Unraveling Migration Policy-Making in the Land of “No Immigrants”: Japanese Bureaucracy and the Discursive Gap

Abstract

Japan has the most rapidly aging society in the world, with the fastest rate of population contraction. However, Japan has yet to embrace using international migration as a solution to these long-term problems. Successive governments have launched programs to alleviate labor shortages via migration, but these governments have also consistently resisted accepting that Japan is becoming an immigration country. Japan's restrictive migration policies, despite critical demographic challenges, have remained a central puzzle for migration scholars. This article addresses this puzzle by demystifying the hitherto-underexplored policy-making processes in Japan. Central to its analysis is Japan's “golden rule” to accept only highly skilled migrants, which has long grounded successive government policy orientations. The qualitative analysis presented here shows that self-constrained bureaucrats in Japan depend on temporary solutions to migration issues without tackling fundamental reforms, due to the country's compartmentalized government structure. Shedding light on policy-making processes within the Japanese government, this article highlights the need to examine bureaucrats’ role in migration policy-making so that we can review the policies more carefully to improve migration governance.