Immigrant Japan? Sounds like a contradiction, but as Gracia Liu-Farrer shows, millions of immigrants make their lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are "other" at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex?

Gracia Liu-Farrer illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories—guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of diverse backgrounds while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country.

Gracia Liu-Farrer is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, and Director of Institute of Asian Migrations, Waseda University, Japan. She is the author of Labor Migration from China to Japan and coeditor of the Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations.

Immigrant Japan is an important intervention into the characteristically pessimistic scholarly literature on Japan's capacity to be a new country of immigration.

In her impressive book, Liu-Farrer draws on interviews with 229 research subjects as well as ethnography, focus group analysis, stories of migrants from secondary literature, and her own experiences as a migrant to and naturalized citizen of Japan to examine how migrants to Japan negotiate issues regarding home and belonging. Liu-Farrer's book is engagingly written, and the stories of her interviewees as well as her ethnographic vignettes are appealing and fun to read.

Immigrant Japan is a necessary addition to the bookshelf of contemporary Japan and migration studies scholars, students and everyday persons. Liu-Farrer's work in sharing the voices of immigrants is an invaluable resource for readers who aspire to build a more nuanced understanding of contemporary Japanese society and the immigrants who have long been a part of it.

Roger Goodman, University of Oxford:

Twenty years of case studies—combined with rigorous and theoretically informed argument—mean that Immigrant Japan more than lives up to its provocative title. It should hit on the head, once and for all, the simplistic assumption that Japan is a country that is incapable of incorporating immigrants.

Deborah Milly, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, author of New Policies for New Residents:

Liu-Farrer's interpretive analysis of the voices of migrants and immigrants provides a distinctive perspective on the relationship between migration and belonging in Japan. It reveals how these subjects engage Japanese society and policies to create a space for themselves as immigrants.

Ryoko Yamamoto, SUNY Old Westbury, Sociology Department:

Immigrant Japan is a welcome addition to a growing body of scholarship on global migration. The personal narratives presented are vibrant and the analysis is nuanced and insightful.