Draft ONLY (02152010-Not for Quotation) Filipino Careworkers in Ageing Japan: Trends, Trajectories and Policies1 Ma. Reinaruth D. Carlos A paper to be presented at the Conference “Migration: A World in Motion” 18-20 February 2010 - University of Maastricht, Maastricht, Netherlands Abstract For a country like Japan that has for long maintained a restrictive immigration policy and a mostly homogeneous society, the acceptance of foreign workers to take care of its ageing population is a very controversial issue. Amidst extensive media coverage and despite the lack of consensus among different domestic stakeholders and ambivalent stand of the Japanese government towards the issue, the first batch of Indonesian and Filipino nurse-candidates and care worker candidates (Kaigofukushishi Kouhosha) recruited under bilateral economic partnership agreements (EPA) arrived in 2008-2009. Up until then for the last 10 years or so, long-term Filipino residents (Zainichi Firipinjin), many of them wives of Japanese nationals. There are also the Filipino-Japanese descendants (Nikkeijin) who have turned to care work especially after the global economic crisis hit Japan in late 2008. In this paper, I compare and contrast these three trajectories/sets of care workers based on their (1) motivations and long term goals; (2) human capital and (3) facilitators of their migration and incorporation into the labor market. Finally, we draw some of the implications of their incorporation in the labor market for care workers on the future direction of this country’s migration policies. 1 Ryukoku University, Kyoto and Seta, Japan. For correspondence, e-mail to
[email protected]. The author would like to thank the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Research Project Number 20402028) for its financial support.