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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how Japanese students and young professionals educated in Central Europe decide to stay, re-migrate, or return to Japan. Focusing on the social construction of skills and mobility capital, it examines how internationally acquired competencies are valued across labour markets.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates how Japanese students and young professionals educated in Central Europe navigate decisions to return to Japan, re-migrate within Europe, or remain at the local labour market, focusing on the interplay between their emergent career aspirations and the social meanings attached to skills. Given the increasingly diverse mobility trajectories of young middle-class Japanese, the study argues that understanding contemporary mobility requires attention not only to structural opportunities but also to how skills are differently valorized across contexts.

Empirically, the paper combines two qualitative datasets. The first draws on previous research with young Japanese middle-class professionals with overseas education and work experience. The second introduces new interview data with Japanese students in the Czech Republic—primarily in medicine, arts, and music—as well as young adults entering Europe through temporary schemes such as the Work & Travel visa. These cases illustrate the growing diversity in mobility channels through which Japanese nationals engage with European educational and labour markets.

Analytically, the study uses mobility capital (Murphy-Lejeune 2002) and Kaufmann et al.’s (2004) concept of motility. The discussion around the strategic deployment of the accumulated credentials is supported by Liu-Farrer’s scholarship on the social construction of migrant skills, which illustrates how skills are shaped by actors and institutions within local, national, and transnational contexts, and are interpreted differently depending on labour market norms and cultural expectations.

This perspective allows the paper to explore how participants’ internationally acquired skills are interpreted, recognised, or discounted in diverse professional fields, and how the social evaluations shape aspirations to stay, re-migrate, or return to Japan. By foregrounding skill as a socially mediated construct, the paper contributes to Japanese studies by revealing how mobility decisions are embedded in cultural understandings of competence, professional worth, and belonging.

References:

Kaufmann, Vincent, Manfred Max Bergman and Dominique Auderset Joye. 2004. “Motility: Mobility as capital.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28: 745-756.

Liu-Farrer, Gracia. 2024. “The Social Construction of Skill in International Migration: Perspectives from Asia.” Annual Review of Sociology 51: 423-440

Murphy-Lejeune, Elizabeth 2002. Student Mobility and Narrative in Europe. The New Strangers. London: Routledge