The control and agency dialectic of guest worker programmes: evidence from Chinese construction workers in Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program (TITP)

ABSTRACT

Guest worker programs entail an intrinsic tension between control over workers’ mobility and workers’ agency. By drawing on the qualitative data from Chinese construction workers in Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), I illuminate the dialectical nature of the tension between control and agency. My findings suggest that labor recruiters and employers implement labor control, but their practices have the opposite effect of pressing workers to abscond or to do irregular jobs. Staying in the program is not an outcome of effective control, but a response to circumstances wherein revisions to Japan’s immigration policy bring rewards while China’s surveillance policies incur potential punishments. The control-agency dialectic suggests that the regulative focus should be shifted from workers to employers and recruiters. Incorporating approaches of spatiotemporality and relationality, I analyze how workers sustain relations with various actors through three interconnected temporal stages, and how the relational dynamics shape workers’ varied mobility choices. Two features of the construction industry shape workers’ circumstances and occasionally facilitate their mobility: the stratification of the labor force according to legal status and the subcontract system. The paper thus highlights the need to contextualise labor agency in changing state policies, relations with co-ethnics, and industry-specific features.

KEYWORDS:

• Labor migration
• agency
• mobility
• Japan
• China

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Professor Rubén Hernández-León for the helpful comments and suggestions on the previous versions of the article. I am also grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions from the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

IRB approval

The UCLA Institutional Review Board (UCLA IRB) has approved this ongoing research project since July 24 2018. The reference numbers are IRB#18-000947 and IRB#18-000947-CR-00001. The UCLA IRB has waived the requirement for signed informed consent for worker participants under 45 CFR 46.117(c)(2).

Notes

1 The proportion of contract abandonment was at a relatively low rate of 3% (Surak 2018, 501).

2 Between 2012 and 2017, the number of contract abandonment occurrences increased progressively by approximately 1000 per year (Ministry of Justice 2018).

3 Irregular workers refer to those whose activities are not authorized by their visa. I detail my interviews with them in the methodology section.

4 “Irregular,” here, indicates interns work for other employers, particularly when their designated employers cannot provide stable and adequate working hours. It is against regulation.

5 The constraints and regulations that I review here apply not only to the rotational type of TMLPs, but also to TMLPs that allow a transition to permanent residence. The transition commonly requires workers to stay in the program for a certain period during which they are subject to all regulations.

6 Penal contracts and deposit fees are considered to have fostered employers’ abuses of guest workers and thus contribute to the persistence of human rights violations. Both the Japanese and Chinese governments have enacted laws to forbid private recruiters and/or employers from imposing deposits and punishment clauses on workers. For Japan’s case, see Gaikokujin no Ginō Jissyu no Tekisei na Jisshi Oyobi Ginō Jissyusei no Hogo ni Kansuru Hōritsu Shikō Kisoku (2016), Chapter 2, Section 2, Article 25 and Article 52. For China’s case, see Duiwai Laowu Hezuo Guanli Tiaoli (Regulations for Foreign Labor Cooperatives) (2012), Chapter 3, Article 25.

7 The influence of workers’ agency on control does not necessarily indicate that their agentic acts will bring changes or transformations to policy regulations or revisions. When interns abscond, the consequences for employers include loss of labor, loss of time and money devoted to the hiring of replacements, and a spillover effect in which other interns in the same enterprise may also choose to abscond. In turn, recruiters lose a portion of the management fees that they receive from employers, thus reducing their profit. More importantly, recruiters and employers are required to report each case of absconding to the Organization for Technical Intern Training (OTIT). If the proportion of such cases is too high, employers may be forbidden from hiring foreign interns and recruiters may be suspended. See Ginō Jissyu Seido Unyō Yōryō (Immigration Services Agency of Japan and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare 2023), pages 88, 91 and 284.

8 I have referred to Tetsu Sano (2002) for the historical background of TITP.

9 For the historic revisions of the TITP, I have referred to the review of TITP published by Chieko Kamibayashi (2018) and the online document published by the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2021).

10 As a temporary measure to meet the labor demand brought by the Olympic Games, this measure was only effective between April 2015 and March 2021. Taken together with the 2016 revision, it was possible for a construction intern to work in Japan for up to eight years.

11 For the stipulations concerning the SSW status, I referred to the Immigration Services Agency of Japan website (2022).

12 The UCLA Institutional Review Board (UCLA IRB) carried out ethical reviews for this study and approved it on July 24, 2018. I have been following these protocols to protect participants’ privacy and confidentiality during the process of data-collection, subsequent data storage, and publication.

13 For the exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the U.S. dollar, I use the average rate for 2018: one dollar yielded 6.63 yuan. For the Japanese yen and the U.S. dollar, I again use the average rate for 2018: one dollar yielded 110 yen.

14 Without insurance and a legal status, undocumented workers are vulnerable to illness, accidents, and disputes with employers. Their situations are not absolutely better than interns. These concerns are common among temporary workers in guest worker programs when they consider absconding.

15 For workers who decide to abscond, the risks and consequences of absconding (including those stemming from China's social credit system) are either absent in the information that circulates through their networks, or not significant concerns when the frustrations and tensions with employers boil over.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Hiroshi Wagatsuma Memorial Fellowship funded by UCLA Asia Pacific Center and the Herbert and Helen Kawahara Fellowship funded by UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies.