How Does Migration Infrastructure Enable the Transfer of Human Capitals across Countries? the Roles of Place of Education and Field of Study in the Cross-Border Labor Market

Immigration researchers from the sociological perspective argue that the formation of the cross-border labor market requires the emergence of institutions and organizations that can reduce the uncertainty and information asymmetry between workers and employers (Shire 2020). As immigration control policies produce complexities in crossing the national border, both migrant workers in the sending countries and employers in the receiving countries necessitate migration intermediaries that mediate between the two actors. While the conception of a cross-border labor market underscores the importance of organizational and institutional perspectives, it overlooks the conventional argument of immigration research, such as the assimilation and integration perspectives. Research on immigrant’s human capital argues that immigrants tend to have a significant disadvantage in the host society’s labor market because of the limited transferability of skills acquired abroad. Meanwhile, recent studies discuss the heterogeneity in their international transferability between science, technology, and math (STEM) degrees and non-STEM degrees because STEM skills tend to be universal and less country-specific. In other words, STEM degrees can be more transferable across countries. However, these studies also lack the organizational and institutional perspectives concerning how STEM skills acquired abroad were transferred to the host society’s labor market. Summarizing the discussions on the job-matching mechanisms among immigrants in the cross-border labor market and the conventional arguments about immigrants’ human capital and their integration into the host society, we need to combine these two theoretical perspectives and fill the gap in our knowledge of immigrants’ job-matching and their integration in the labor market in the receiving countries. We use the data derived from the pane survey targeting immigrants in specific municipalities in Tokyo, Japan. Using the quantitative longitudinal data set following the career trajectories of migrant workers in Tokyo, we investigate the roles of job-matching mechanisms for migrant workers with STEM education acquired abroad.