Left Ajar: The Price of Rights (2013) and Migration to Japan
When discussions arise about migrating to Japan in developed Western countries, the phrase “great for visiting, not for working” often springs up. On the other hand, those who do wish to work in Japan as a migrant may find that their chances of admittance are not as great as they would like. Yet Japan, realizing that it has come to a time where foreign labor is essential to its economy, is now taking steps to expand its historically conservative migration channels.
While many analyses of Japan’s immigration policies have been conducted from a domestic social and cultural lens, analysis can also come from contextualizing Japan on the world stage. In his book The Price of Rights, Martin Ruhs (2013) offers an excellently informed, empirical perspective on global immigration dynamics, uncovering the relationships between a country’s national interests and its approach to immigration policies in practice, rather than focusing solely on the ideological aspects of immigrant rights. Ruhs conducts a broad survey of immigration programs in major countries. He then proposes a redefinition of migrant human rights as defined by the UN, arguing that some non-core migrant rights can be restricted in exchange for increased immigration. Ruhs supports three hypotheses: that migrant programs are more open to higher-skilled migrants, that the more skills migrants have, the more rights they tend to enjoy, and the less obstacles to entry a migrant program has, the less rights it tends to grant.
The framework and arguments Ruhs establishes can be applied to explain why Japan has, until quite recently, remained relatively selective towards migration despite its domestic labor shortages and search for talent abroad. The Japanese visa program for highly skilled foreigners and new proposals for a migrant training program, both established after the publication of Ruhs’ book, support his claim that programs aimed at high-skilled migrants tend to offer greater rights than those targeting low-skilled migrants.
In describing the flow of migration, Ruhs classifies countries as “migrant-receiving” or “migrant-sending” depending on if the country experiences net migration or net emigration (2013, p. 11). With a net migration of 134,721 in 2013 and 99,994 in 2023 (World Bank, 2023), Japan continues to be a migrant-receiving country. However, it is still selective in who gets to come and stay. In 2015 and 2016, permanent immigrants comprised less than 0.1% of the population in Japan, while they “made up between 0.8% and 1% of the total population” in Canada and Australia (OECD European Commission, 2018). Of all the countries in the OECD at the time, Japan had the second-lowest proportion of permanent immigrants in its population (OECD European Commission, 2018). This is an effect of Japan’s selective approach to migration, especially permanent residence.
In setting up his argument, Ruhs asserts that nations tend to promote their own national interests. Ruhs proposes that nations consider how migrants affect four aspects of the state: the economic needs of the nation’s industries and labor markets, the distribution of wealth across the population of the nation, “national identity and social cohesion,” and “national security and public order”(2013, pp. 26–28). Perhaps the most notable barriers of Japan concern the latter two aspects of migrants’ perceived effects on social cohesion and public order.
In recent history, migrants and foreigners in general have been associated with crime in Japan. Throughout the world, foreigners have often been scapegoats of crime: “new immigrants at different historical periods have been blamed for increasing crime” in the United States and “migrant threats have been viewed as a criminal threat in European countries as well”(Yamamoto, 2010, p. 303). Japan’s 2003 policy aimed at fighting crime included the idea that foreigners were a major factor of rising crime rates (Yamamoto, 2010, p. 301), and “a substantial portion of the Japanese public affirmatively subscribed to the image of … foreigners overpowering native residents”(Yamamoto, 2010, p. 320). This notion was highly exaggerated, given that according to 2006 data cited by Yamamoto, foreigners only represented “approximately two percent of all penal- code offenders, four percent of homicide offenders, and eight percent of robbery offenders”(Yamamoto, 2010, p. 310). Since the Japanese government and populace believe that foreigners may be upsetting social cohesion and public order as defined by Ruhs, they may be less open to foreigners in general.
Ruhs discusses how migrant access to welfare could depend on whether they can economically make up for the costs of welfare benefits, writing that “the lower the skills and earnings of migrants in the host country, the greater will be the strictly economic case for restricting some of their welfare rights in order to minimize the fiscal costs for existing residents”(2013, p. 46). Governments or companies may limit welfare benefits for lower-skilled workers, who may be unable to compensate for those benefits. Established welfare states like Japan may be more selective in admitting migrants because they must be enrolled into welfare. Indeed, Ruhs classifies Japan as a “conservative welfare state”(2013, p. 78), so a look at Japan’s welfare systems is necessary.
