Fighting for Foreigners

Immigration and Its Impact on Japanese Democracy

Apichai W. Shipper

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780801462078
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politische Interessenvertretung

Although stereotypically homogenized and hostile to immigrants, Japan has experienced an influx of foreigners from Asia and Latin America in recent decades. In Fighting for Foreigners, Apichai W. Shipper details how, in response, Japanese citizens have established a variety of local advocacy groups—some faith based, some secular—to help immigrants secure access to social services, economic equity, and political rights.Drawing on his years of ethnographic fieldwork and a pragmatic account of political motivation he calls associative activism, Shipper asserts that institutions that support illegal foreigners make the most dramatic contributions to democratic multiculturalism. The changing demographics of Japan have been stimulating public discussions, the political participation of marginalized groups, and calls for fair treatment of immigrants. Nongovernmental organizations established by the Japanese have been more effective than the ethnically particular associations formed by migrants themselves, Shipper finds. Activists who initially work in concert to solve specific and local problems eventually become more ambitious in terms of political representation and opinion formation.As debates about the costs and benefits of immigration rage across the developed world, Shipper's research offers a refreshing new perspective: rather than undermining democracy in industrialized society, immigrants can make a positive institutional contribution to vibrant forms of democratic multiculturalism.

1

Introduction

Associative Activism

The following description by a Filipina missionary of a weekly church gathering of Filipinos in Japan illustrates the undemocratic relationship among foreigners based on their legal and occupational categorization:

At the front pews you will see the “legitimate” Filipino community—the embassy people, the students on Monbusho scholarships, the spouses of Japanese nationals, then the male migrant workers, who are engaged in “decent back-breaking labor.” Crowded by the door are the women who work in the sex industry, the last to arrive and the first to leave. Readers and leaders are almost always the students. Although coffee or tea and cookies are served after mass, for fellowship, only the “legitimate” members of the community remain.1

Such experience is not uncommon among the variety of foreigners from different races and socioeconomic backgrounds. Although Japan has one of the most controlled borders in the industrialized world, the number of foreigners rose from 750,000 in 1975 to 2 million in 2005. Many of these are old immigrants from Korea and China who were born in Japan, but over half are new immigrants from Asia and Latin America, who work in small- or medium-sized manufacturing firms. In addition, approximately 200,000 foreign workers, mostly from Asia, who have overstayed their visas, have low-paying positions as construction workers, factory workers, waitresses, entertainers, and cooks. This recent influx of foreign workers, particularly from Asia and South America, is creating new challenges for Japan’s democratic ideals and institutions. The large number of foreigners in Japan is forcing the government to reevaluate basic principles of democracy, a political system that requires agreement among members of the political community on membership rules, entitlements, and a minimum of shared values. The presence of these foreigners is challenging the Japanese government and society to accord new respect to individual and group differences in culture, beliefs, and identity, while guaranteeing equality of social and economic opportunity.

I do not intend to explore salient characteristics that might be required for a system to be a democracy and then evaluate whether Japan is a democratic society. Based on its liberal constitution and existing political institutions that provide essential guarantees, I assume that Japan is already a democracy.2 Instead, the recent influx of foreigners and their legal distinction raise interesting questions about the direction and quality of Japan’s democracy. Scholars generally agree that foreigners have a causal impact on democratic institutions, but they disagree on whether this impact is positive (strengthening and transforming democracy and reducing economic inequalities) or negative (weakening or undermining democracy and increasing economic inequalities). I aim to clarify this relationship by examining how foreigners have advanced (or hindered) democracy in Japan. Which type of foreign workers and their organizations best promotes Japan’s democratic institutions and processes that aim to protect individual freedom and basic liberties as well as to improve social and economic equality? This question is addressed through a discussion of the efforts of immigrant rights activists to protect foreigners at the local level and to provide alternative sources of information on foreigners at the national level. I then explore the responses of local governments to the demands or preferences of these activists and the government efforts to provide wider and more egalitarian representation even for nonresidents. These efforts of nonstate institutions and local governments are important and inherently good for democracy because humane treatment of the worst-off populations, including foreigners, as well as wider and more egalitarian representation even for noncitizens are crucial aspects of this model of democracy.3

Despite its antiforeigner image of the past, Japan has achieved a surprisingly high degree of civility in its accommodation of foreign workers, including illegal ones. This achievement, which advances more inclusive democracy in Japan, is credited not to government efforts but to the initiatives of certain Japanese citizens and their organizations to support foreigners. This book explains how this process takes place.

Foreigners and Democracy in Theoretical Perspective

As modern technology facilitates the movement of capital, people, and ideas across national boundaries and socioeconomic conditions propel migration from underdeveloped to wealthy countries, the impact of foreigners on democratic institutions and ideals has generated increasing scholarly interest. Some scholars, including democratic theorists and critical legal scholars, see the participation of immigrants in the civil society and pressure on institutions to respond to their needs as driving democracy forward. Others, such as nationalist theorists and certain labor scholars, have argued that the presence of foreigners undermines democratic ideals such as worker rights and equality and weakens citizen commitment to the common good. This section discusses the debate on the impact of foreigners on democracy before turning to an explanation of Japan’s institutional arrangement for foreigners.

Strengthening or Weakening Civil Society and Democracy?

