A Study on the foreign workers in Japan

Abstract

Temporary labor employment means to work with the purpose of using the opportunity of overseas employment only for a certain period without considering settling down in the importing country. It constitutes the main stream of labor shift of today. One of the features of temporary employment in Asia is that there is hardly any relation of export and import under the agreement between two countries, which cannot be found in other areas.

Entering the 1980s, the economy of oil producing countries in the Middle East gradually became stagnant and the demand of labor reached its peak. In the early 1980s, increasing number of workers returned home forced by dismissal or wage cut. In the meantime, industrial nations of East Asia such as Japan, Taiwan and Korea were confronted by the period of labor shortage. At the same time, a labor flow from the countries with a surplus of manpower in Southeast Asia to the East was prominent. In Japan, the issue of foreign workers has been brought into focus since around 1985, although the influx and increase of foreign workers become conspicuous in the 1980s.

Discussions on the countermeasure for foreign workers has been going on in earnest in Japan since the late 1980s, and there were many pros and cons presented concerning the policy of importing foreign workers, which might be considered the argument between open-door and closed-door policy of the second kind, without reaching a conclusion yet. Japan began to show serious interest because of the increasing number of illegal foreign workers and the fear of Japanese people against them.