Perhaps the greatest aspects of the Japanese welfare state are its national pension and national health insurance schemes. The national pension system covers any adult aged 20 to 59 (Japan Pension Service, 2024), and individuals staying in Japan for longer than three months are required to enroll in national health insurance (Japan Health Policy NOW, 2015), meaning that anyone staying in Japan under even a single-year work visa will be enrolled in these welfare programs. As welfare coverage is mandatory for migrant workers, Japan may be less open to admit low-skilled workers, as their cost on the welfare system, especially healthcare, could outweigh the economic benefits that these workers would produce. Migrants may pose less of a burden on the pension system, as benefits are usually not conferred until after they reach a senior retirement age in Japan. Still, welfare payments remain such a high concern that the government is currently considering “revoking permanent residency status from foreigners…if they do not pay taxes or social insurance premiums”(KYODO NEWS+, 2024). The wide-ranging coverage of the national pension and health insurance systems demonstrate that Japan’s main welfare programs apply to virtually every migrant worker. When applied to Ruhs’ argument that nations are concerned with the economic costs of admitting migrants to welfare programs, the universality of Japanese welfare can help explain why it is generally reluctant to admit migrant workers.
Ruhs’s initial framework and discussion of how national interests affect immigration policy has thus far helped explain why Japan would be less open to immigrants. However, Japan’s migration programs have changed since the publication of the book. Most notably, Japan has introduced a points-based system for highly skilled migrant workers, and is also in the process of replacing the technical internship program mentioned in Ruhs’s analysis. Yet, an analysis of these programs demonstrates further support for Ruhs’s claims.
Japan’s visa for highly skilled workers relies on a points-based system. Applicants earn points based on their highest attained degree, years of work experience, younger age, income, and language test level (Embassy of Japan in Lebanon, 2013). Accepted visa holders gain greater security and openness compared to their general work visa and technical intern counterparts. For example, many migrants need to have lived in Japan for ten years to apply for permanent residency, but highly skilled workers can apply after just five (Immigration Services Agency, 2022). They can also bring dependents, spouses, and family members over to work or stay (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2023), privileges that are less generous on general work visas. This visa demonstrates further support for Ruhs’s hypothesis that higher migrant skills are correlated with greater rights, as the significantly increased barriers to highly skilled visa attainment result in greater rights and benefits granted upon entry.
Japan’s 2023 introduction of J-Skip and J-Find visas also fit the trend proposed by Ruhs. The J-Skip visa confers further benefits upon highly skilled professionals engaged in and qualified for academic research or business development, including the ability to apply for permanent residency after just one year (Immigration Services Agency, 2023). The J-Find visa grants job-seeking graduates from pre-approved universities a maximum stay of two years (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2023b), as opposed to a maximum tourist stay of 90 days. In both cases, Japan continues to demonstrate preference towards higher-skilled or higher-qualified migrants coming to the country for employment, supporting Ruhs’s hypothesis that migration programs are more open to migrants with higher skills.
Laws themselves embody ideals by setting a guideline that should be enforced. The discussion of ideal migrant rights versus how they are approached in practice would not be complete without discussing how laws are worded versus how they are enforced in practice. Although Ruhs is quite aware of this discrepancy and chooses to only judge the letter of the law, a complete look must consider any violations that nations systematically allow. Japan’s technical internship program was perhaps the most egregious producer of migrant workers’ rights violations.
On written law, the technical internship program was intended to skill-up migrant workers and prepare them for skilled careers by training them under designated employers. In practice, it served as a “means of adjusting labor supply and demand for low-wage foreign workers,” (Mizukoshi, 2024), essentially channeling cheap, unskilled labor from abroad. Mizukoshi (2024) estimates that there were “as many as 410,000” technical interns employed, comprising a fifth of the “approximately 2 million” foreign residents holding a job in Japan. Technical interns were prohibited from changing their jobs (Mizukoshi, 2024), making them vulnerable to employer abuse. This resulted in a number of rights violations. Intern trainees would face “physical or psychological abuse as well as the confiscation of their passports” and “wage theft by their employers”(a.matsumoto, 2023). Even worse, migrants would be victims of exploitation even before they stepped onto Japanese soil. Brokers in charge of coordinating hiring and migration to Japan would charge “excessive fees” and leave trainees “already in debt by the time they move to Japan” (a.matsumoto, 2023). These extreme conditions would prompt interns to abandon their jobs. In 2022, the Immigration Services agency recorded over 9,000 missing trainees (Mizukoshi, 2024). The technical internship program supports Ruhs’s idea that programs lower-skilled migrant workers tend to grant less rights. However, the use of the program as a tunnel of cheap labor and violations occurring in the wake of the program also demonstrate that Ruhs’s analysis of the word of the law is not sufficient to fully capture the reality of migration programs in practice.
