Paper short abstract:

Drawing on in-depth interviews with technical trainees in both Vietnam and Japan and materials from Vietnamese recruiting companies, this paper will trace their careers in order to examine both the controversies and the positive outcomes of “technical training” in Japan.

Paper long abstract:

Not even the COVID-19 pandemic could impede the ongoing contract-labor migration from Vietnam to Japan. Vietnamese, most of whom are short-term workers, became the second biggest group of foreigners in Japan, surpassing the long-standing Korean minority. Currently, they comprise 15.5% of the foreign national population. Why does this country lead Southeast Asia in terms of sending workers to Japan? This paper demonstrates how this dynamic stream of labor was created by a combination of the disastrous economic situation in rural areas of northern Vietnam and the “Technical Intern Training System” (ginō jisshūsei seido), introduced in Japan in 1993. Drawing on in-depth interviews with technical trainees (ginō jisshūsei) in both Vietnam and Japan between August 2019 and present time and materials from Vietnamese recruiting companies, this paper will trace their careers in order to examine both the controversies and the positive outcomes of “technical training” in Japan. While most of them experienced hardships and had to create their own strategies for developing their careers after the completion of their training, which are not always directly related to the program’s initial goals, their experiences in Japan often allow them to find a way to cope with this task successfully. The paper will identify the main actors of the recruitment process and show how the step-by-step migration pattern, which made Vietnamese cities its main link, gradually evolved into a more dynamic model, which allowed the recruitment of potential trainees directly from rural areas. The paper will draw on statistics provided by mediating organizations along with fieldwork including testimonies from VP Corporation, an important labor broker company in the capital of Hanoi, and so-called supervising companies (kanri kikan) in Japan. Several case studies will reveal the experiences of Vietnamese trainees who spent years working in Japan.