The Politics of Labour Migration and Demographic Change in Contemporary Japan

<p>Japan currently faces a demographic crisis resulting from declines in fertility rates and rapid expansion of Japan’s elderly population. Public pensions will come under immense strain as shrinking numbers of working age people are forced to support ever more retirees. At the same time, declines in fertility and falling population figures threaten Japan’s future economic growth and vitality. This thesis investigates the relationship between the demographic crisis and Japan’s strict immigration policies. Policymakers continue to refuse to allow migration to Japan in order to offset declines in Japan’s own working age population. The thesis aims to explain why Japan remains so reluctant to accept migrant workers from abroad, even though this may offer a solution to the problems of demographic decline and depopulation. I contend that conventional analyses of Japan’s immigration policies do not provide adequate explanations for why Japan continues to exclude foreign labourers. Rather, I argue that Japan’s attitude must be understood in connection with a binary, “us-and-them” mindset toward foreign countries and communities collectively that exists in Japan’s governing and bureaucratic institutions. This mindset is evident in Japan’s practical labour policy implementation, and has important cultural and political implications for Japan’s public discourses of national identity and interests. The thesis argues that Japan remains unwilling to accept migrant labourers because of an immigration policy structure that resolutely adheres to an outdated view of migrants as mere units of labour. This overlooks changed global models of migration that prioritise human rights, proactive social integration and strategic selection of migrants. While Japan could ease the effects of depopulation and demographic decline by revising core policy assumptions in order to effectively integrate migrants into the dwindling national workforce, it has so far failed to engage with newer models of migration. My analysis locates Japan’s crisis within a wider context of global demographic change and transnational population movement in the twenty-first century.</p>

The Politics of Labour Migration and Demographic Change in Contemporary Japan

<p>Japan currently faces a demographic crisis resulting from declines in fertility rates and rapid expansion of Japan’s elderly population. Public pensions will come under immense strain as shrinking numbers of working age people are forced to support ever more retirees. At the same time, declines in fertility and falling population figures threaten Japan’s future economic growth and vitality. This thesis investigates the relationship between the demographic crisis and Japan’s strict immigration policies. Policymakers continue to refuse to allow migration to Japan in order to offset declines in Japan’s own working age population. The thesis aims to explain why Japan remains so reluctant to accept migrant workers from abroad, even though this may offer a solution to the problems of demographic decline and depopulation. I contend that conventional analyses of Japan’s immigration policies do not provide adequate explanations for why Japan continues to exclude foreign labourers. Rather, I argue that Japan’s attitude must be understood in connection with a binary, “us-and-them” mindset toward foreign countries and communities collectively that exists in Japan’s governing and bureaucratic institutions. This mindset is evident in Japan’s practical labour policy implementation, and has important cultural and political implications for Japan’s public discourses of national identity and interests. The thesis argues that Japan remains unwilling to accept migrant labourers because of an immigration policy structure that resolutely adheres to an outdated view of migrants as mere units of labour. This overlooks changed global models of migration that prioritise human rights, proactive social integration and strategic selection of migrants. While Japan could ease the effects of depopulation and demographic decline by revising core policy assumptions in order to effectively integrate migrants into the dwindling national workforce, it has so far failed to engage with newer models of migration. My analysis locates Japan’s crisis within a wider context of global demographic change and transnational population movement in the twenty-first century.</p>

The Spanish government faces difficult months ahead

Significance Spain has been harder hit by rising prices than other EU states. The governing Socialist Party (PSOE) and Unidas Podemos (UP) have clashed over the appropriate response, with the latter favouring partial nationalisation of the energy sector. The governing parties also are at odds over pension reform, the environment and labour policy. Impacts With Spain responding first to the international energy price crisis, its measures will face close EU scrutiny. High household electricity bills are particularly affecting working-class consumers, many of whom vote for the governing parties. The government is unlikely to repeal 2012 labour reforms that have had the effect of liberalising the labour market.

The emergence of a New European Labour Policy regime: Continuity and change since the euro crisis

The architecture of European labour policy has changed in the past years of the euro crisis and its management. While in the pre-crisis phase EU labour policy still had a mainly symbolic character, the EU crisis management gave it a much more binding character. The article analyses the continuities and shifts in European labour policy against the background of austerity and crisis policy arguing that a new labour policy complex was able to emerge at the European level. While institutional shifts were considerable, the market-liberal orientation of labour policy remained in place. However, it was radicalized with the resilience approach. The article therefore provides an overview of the continuity and change of European labour policy in the euro crisis on the basis of institutional and discursive shifts.

