How are Part-Time Laboring International Students Incorporated into Host Labor Markets after Graduation? The Case of South and Southeast Asians in Japan

ABSTRACT

A recent increase in the number of international students employed in low-skilled part-time work raises the question; are they incorporated into host labor markets after they graduate, and if so, how? This article addresses this issue by examining the case of South and Southeast Asian students in Japan. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this article shows that labor market incorporation occurs for most SSA students and takes two different forms. First, an analysis utilizing the Japan Student Services Organization datasets on student pathways after graduation (2014–2017) revealed that the primary form is their (re)incorporation as low-skilled part-time workers. Mostly enrolled in vocational schools, these students go on to another school upon graduation, which in effect means an extension of their status as student part-timers. Second, while incorporation as full-time workers also occurs, interviews with these workers suggested that they are employed as a workforce that serves the migrant population and/or supplements shortages of native-born workers. Based on these results, this article argues that SSA students in Japan are incorporated into the host labor market as complements to the labor needs that Japan’s new demographic reality has created.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the Japan Student Services Organization for crafting the data for this research.

Notes

¹ The outline of this plan is available (in Japanese) at https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/koutou/ryugaku/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2019/09/18/1420758_001.pdf.

² The JLPT has five ranks (N1 to N5). The test comprises three elements, including language knowledge, reading, and listening (although there is no speaking task, which may disadvantage some SSAs who have better speaking abilities than reading and writing skills). Many large companies use the possession of an N1 certificate as a condition of application for foreign applicants.

³ Nevertheless, note the creation of the new ‘Specified Skilled Worker’ visa (Tokutei Ginō) in 2019, which allows migrants, including former international students, to undertake low-skilled work. The impact of this visa on international students’ careers is yet to be seen.

⁴ These guidelines (as of December 2019) are available (in Japanese) at http://www.moj.go.jp/content/001310908.pdf.

⁵ Relatedly, ‘professional’ work may have no intrinsic attribute, either. Relevant to this discussion is a speech made by a Japanese immigration lawyer during a 2019 symposium on the careers of international students. The lawyer said that one of the techniques he uses to convince the immigration authorities that the work that his clients, who are international students with job offers from Japanese companies, are scheduled to do is ‘professional’ enough, is to indicate the percentage of university graduates in the worksite.

⁶ A list of annual data is available (in Japanese) at: https://www.jasso.go.jp/about/statistics/intl_student_d/index.html.

⁷ The figure has been around 30% for the last several years. The government’s ‘Japan Revitalization Strategy 2016, stipulated that it would aim to raise the proportion of international students who were able to secure a job in Japan after graduation from 30 to 50%. This figure is based on the results of this survey.

⁸ Mazumi (2019) has reported the results using the 2016 data (the latest year available at the time of writing) in a short Japanese essay. This present article has updated the data to show the results of aggregate data. In addition, while the previous work mainly engaged in a general comparison of pathways between Chinese and SSA students, this article focuses more on what SSA students’ pathways as a whole signify in the context of labor market incorporation.

⁹ According to an officer at the Tokyo Employment Service Center for Foreigners, a public employment office, instances have increased over the last ten years in which migrants with bachelor’s degrees from their home countries have been issued work visas (Yoshida, 2017), which probably reflects the changing policies of immigration authorities. To the extent that this is the case, it offers another illustration of the official (and somewhat arbitrary) construction of ‘professional’ migrants.

¹⁰ This data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is available (in Japanese) at: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/stat-search/file-download?statInfId=000031910781&fileKind=0.

¹¹ Cases like Respondent B may be growing along with an increase in the number of technical intern trainees. Among the informants I contacted was a Vietnamese woman in her early thirties, who graduated from vocational school and obtained a job offer from a Japanese-style hotel where she was expected to supervise technical intern trainees. I did not include her case here because she eventually rejected the offer and decided to return to her country. She did so because, according to her, the hotel was located in a rural area far away from Tokyo and she was afraid of becoming lonely with no acquaintances. She had studied tourism in school and wanted to work for a major airline or travel company, yet this goal was not realized because, with no JLPT N1certificate, she was not qualified to apply to begin with.

¹² This data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is available (in Japanese) at: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/stat-search/file-download?statInfId=000031917136&fileKind=0.

¹³ This data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is available (in Japanese) at: https://www.e-stat.go.jp/stat-search/files?page=1&layout=datalist&cycle=1&toukei=00450222&tstat=000001020327&tclass1=000001142727&stat_infid=000031966778.

¹⁴ This data from the Ministry of Justice is available (in Japanese) at: http://www.moj.go.jp/nyuukokukanri/kouhou/nyuukokukanri04_00003.html.

¹⁵ As of the time this manuscript was modified following the first decision, it is apparent that COVID-19 and its impact on the economy have become another significant temporal factor to consider.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI [19H00607 (partly) and 17K13850].