Author Archives: japansociology

The changes and universality of transnational communication by spread of Facebook: from sociological approach

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by Eriko Maruyama

In 2012, Facebook users are more than one billion, which is 3rd rank of population following China and India (Lee,D 2012). Facebook enables us to keep regular contact to people all over the world. With globalisation, immigrants move beyond borders, and they are now called ‘transnational migrants’. They are trying to assimilate to host society, but at the same time, they are keeping connection with their mother countries (Levitt, P, 2004). Does Facebook help their transnational communication and keep the ties? If so, why are people still flying country to country to meet people even we have such an excellent innovation?

Facebook help us maintain relation with family and friends, even we cannot make calls, or send texts often, It would be very helpful for immigrants to keep their links with home communities. Moreover, Facebook may ease the difficulties and hesitation of emigrants to move to foreign countries because they can have everyday connection with their family and friends via Facebook. Some people are addicted to Facebook. One statistic shows that majority of social networking users use Facebook for keeping in touch with friends and family. Candidates also answered that the advantages of SNS are enabling us to keep connection with people who live far away and to speak with them more often. On the contrary, the candidates point out the disadvantages as waste of lots of time for using it (APS, 2010). As this result shows, many users tend spend much time for checking ‘news feed’ on Facebook, and even more, some of them are addicted to it. In this context, therefore, it is possible to say that Facebook keeps immigrants stay in front of computers and prevents them from assimilation to the host society. Also, the more people check what is going on in their origin community, the more they would miss their home and this would accelerate their sense of belonging to their home.

However, Facebook is not a globalising affair at all. This phenomenon is happening only in the American continent, Europe, and some countries in Asia. In China and Russia, the access to Facebook is regulated and there are few users in central Africa as well. (see the picture below). In addition, why do we still fly to abroad for business meeting or visit family even we can make regular contacts by Facebook? I consider that it is still important for human being to meet people directly. We cannot make reliable relation online. Relationships among human are sensitive and complicated. We need hugs sometimes.

In short, Facebook actually has been changing our social connection and life styles, but still it is just online network. Apparently, it enables transnational communication and immigrants can keep connection through Facebook. However, Facebook is merely a tool of communication. It is difficult to conclude that we do not need to physical meeting because we do have Facebook. Paradoxically, Facebook may make people more missing their home community and promote returning to their countries.

References

Lee, D (2012) ‘Facebook surpasses one billion users as it temps to new market’, BBC News Technology, Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19816709

Levitt, P (2004) salsa and ketchup: transnational migrants straddle two worlds. Contexts, Vol 3, issue 2, pp20-26

The Australian Psychological Society (2010) The social and Psychological Impact of Online Social Networking. APS National Psychological Week Survey 2010.

Globalization and Homogeneity

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by Yumie Kitamura

In recent decades, globalization has become so common around the world at an unprecedented speed.

Owing to high-tech, we can keep in touch with people all over the world. While I lived in San Francisco last year, I talked over skype with my family and friends every night, and now living here in Japan, I enjoy skyping with my friends in US. No matter how far we live, we can chat and talk anytime as long it is good time for us. We talk about everything happened to our current lives and laugh about it, as if we are really talking face to face. I really feel technology keeping us close.

I also enjoy shopping online. Most of stores in US currently started shipping products to Japan with low shipping fee. So I can easily order Marc Jacobs bag online at home and receive it from US a few days later.

This is when I feel globalization in my real life, and as far as that is all, this globalization seems so great and I love it. But in fact, this enormous phenomenon seems to be very difficult and complicated issue. While I appreciate the fruit of globalization, I also have some questions: Is globalization really all good for us?

Because no need to say, globalization is not something happening only online. It actually is happening right in our local towns too. Let’s take a Bangalore’s model for an example. Bangalore, the high-tech city in India, is planned to become an unbelievably gorgeous, modernistic high-tech city in near future. In the model picture of how the city is going to be, you could never tell the city in actually built in India. Because, the city just looks like some gorgeous ideal city in Europe or someplace. If this is how Bangalore is globalizing, it seems to me it’s the same as homogenizing into some modernistic, conventional European-looking city, eventually losing its beautiful originality and local charm.

International Migration

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by Yurino Kawamura

One of the major reasons people seek to live in another country is to obtain better living for themselves and their families. It is true that some families rely their living on money sent from their family member working in foreign country, such as the United States. However, immigrants in those countries tend to engage in jobs with relatively low salary and harsh environment. There are several reasons, but taking the example of United States, lack in English communication skills is a major reason that makes international immigrants difficult to get better jobs. This would lead to a serious problem when immigrants try to raise family in the United States. Since their wages are relatively low, they could less likely afford to let their children go to private schools. Therefore the second-generation children would study only in English, while speaking their mother tongue at home only. These children tend to prefer English more than their first language as they grow up and spend more time in the English-only community. This will cause a communication gap between the second-generation children and their parents who have difficulties in English communication. Second-generation children would eventually be assimilated to the American culture, fading from their original countries’ customs. Moreover, the communication gap between their parents would increase their possibilities to misbehave in their lives and sink downward into lower class. Who would like to live such a life in the country where they are struggling to live better life?

