Paper short abstract:

Based on long-term research with Japanese workers, this paper examines how individuals have responded to neoliberal discourses of risk and self-management, and reflects on the meanings of employment and unemployment for mid-career and senior workers under neoliberal restructuring.

Paper long abstract:

In the postwar period, Japan developed particular forms of welfare that closely linked Japanese citizens’ access to welfare with corporate employment, and Japanese workers came to enjoy economic and cultural prosperity as well as security and the possibility of constructing life plans. This postwar social contract of “corporate welfarism” minimized the social risks and personal career uncertainties of a fluid labor market and came to represent Japan’s “sacred cow.” However, after nearly 30 years of economic recession by the late 2010s, instead of moving closer toward social democratic regimes, the Japanese state has been scaled back and pursued various neoliberal reforms that have eroded the postwar model of corporate welfarism. Specifically, structural and management reforms have been promoted to reengineer Japan’s corporate practices and to “flexibilize” the workforce, and to promote a specific mode of control—"self-management”—among employees. What are some of the manifestations of these changes for experienced employees? Are employees responding by becoming complicit with neoliberal promises of risk-taking and self-management?

Based on long-term research on corporate restructuring and interviews with Japanese employees, this paper focuses on mid-career and senior workers whose expectations of long-term employment were directly affected by restructuring, and it examines what employment and unemployment mean to people on the ground. Specifically, this paper sheds light on the various forms of “in-house unemployment mechanisms” which have been used to cut personnel costs while avoiding outright dismissal. As a result, these Japanese workers are caught between the slippage of the older corporate ideology of corporate welfarism premised on long-term employment security, and the rise of the new global ideology of neoliberalism premised on labor mobility, in the process exposing them to new conditions of risk and uncertainty.