During a hot summer night in Kotobuki-chōof Yokohama, a young Korean man stood on the stairs of the Labor and Welfare Center listening to the free summer concert. The Asian economic crisis had interrupted his third year of law studies in a university in Seoul and brought him to Kotobuki-chōin search of work. Below him in front of the stage, a group of happy Bangladeshis gathered. Next to this group of foreign workers stood a few staff and volunteers from the Kalabaw-no-kai, a support group for foreign workers in Kotobuki-chō. They had helped organize this annual event with various volunteer groups from the area and operated a yatai (stall) selling barbeque meat all afternoon. One Kalabaw staff had also helped another volunteer group handing out food to homeless residents during the festival (earlier in the week, homeless residents were given a coupon to receive free food during the festival). These foreign workers and members of the foreigners support group were immersed in this community festival and the beautiful music.

Foreigners participate in the creation and maintenance of a variety of institutions, such as cultural or religious associations, immigrant ethnic associations, hometown associations, or homeland language schools. These institutions generate a vibrant civic life and political awareness among their members, while functioning as transnational agents of social capital and trust. Through these institutions, foreigners organize festivals, cultural activities, and other events that bring together foreigners and natives in the community while preserving certain features of the immigrants’ culture. These institutions can promote public discussion about immigrant and local issues through public meetings and the mass media. All these activities aim to improve multicultural understanding. This associational involvement by foreigners, who appear particularly zealous in their community-sustaining activities, has led some democratic theorists such as Michael Walzer to view new American immigrants as a major source that reinvigorates civil society and democracy.4

In contrast, others have observed that foreigners are less likely than natives to volunteer for public service and to participate in the political and civic activities of their host societies. They are not required to participate in civic duties, such as jury service, or to serve in the military. Where foreigners are allowed to vote at local elections, they tend to have lower rates of voter turnout than that of citizens.5 In addition, foreign workers in most industrialized countries have lower levels of participation in and hold different attitudes toward their unions than do native workers.6 This division between natives and foreigners undermines working-class solidarity and can weaken labor-backed political parties.7 Furthermore, the presence of immigrant workers typically reduces the political and economic bargaining power of organized labor. Their growing number provides firms—domestic and transnational—with a valuable tool to suppress wages and benefits, thereby disempowering labor. During periods of economic recession when organized labor hopes to exert its leverage against business, business often responds by scapegoating and repatriating foreign workers rather than by making concessions to native workers.8

Transformation or Retrenchment?

Scholars also disagree on whether foreigners offer opportunities for democratic transformation or encourage democratic retrenchment. Critical legal scholar Roberto Mangabeira Unger sees “hidden opportunities for democratic transformation in the rich democracies” as a result of the gradual movement of labor from developing countries to rich countries. He believes that immigration generates “involuntary or half-conscious institutional experimentalism” in host countries.9 In Unger’s view, this institutional experimentalism by state actors in rich countries drives democracy forward in these countries. Bonnie Honig adds that, historically, the foreigner, as an “agent of refounding,” has helped a society to define and shape its national community, thereby further advancing democracy.10 Foreigners may induce a modern society to redefine the criteria for membership and entitlements as well as to rethink the status of natives, thereby reconceptualizing its own ideal of justice. For Honig, “democracy is always about living with strangers, [and] being mobilized into action periodically with and on behalf of people who are surely opaque to us and often unknown to us.”11 Will Kymlicka concurs that foreigners propel liberal democracies to experiment with and to establish new institutions for multicultural representation that guarantee justice.12 However, he cautions that certain types of immigration organizations promote the development of democratic citizenship better than others.13

Others have argued that foreigners can lead a country down the dark path toward democratic retrenchment. Because he believes that foreigners lack national loyalty and do not share the same notion of the common good, David Miller argues that foreigners will undermine the community’s interests and even national security.14 In the United States, the 9/11 terrorist acts raised such a concern over national security and Muslim foreigners who are seen as not sharing similar values and ideals as Americans. Viewed as purveyors of antinational ideas and potential threats to national security, many Arabs and Muslims living in the United States were required to register with the government, and many were imprisoned without charges or legal representation.15 The subsequent passage of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001 curtailed civil liberties (e.g., by relaxing the restrictions on phone tapping), for citizens as well as foreigners.16 Significantly, an official view of foreigners as a subversive force and threat to national security promotes racism and xenophobia among citizens, as occurred with the Nativism movement in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Similarly in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s, some officials worried that certain Korean residents were harboring ill-will toward Japan and its citizens. These officials spread horrifying rumors about Koreans in Japan, following the Great Kanto Earthquake on September 1, 1923, that Koreans were setting fires, looting, and poisoning wells in a planned attempt to attack the Japanese. The Home Ministry then instructed the local authorities to take strong measures to prevent any Korean subversion in their areas.17 It helped to organize vigilante corps, comprised of both army reservists and civilian volunteers, to search the streets for Koreans and acted brutally against them. At least two thousand innocent Koreans died at the hands of these vigilantes.

Increasing or Reducing Economic Inequalities?

Foreigners, through the migration of labor from poor to rich countries, have been viewed as both a solution and a source of world economic inequality. Building on philosopher John Rawls’s well-known “difference principle” of distributive justice, which states that inequality is allowed to exist if it benefits the least advantaged in society, supporters such as Joseph Carens stress the importance of a commitment to freedom of movement as both an important liberty in itself and as a prerequisite for other freedoms.18 While Rawls’s theory of justice, in its original form, is confined within a given society, Carens applies Rawls’s conc...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Note on Conventions
• 1. Introduction: Associative Activism
• 2. Controlling Foreigners: Japan’s Foreign Worker Policy
• 3. Long-Distance Nationalism: Political Activities of Immigrant Ethnic Associations
• 4. Democracy of Illegals: Organizing Support for Illegal Foreigners
• 5. Local Partners: Local Governments and Immigrant Rights NGOs
• 6. Foreigners in the Public Sphere: Contesting Prevalent Social Meanings
• 7. Conclusion: Foreigners and Democracy
• Appendix