To break out of this negative spiral, I would like to point that creating more opportunities for the first-generation immigrants to gain communication skills in the country’s language, in this case English, may play an important role. If first-generation immigrants could acquire English skills, they would have substantially broader range of job opportunities, such as managements of other workers. It may sound counterproductive, but teaching English to the immigrants may facilitate them to keep their mother tongue and culture active. If first-generation immigrants acquire adequate English skills and work with higher wages, they are able to spend more money on their children’s education so that they can grow up as a true bilingual individual. Even if their children would prefer English over their mother tongue, if parents feel no hesitate in English communication with their children, there are more chances that children can get more support and guidance from their parents to keep themselves away from delinquency. The point is that this must not lead into a linguistic assimilation, but rather to a community with mixed culture and language with mutual respect and understanding.

Losing the Mother Tongue

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by Azusa Iwata

The reading Alejandro Portes by mentions that relatively few immigrants retained their parental tongue. (Contexts, Spring 2002). I have a friend mixed with Chinese and Japanese, and grew up in Canada. So she can speak both of Japanese and English not Chinese, and usually she uses English in her house and her community. However her problem is that she is not perfect about English and Japanese, which seems to makes her sometime confused. When I talked with her, her Japanese is very hard for me to understand because of the accents. In addition, she knows that her Japanese and English are a bit different from the native speaker’s. Thus, she seems to feels uncomfortable saying “I am Canadian” as self-introduction. It shows the language spoken strongly connected to their identity. She also mentioned that why she cannot speak English perfectly even though she was born in Canada is because the communication in the house was with improper English caused by their parents, that is, the education in her house got her not perfect English and Japanese. Then, I would like to talk about the difficulty to choose language for the mixed people from this example.

First, I think the mother tongue is very important for the family community. For example, she said that it was very hard for her to talk with her relatives in China because she cannot speak Chinese at all. Thus, it seems that she felt like “I was an outsider” whenever she visited her relatives in China. From this example, I think the education for maintaining their parental tongue is essential for their family through the education when they are kids. On the other hand, English is as you know global common language, which I think makes the mixed people think “Only English is ok”.

Second, I think language is not only the tool for communication but also the culture for the speakers. In the concrete, Japanese has honorific words called “Keigo”, which are supposed to be used for our elder. Thus, I feel that most Japanese are careful of their language whenever they talk with their elders. On the other hand, English does not have honorific words such as Japanese, which I think makes no wall between their elder and their junior. I think this characteristic is one of the cultures and makes their identities.

In my opinion, in terms of their family and their identity, maintaining the parental language is very important for the people whose parental language is different. As I mentioned before, language is not only the tool for communication but also the culture. Thus, we need to promote the education for the people whose parental language is different. Moreover, with such a globalization, I think people who can know various cultures including languages are needed for the society in these days.

What migrations will be faced in Japan

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by Kaori Isobe

According to the statistics by Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, there are about 686,246 people who came to Japan as legal foreign workers during 2011. Furthermore, there are also people coming to Japan from other countries to work illegally or overstay. But I’ll write about legal migrations in this blog article.

As increasing the number of migration, the issues between migrations and Japanese people have been increasing as well. One of the issues is that migrations tend to be together all time. Let me show an example. There are many migrations from Brazil in my hometown, Shizuoka-prefecture. When I went to Hamamatsu-city, where they work and live intensively, I found that Brazilian people gather up all time. They talk in Portuguese and place a distance from Japanese people. It means they don’t get familiar with Japanese people and they don’t have communication with local people. Is this really good situation for both migrations and Japanese society?

I definitely say NO. If migration cannot communicate with local Japanese people, migration never get along with Japanese people. For example, migration cannot follow rules which are existed in the local area in Japan, such as the way of garbage out. If migration cannot follow rules, Japanese society would criticize migration. Then, this situation would isolate migrants from Japanese society. Also, an image of migration would be so bad among Japanese society. Then, the relationship between migration and Japanese society will be getting bad and bad.

Well, how this issue should be solved? First, migrants should accept differences between migrations’ culture and Japanese culture. It may be easier to gather with who speak same language from same culture. But, to be familiar with Japanese culture, migration should try to communicate with Japanese much more, even it’s difficult.

