Beyond the Skill Migration: Middle Class North-South Mobility in Asia

Favell’s famous work, Eurostars and Eurocities(2008) arouse wide academic interest in mobilities in EU. Under the popularization of international migration, migrants’ social background and migration flows from/in North has been diverse. As Scott(2006) claimed, it has “become a ‘normal’ middle-class activity rather than something exclusively confined to an economic elite.” However, these works are limited on the research area. This paper tries to theorize the middle class North-South mobility in Asia, based on empirical work among young Japanese migrant workers in Asian cities, including Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

In decades, the destinations of Japanese migrants have been gradually shifting from Western countries to Asian countries. This occurs in the economic transition or power-shift between Japan and other Asian countries. Young generation increasingly prefer economic opportunities in Asian global cities. They are not typical expatriates transferred from headquarters, nor project-based temporary professionals, but contract-based and locally hired workers moving individually. This represents a new trend of migration, which has emerged in the last decade.

I explain how its migration system has formed in Hong Kong and transplanted to other areas and discuss the characteristics of the migrants. The phenomenon formed a market-based migration system arranged by staffing agencies. Now Japanese companies abroad have two types of Japanese workers; expatriates sent by the same company and locally hired contract workers positioned under them. Young contract workers’ career plans are often inconsistent with the actual achievements, since they are excluded from the companies’ promotion system. Consequently, many of them use their working experience and social networks acquired while abroad and find another career track with entrepreneurship. This shows a pattern that is distinct from career-based skill migration. Through these discussions, I propose a different perspective on the middle class migration in Asian context.