Contemporary reversely-oriented labor migration: Japanese youth emigrants to China

The developed countries’ long recession and the increasing presence of NIEs, BRICS and ASEAN countries created a new form of temporary labor migrants who are willing to work in active and aggressive labor market in these countries despite of severe conditions. This paper focuses on reversely-oriented labor migration and aims at revealing how migrants from the developed country organize their attempts and plan at career building with a special reference to the Japanese young semi-skilled labor migrants working in Shanghai. This type of migration was at first created as cheap labor needed by Japanese companies based on Asian countries, and recently is established as a survival strategy to counter the labor market in Japan, which marginalize the youth including both male and female. Based on a series of interview surveys in Shanghai since 2009, I show 3 findings. Firstly, their motivation: they are willing to get into the competitive global labor market although for the time being their living standard gets low with lower income and less social security, in order to avoid to be fixed to the exploited position in Japan. Secondly, their plan: they regard their working experience abroad as temporary training to obtain some capitals. After short-term staying, they have some options in terms of their location to work and of working status. Thirdly, their strategy: under the severe condition after migration, they intentionally migrate to another place and change jobs repeatedly as if collecting and keeping options to get a better chance. Referring to these points, I reveal how they try to control their uncertain conditions in the global labor market.