Human security and Japanese refugee policy: explaining the ‘flux’

Abstract

Japan is one of the richest democracies of Asia, a pillar of the international liberal order in the region, and a strongly pacifist nation with the only anti-war constitution in the world. It is also one of three major countries which have elected to incorporate human security principles as intrinsic components of foreign policy. However, its implementation of human security principles in some areas, especially refugee policy, belies its rhetorical commitments; it boasts the lowest number of refugees among all industrialised nations. What explains this discrepancy? Through a comparative study of the Indochinese and the Rohingya refugee crises, this study aims to offer a corrective and a supplement to Sarah Tanke’s work (2021) by arguing that despite Japanese officials’ championing of a human security narrative in the international arena, the gap between declaration and implementation, especially regarding the human security of displaced persons in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, points to their instrumental use of such a narrative to avoid international censure and free ride on the international asylum regime. It further investigates the domestic political, social and psychological factors modulating this behaviour, and argues for a broader role for international pressure in order to bring about policy change.

Keywords:

• Refugee policy
• human security
• Rohingya
• boat people
• Japan

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the Japan Foundation, New Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for jointly hosting a four-day conference 22–26 February 2021 on ‘Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Indo-Pacific Region: Debates, Dialogues and Deliberations 2020–21’, where this paper was initially presented in a significantly different form. The author also wishes to thank the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Central Library, Jawaharlal Nehru University, for providing many of the materials necessary for the completion of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A representative example of such xenophobia expressed openly on the internet can be seen on the following URL: http://newhoshu.blog.jp/archives/62022706.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arnab Dasgupta

Dr. Arnab Dasgupta is a researcher based in New Delhi, India. He was recently awarded his PhD in Japanese Studies from the Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He has an MA in the Japanese language from the same university, and was the recipient of the 2017–18 Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship in Japanese Studies, under which he spent a period of 10 months in Japan as a Visiting Researcher affiliated to the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo, doing fieldwork for his doctoral thesis. He has received other awards for academic and research excellence from both the Governments of India and Japan, as well as private Indian and Japanese organisations. Email: [email protected]