Transnational Families and Newcomer Children in Japan

In the 1980s, because of the economic boom in Japan, many workers came to Japan from other Asian countries. In the 1990s, the Japanese government revised the Immigration Law, resulting in workers coming from Latin America. Since then, the number of foreign laborers has continued to increase.

The number of foreign workers’ children has also grown. They face difficulties keeping up with academics in school because of insufficient Japanese language and poor school support. Teachers also face challenges in instructing diverse students whose native languages are Chinese, Tagalog, Portuguese, Spanish, and others.

In Kanagawa prefecture neighboring Tokyo, the number of newcomer children is relatively large. Four public high schools began providing special services for foreign students in 2007, and the number of such schools increased to 16 in 2013. Those schools provide a variety of services including native language classes, Japanese-as-a-second-language classes, and special instruction classes for academic subjects.

The authors identified the challenges and needs of newcomer students. The data derived from interviews with 85 children at a high school in Kanagawa prefecture from 2007 to 2013. The findings and interpretations indicate that (1) some newcomer children have poor academic achievement and face difficulty going on to college because of scarce resources and support even though they desire more education; (2) many families experience separation due to migration for jobs or women marrying Japanese men and leaving their children in their own country. These are the “multinuclear households” often seen in countries with long accepted immigrants; (3) those families that live apart for many years have difficulty reestablishing their ties. We argue that special educational and social attention should be given to these families and their children.