Social marketing applications in public policy programs: key learnings and applications

Purpose Marketing tools used in public policy may not be purely commercial but based on non-commercial marketing exchanges also. This paper aims to make a case for the practice of social marketing principles to aid the context of public policy. Design/methodology/approach The approach is to draw out the key implementable learnings (KILs) from the analysis of the five public policy initiatives in the USA, India and Sri Lanka. A case situation with the context of child labour policy in India is proposed to use these KILs. Findings This paper concludes that the implementation of any policy is a challenging exercise and dependent on a large number of factors. However, KILs derived from successful social marketing programs deal with umbrella campaigns, prevailing socio-cultural environment, bottom-up communication, upstream approach to engage with stakeholders and targeted media advocacy could prove useful when the objective is to induce behaviour change as a part of the policy execution. Originality/value This paper evaluates the learnings from social marketing campaigns and their relevance to public policy programs. It also considers a case to demonstrate the application of the concept.

The Advent of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement as a Tool for Development

Modelled on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), signed at the Extraordinary Summit of the African Union, which convened in Kigali, Rwanda, on 21 March 2018, is designed to facilitate a single continental trade regulation and integration framework for trade disciplines and intentioned to boost intra-Africa trade. AfCFTA came on the backdrop of not less than eight regional economic communities (RECs), which are loosely regulated. The study finds that AfCFTA can become a beacon of development in the African continent, provided an array of issues including addressing the multiplicity of RECs, putting in place a Development-focused migration and labour policy or developing a side labour agreement similar to that of NAFTA to address other issues like harmonisation of treatment and conditions of workforce and pursuing industrialisation that will help manage the negative spillovers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). JEL Codes: C23, F10, F13, F14, F15, F17, F19, K33, K41

The ILO and the future of work: The politics of global labour policy

In the late 2010s, the future of work gathered attention from the most influential actors in global social governance. The International Labour Organization (ILO), since 2015 and in the context of its Future of Work Initiative, aimed to position itself in the discussion by putting this issue at the centre of their activities for its centenary (2019). The normative and conceptual approach developed by the ILO in this initiative was named the ‘human-centred agenda’, aimed to align technological change with decent work and social justice. Although preliminary scholarly works have seen these efforts as a humanistic and pro-worker ‘countermovement’, a deeper analysis of the ideas and interests involved in the Future of Work Initiative reveals a different, more complex picture. This article studies the creation of the human-centred agenda led by the ILO secretariat and the Global Commission on the Future of Work, and how it was further negotiated and modified by the social partners in the making of the Centenary Declaration in 2019. In particular, it shows how business at the ILO and right-wing populist governments, in tandem, reoriented the human-centred agenda towards a pro-employer perspective, thus framing social and labour policy as a tool for adapting the workforce to technological change. It concludes with some reflections about the consequences of these developments for the ILO’s position in global governance.

Regional aspects of imperfect competition in the domestic labor market

В статье дана характеристика особым преференциальным территориям в РФ, проведен анализ их развития, показавший ежегодный и активный рост числа ТОСЭР, их резидентов, объемов вложенных инвестиционных ресурсов, числа рабочих мест. Выявлены проблемы в функционировании ТОСЭР. Представлены сведения о текущем состоянии ТОСЭР в Республике Дагестане. Авторами предложена методика оценки эффективности функционирования ТОСЭР, расположенных на территории монопрофильных муниципальных образований (ММО), которая имеет комплексный характер и учитывает многоаспектные особенности функционирования данных территорий, что позволяет получать информацию для принятия управленческих решений, осуществлять мониторинг деятельности ТОСЭР. Imperfect competition in social and labour relations has no homogeneous effect on regional labour markets. There is a regional segmentation of the domestic labor market under the influence of imperfect competition. Government measures and measures to regulate the domestic labour market have different effects on regional labour markets. In this regard, the weakening of imperfect competition in social and labour relations is seen through the strengthening of the role of the regional labour policy of the population.