Low-Skilled Migrant Labor Schemes in Japan’s Agriculture: Voices From the Field

Abstract

Despite rapid demographic decline, until recently, low-skilled migrant workers have been welcomed only through ‘side-doors’ such as technical interns (TITP). Yet pressure for change comes from two sides: the moral critique of the ‘side-door’ scheme, and the growing economic pressures of a dwindling labor force. In 2018 Japan put in place a short-term bona-fide labor scheme (Specified Skilled Worker; hereafter, SSW) in fields previously largely inaccessible to foreign labor. In combination with the TITP schemes, these workers are allowed to stay longer. But what do these changes mean, how do the farmer-employers see them, and will the SSW lead to a sustainable farm labor supply going forward? We explore stakeholders’ views of the current schemes and their opinions on how low-skilled labor migration should proceed in agriculture. Businesses are desperate for labor, but not at any cost. Under SSW, employers are being asked to change the ways they envision and treat migrant labor. The tensions between their expectations and the realities on the ground reflect the contradictions that Japan’s migration policies inherit, based in the bureaucratic fiction that only ‘skilled’ labor is necessary. Data for this paper come from qualitative interviews conducted from 2018 to 2022 in Kyoto, Aichi, and Tokyo.