Second, Japanese society should not have stereotype of migration. To remove stereotype, Japanese society should hold events, such as an interchange between migration and local people and Japanese language lecture. It would not be so much easy, but keep on holding event as constantly, both migration and Japanese society would open their hearts and change the images each other. Migrations and Japanese people should know each other very well.

Finally, Japanese government should move to make better society for both migration and Japanese society. As you may know, Japan is said to be a racially homogeneous country. But as increasing the number of migration, Japanese society needs to pay attention to people from other countries much more. Therefore, the government should tell about migrations to Japanese citizens, especially for young people. Why I mentioned “young people” is because young people will become leaders in next Japanese society. So, I propose that Japanese education should add lectures which are about people from other countries including migrations.

Throughout these passages, I wrote my opinions. Whether my proposals are effective or not, issues about migration and Japanese Society should be considered with Japanese government but also with Japanese citizens because this issue must influence all citizens who live in Japan.

Reference

Web Page of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare; http://www.mhlw.go.jp/

The City and Globalization

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by Miki Imamura

Personally speaking, my dream is designing a city which provide environment where people can find happiness and become happy. I found the possibility to achieve global peace in designing a city as I continue studying how to solve global issues which we are facing in the world. What I believe is the crucial reason for conflict is miscommunication coming from not understanding each other. To improve communication skill to understand people who don’t share the same norm or common sense, changing their way to think is the most important, I believe. It could be done by media, education, or designing a city. Changing the way to think is very hard to do, but changing the action is so easy to do. That’s designing a city. Designing space is changing people’s movement. It can change what people see, whom people meet, and that may contribute to change people’s life. Therefore, if we design a city to provide environment where people find more chance to meet those who have different point of view, if we provide more opportunity to create communication between them through designing a city, I think people will get to know what others thinking which makes realized what themselves are. Thus, my ambition is designing a city to provide more opportunity to communicate each other.

When we think about a city, it supposed to develop for residents to improve their daily life. I was thinking so. And I was also thinking a city supposed to develop taking time and adjusting changes slowly, until I read the article written by Michael Goldman and Wesley Longhofer. In their article, “making world cities”, tells me that globalization which is rapidly spreading and deeply infiltrating in the world is changing the nature of a city. Bangalore in India is one of the “hotspot of globalization”. Bangalore is the “Silicon Valley of Asia”, and the city has totally changed not for its residents but for software elite creators. It is normal for city to get large for its economy, however the rapid growth such as Bangalore is corrupting its resident’s daily economy and making them social vulnerability. It seems like not be able to help for government to attract foreign investment to change their situation, however what they are doing is producing a huge inequality gap between poor and rich. Beside we are trying to reduce poverty, globalization and global companies are forcing a city to produce more poverty.

This fact was quite shocking for me, because the wave of globalization will not stop and might be more active in the future. Additionally our global population is still growing up. That means global companies will seek another “hotspot” and create another “Bangalore”. Stopping this movement is almost impossible because the demand of global companies and the supply of those government which they need foreign investment meet each other. What we can do is approaching companies and government to promote an urban design which gives less damage for nature of cities. The point is what this urban design would be, which I still do not know yet. Through my study, I will find it out.

Bibliography

Michael Goldman and Wesley Longhofer. (2009). making world cities. Contexts , 8 (1), 32-35.

Dual Citizenship

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by Natsumi Ichioka

In the last class, we discussed whether we allow dual citizenship or not. I agree with dual citizenship. Though I have only Japanese nationality, I would like to get another nationality if I could. There are two reasons.

First, I think dual citizens have more opportunities than single citizens. If you have the dual citizenship, you can go both countries anytime without visa. It is the extent of action. It also means when there are some urgent events for example funeral in one country, you can go there soon. It is so wastes of time to get a visa.

Secondly, there are so many countries which admit the dual citizenship. Japan doesn’t admit dual citizenship now. But, most of the developed countries admit it. U.S. government gave the nationality those who were born in U.S. Recently, the rates of the international marriage are getting high. The dual citizenship’s problems are so important in the world. In Japan, in 1984, the nationality constitution was reformed. People who were born before this reform and have dual citizenship have to decide one nationality by one’s effort. But this reform are not perfect, actually some people still have the dual citizenship in Japan. Japanese government tries to lose the dual citizenship, but it is impossible. So, we have to change this situation. I think Japan have to adopt with the foreign policy.

There are also some problems for example, crime, tax, war, conscription and so on. If you have a dual citizenship, and have a trouble in the foreign country, which country will help you? It is a complicated problem. Because I have a Japanese nationality, I can feel relief when I was in foreign country because Japanese government might help me when I have some trouble. It is the merit of the single citizenship.

