Why migrate to earn less? Changing tertiary education, skilled migration and class slippage in an economic downturn

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the changing experience of middle-class labour in an economic downturn and its relation to migration motivations. At the heart of this paper is an intriguing question of why educated middle-class workers would leave metropolises with high standards of living to work in a provincial city abroad where they perform routine tasks and earn less than they would in comparable positions back home. An analysis of in-depth interviews with Japanese service workers in China’s digital outsourcing industry focuses on their educational background and employment experience prior to migration. Based on my findings, I argue that relatively educated migrants use their diminishing middle-class resources to access an occupational niche abroad, in order to (temporarily) evade the increased risk of class slippage in the society of origin. Japan’s experience of a long-term economic slump since the early 1990s provides a fruitful point of comparison for studies that investigate changing youth transitions from education to employment and their relationship to migration patterns and class mobility in economically stagnant nations elsewhere. I critically engage with the literature on middling migration to highlight the usefulness of a historically sensitive and relational perspective from which to study middle-class migrants.

KEYWORDS:

• Skilled migration
• middle class migrants
• recession
• tertiary education
• middling migration
• Japan

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 For instance, solicitors, management consultants and those ‘employed within global companies such as Merrill Lynch' can be seen as non-elite and belonging to the same class as nurses and physiotherapists (Conradson and Latham 2005a, 161, 167.)

2 For example, the lower-middle classes in Gujarat, India are accustomed to living in a house with a dozen rooms and even growing up with a servant (Rutten and Verstappen 2014). The middle classes in Japan would consider this a highly privileged lifestyle and out of reach.

3 There are parallel debates on changing class, social mobility and/or migration such as Butler and Savage (1995), Goldthorpe (2016) and Savage et al. (2013).

4 Bernier argues (2011, 117) that this is a similar process of déclassement experienced by the middle classes in the West in the 1980s.

5 Japanese citizens and businesses have long played a role in the city’s economic development since the colonial period (Kawashima 2017 explains the transnational ties between the two locations and the role they played on the development of IT industrial parks in Dalian). While outside the scope of this paper, a comparison between the migration examined in this paper and patterns of migration in other areas of former colonial rule would contribute to scholarly fields such as postcolonial studies and critical expatriate studies (Farrer 2018).

6 The typical starting salary in 2015 was from around 6, 000 yuan (777 €) per month, which was less than the Japanese minimum wage level. In Japan, the minimum wage is calculated as an hourly rate and differs in each prefecture. In 2014, the national average was 780 yen (6.2 €). Accessed 7 February 2019. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/houdou/0000092874.html (see sankō 3).

7 When this form of first began, those with a secondary education qualification were eligible for the Chinese skilled migrant visa. This has changed subsequently and access to work visas has become more restrictive (Kawashima 2019, 136–138). Employers have also become more selective in hiring Japanese workers, who are expensive compared to Chinese employees.

8 Casual labour among those aged 15 and 24 increased from 14.9% to 46.5%, and among those aged 25 to 34, from 9.8% to 25.8% (MHLW 2013, 183–184).

9 For the evolution of inequality in Japanese education between 1979 and 2009, see Kariya (2017). In 2015, over 40% of graduates from these institutions left their graduate job within three years (MHLW 2018).

10 Even though the graduate employment rate recovered from well below 60% in 2000 to nearly 70% in 2005 (MEXT 2008), working conditions and remunerations remain poorer and more precarious due to the deepening labour market deregulations.

11 The fees at a four-year university typically ranged from 2.14 million to 3.6 million yen (approximately 17,000 € to 28,000 €) in 2017 (MEXT 2018). Vocational colleges, most of which are privately owned, tend to charge similar fees for a two-year course. One migrant took out a loan to pay for her own tertiary education, even though her parents could afford the college fee.

12 For example, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare defines the ‘standard worker’ as someone who gained permanent employment at a firm immediately upon completing education and continues to work there. http://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/list/chinginkouzou_b.html#10 (Accessed 7 February 2019)

13 Itoh (2014, 53–60) presents fascinating cases of Japanese migrant women whose business ownership interacts with their gender ideals.

14 Sooudi (2014) explores the role of media in such imaginings. My data indicates the prior experience of visiting abroad and international friendships are also influential.

15 Bilingual Chinese digital workers in a comparable position typically started on the monthly salary of approximately 4000 yuan (517 €) in 2015. This is equivalent to half of Japan’s minimum salary levels.

16 In 2008, the average household income in Dalian was 2, 859 yuan (370 €), and the minimum wage was 700 yuan (90 €). In 2013, these increased to 4, 922 yuan (637 €) and 1300 yuan (168 €) respectively (JETRO 2015, 12).

17 These factors, rather than Japan’s growing labour shortage in more recent years, have significantly reduced the inflows of Japanese digital migrants to Dalian over the last few years. I examine elsewhere (Kawashima 2018) the impact of these changes on the migrants and their plans for future (return) migration.