5 Tokyo: (Dis)Embedding in the Japanese Labour Market
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Helena Hof
Abstract
Chapter 5 on Tokyo outlines the Japanese employment system, in which foreign university graduates have increasingly secured career track positions in Japan’s primary labour market. Yet, pressure to conform to their firms’ homogenising company culture causes most of them to opt out. Overall, migrants’ employment patterns in Tokyo resemble those of migrants in Singapore by their frequent turnover. The analysis demonstrates considerable fluidity and overlap between the much-discussed sharp divide drawn between jobs in Japan’s primary labour market, that is, regular jobs, and those in the secondary labour market, including contract positions. The findings call for attention to the diversifying Japanese labour market, which offers a greater variety of career paths to highly educated early career migrants than linear career progression or stagnation.
Abstract
Chapter 5 on Tokyo outlines the Japanese employment system, in which foreign university graduates have increasingly secured career track positions in Japan’s primary labour market. Yet, pressure to conform to their firms’ homogenising company culture causes most of them to opt out. Overall, migrants’ employment patterns in Tokyo resemble those of migrants in Singapore by their frequent turnover. The analysis demonstrates considerable fluidity and overlap between the much-discussed sharp divide drawn between jobs in Japan’s primary labour market, that is, regular jobs, and those in the secondary labour market, including contract positions. The findings call for attention to the diversifying Japanese labour market, which offers a greater variety of career paths to highly educated early career migrants than linear career progression or stagnation.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Series Preface vi
- List of Figures and Tables vii
- List of Abbreviations viii
- Glossary ix
- Notes on the Author xi
- Acknowledgements xii
- Introduction 1
-
Spatial Mobility to Asia: Moving Ahead by Moving Out
- The EU Generation and Their Migration Motivations 23
- Destination Singapore: The Dream of a Cosmopolis 51
- Global City Tokyo: Japan’s Diversification from Within 66
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Organisational and Career Mobility: Seizing Security, Success and Self-Realisation
- Singapore: Professionalising the Self 85
- Tokyo: (Dis)Embedding in the Japanese Labour Market 103
- Career Trajectories through an Intersectional Lens 121
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(Im)Mobility through Differentiated Embedding: The Ties That Bind
- Immobility and Emplacement: Making the City Home 147
- Belonging through Romantic Relationships 167
- Conclusion 186
- Positionality: Researching Migrants as a Migrant 198
- Demographic Profiles of Interlocutors 203
- References 212
- Index 242
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- Series Preface vi
- List of Figures and Tables vii
- List of Abbreviations viii
- Glossary ix
- Notes on the Author xi
- Acknowledgements xii
- Introduction 1
-
Spatial Mobility to Asia: Moving Ahead by Moving Out
- The EU Generation and Their Migration Motivations 23
- Destination Singapore: The Dream of a Cosmopolis 51
- Global City Tokyo: Japan’s Diversification from Within 66
-
Organisational and Career Mobility: Seizing Security, Success and Self-Realisation
- Singapore: Professionalising the Self 85
- Tokyo: (Dis)Embedding in the Japanese Labour Market 103
- Career Trajectories through an Intersectional Lens 121
-
(Im)Mobility through Differentiated Embedding: The Ties That Bind
- Immobility and Emplacement: Making the City Home 147
- Belonging through Romantic Relationships 167
- Conclusion 186
- Positionality: Researching Migrants as a Migrant 198
- Demographic Profiles of Interlocutors 203
- References 212
- Index 242
