Japan in a global age of migration

Long thought to be immune from the globalization of labor migration, Japan has over the past decade begun to experience quantum increases in the numbers of women and men who have not simply come to work and quickly returned home, but are also bringing families, forming new households with Japanese nationals, and residing in neighborhoods in cities and regions throughout the country. Many government representatives and citizens continue to believe that this is a temporary phenomenon, occasioned by acute labor shortages in low-wage occupations, which will be overcome through factory automation and off-shore relocation of corporate Japan’s labor-intensive industries. However the country’s impending population decline, rapidly aging society and growing low-wage service sector, along with widening income disparities between Japan and most of the world, point to a greater certainty that the global age of migration has come to stay.