The role of human and social capital to gain the upper hand in migrant's labor market: The case of Japanese-Argentina workers in Japan

We study necessary conditions for migrants to get out of precarious jobs imposed on them examining the case of Argentina migrants in Japan. Japan’s Latin American migrants are known as enjoying privileged status as descendants of Japanese nationals, but nearly ninety percent of them have been concentrated to highly unstable part-time jobs often fired by labor contractors. We examine the difference between such agency workers and those gained better jobs, focusing on the role of human and social capital. Data collected through 369 interviews with Japanese-Argentina workers in Japan indicate that proficiency in Japanese is the most important factor to find better jobs in terms of human capital. But Japanese proficiency is not the sufficient condition for gaining the upper hand in the labor market. Regardless of competence in Japanese, reliance on co-ethnic social ties usually results in part-time jobs. These networks serve as group-based resources because they are useful for those with poor fluency in Japanese to find jobs. Yet reliance on these ties is most common for moves into the most precarious jobs prepared for Latin American migrants. By contrast, those who seek jobs from Japanese are much more likely to become full-time employees or self-employed. These results show a certain combination of human and social capital, fluency in Japanese and reliance on ties with Japanese, is necessary to get out of part-time jobs. Migrant co-ethnic networks are crucial for job seeking and unemployment minimization strategies, but they have led to migrant’s concentration in the most disadvantaged segment of the labor market.