The proposed reformations to the technical internship program attempt to better align it with the goal to “support the Japanese economy now facing a labor shortage,” and to “help trainees to become skilled workers and pave the way for obtaining permanent residency” (Mizukoshi, 2024). Under the new system, workers “would be allowed to change their jobs, provided that they satisfy a certain condition,” (Mizukoshi, 2024) perhaps granting migrants more safety than the previous technical program. But of course, applying Ruhs’s logic, these increased rights may come with increased barriers. And indeed they do. Trainees will now need to pass the N5 or N4 level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, (KYODO NEWS+, 2024) the most basic levels of the standardized test often used to gauge understanding of Japanese.
At this point, it is appropriate to ask if these increased rights would result in more migrants despite higher barriers. Japan’s aim to prevent migrant rights violations and improve the baseline safety of the labor program points to the government’s understanding that the country has started to lag behind internationally in terms of its appeal to unskilled migrant workers. Perhaps improving the program will indeed attract more laborers. And, at the same time base requirements are rising for unskilled trainees, their highly skilled visa programs, J-skip, and J-find give highly qualified migrant workers more opportunity to work in the nation. For these new programs, only time and further research will tell just how effective they are in supporting Japan’s labor force.
The door to working in Japan, previously left just slightly ajar, now creaks open wider and wider. An application of the arguments presented in Martin Ruhs’s The Price of Rights has helped to lend some context to the Japanese welfare state’s selectivity towards migrants and demonstrates that, in over ten years following Ruhs’s publication, Japan’s highly skilled foreign worker visa, J-find, J-skip, and new trainee programs all follow a trend of letting higher skilled migrant workers enjoy more rights in the country.
Works Cited
a.matsumoto. (2023). Global voices — global voices online: Widespread labour standards violations among japanese businesses with so-called technical interns. Singer Island: Newstex. Retrieved from http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/blogs-podcasts-websites/global-voices-online-widespread-labour-standards/docview/2890239453/se-2
Embassy of Japan in Lebanon. (2013). Points-based preferential immigration treatment for highly-skilled foreign professionals. https://www.lb.emb-japan.go.jp/Points-Based-Immigration-Treatment.PDF
Immigration Services Agency. (2022). Application for permanent residence permit (Japanese). 永住許可申請 | 出入国在留管理庁. https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/procedures/16-4.html?hl=en
Immigration Services Agency. (2023). Measures for Highly Skilled Workers: J-skip Visa (Japanese). 特別高度人材制度（J-Skip） | 出入国在留管理庁. https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/applications/resources/nyuukokukanri01_00009.html
Japan Health Policy NOW. (2015). Health Insurance System. https://japanhpn.org/en/hs1/
Japan Pension Service. (2024, April 1). National Pension System. Nenkin.go.jp. https://www.nenkin.go.jp/international/japanese-system/nationalpension/nationalpension.html
KYODO NEWS+. (2024, February 9). Japan Oks New Foreign Trainee Program to strengthen rights protection. Kyodo News+. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/02/777a99ffd313-japan-oks-new-foreign-trainee-program-to-strengthen-rights-protection.html
OECD European Commission. (2018). Settling In 2018 Indicators of Immigrant Integration. Chapter 2. Composition of immigrant populations and households. OECD iLibrary. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/9789264307216-6-en/index.html?itemId=%2Fcontent%2Fcomponent%2F9789264307216-6-en
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. (2023, May 15). Highly skilled professional visa. https://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/visit/visa/long/visa16.html
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. (2023b, April 27). Specified visa: Designated activities (future creation individual, spouse or child of future creation individual). https://www.mofa.go.jp/ca/fna/page22e_001037.html
Mizukoshi, T. (2024, March 5). The draft of the Revised Technical Intern Training Program finalized: Japan to remain a country attracting workers to “Make money”: Yano research market solution provider. The Draft of the Revised Technical Intern Training Program Finalized: Japan to Remain a Country Attracting Workers to “Make Money” | Yano Research Market solution provider. https://www.yanoresearch.com/hirameki/357
Ruhs, M. (2013). The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration. Princeton University Press.
World Bank. (2023). Net migration — Japan. World Bank Open Data. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.NETM?locations=JP
Yamamoto, R. (2010). Migrants as a crime problem: The construction of foreign criminality discourse in contemporary japan. International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 34(2), 301–330. Retrieved from http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/migrants-as-crime-problem-construction-foreign/docview/1029932050/se-2