But, we should adopt the positive trend in the world. There are so many people who have the dual citizenship in the world. We should not pay attention the negative case which deals with crime or war, but the way to make a good relation between the single nationality and dual citizenship. Japan has so many appeal points for example the skills of chemistry, the minds of the Japanese and so on. Most of Japanese people are proud of themselves. I think Japanese government admit the dual citizenship, the relationship with the foreign country becomes better. The world situations are changing for admitting the dual citizenships, Japan have to follow the changing as well. I hope many people who have in trouble with this problem can live more comfortably in Japan and in the world.

References

http://kouenkai.org/ist/docf/yanagihara.html

http://japanese.japan.usembassy.gov/j/acs/tacsj-dual.html 米国大使館　東京・日本

International migration and globalization are connected

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by Julia Helbing

When thinking about international migration, it came into my mind that it is somehow connected to globalization and high-tech work.

There are inevitably many poor countries. But in these countries are a lot of high-skilled workers. Because they don’t have the chance to get a proper education or a job in their country of origin, many of these workers go abroad, where they can find proper education and work. But still they take parts of their old life with them; they still want to eat food from their country of origin. So they import it from their home. Some people even opened shops just for the needs of foreign habitants, mostly foreigners, and imported the food they are used from home. As soon as normal supermarkets noticed this, they also started to offer some food from foreign countries, hoping that the immigrants would buy at their supermarket and take some other items with them. I think this is one good reason, why trade with foreign countries started and influenced globalization.

Nowadays, international migration is an all-over-the-world topic. People are going almost everywhere, because they have family in other countries, they already found a job or where they hope to find a job in the future. Many students also go abroad, to add experience and a stay abroad to their life or to learn another language and become fluent in speaking it. If they would find a job, they would also stay in this country and finish their studies there.

But going to a foreign country is really a very big step and should be considered well. When you start a new live in a country you don’t know, or you are not used to the habits, you will experience many difficulties not just concerning the language. In the other country, many things are different to the origin country, people behave different and react different. For example, whenever I go for shopping in Japan, whether it is food shopping or anything else, the employees behave different than German employees. Japanese employees seem to be friendlier, but they sometimes try to avoid speaking English with a foreign costumer. German employees seem to be a bit colder, but almost all of them can speak English or another language fluently. In Japan, you also take off your shoes when entering the fitting room, in Germany, you just keep them on.

International migrant also have strong ties to their home countries. They try to stick to their holidays, want to consume food and drinks from their own countries and they also like to speak their mother tongue at home. Of course they try to learn the language of the host country, but normally they speak it with an accent. When their children are growing, the children usually just use the mother tongue of their parents at home, but speak the host country’s language as soon as they exit the house. They find it less problematic to adapt to the behavior, language and costumes of the host country. The second or third generation of immigrants also loses the connection to their countries of origin more and more. The third or fourth generation can’t even speak the language of their grandparents anymore.

Nevertheless, immigrants have very often to fight against discrimination. Even if they can’t even speak the language of their country of origin, just because they look different, some people don’t see them as for example American habitants, despite they grew up and went to school in America. There are many laws against discrimination, but still a lot of discrimination happens, even in political environment. In Germany for example, one politician, Thilo Sarrazin wrote the book “Germany disestablishes itself” and stated that Muslims are taking away the jobs in Germany.

I think in a globalized world, there should be no space for discrimination. We can buy articles from all around the world through the internet or even in our local supermarket; a lot of foreign people are doing great jobs all over the world. And there are also some jobs that habitants born in one country don’t want to do, e.g. the care of elderly. They are happy that foreign people do this. You could say that some people don’t want to live with foreigners, but can’t live without them.

Labor shortage and immigration in Japan

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by Yukari Deguchi

Today, most countries accept immigrants. Global immigration is sometimes seemed as a new issue, but it has been controversial for long time. In case of Japan, it has Koreans who are deeply related with WWⅡ. After the war, from 1970s, European and American men moved to Japan as “Gaijin-shain (外人社員means foreigner office workers)”, and women from South-east Asia came to work at sex-related business. From 1980s, because of rapid economic growth and labor shortage, Japan accepted a massive amount of Nikkei-jin like Japanese-Peruvian and Japanese-Brazilian as blue color workers. Recently, foreigners who work for nursing and caring have become a major issue about immigrant in Japan.

This kind of workers came from mainly the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. From 2004, based on EPA (Economic Partnership Agreement) between Philippine, Indonesia and Japan, around 500 workers have come to Japan in each year. In Japan, labor force is shrinking while people who need care are increasing because of the falling birthrate and aging population. Therefore, foreign nurses and care givers will be important and essential in the near future.

However, the situation those workers are in now is very tough. For example, the workers have to take Japanese lessons and study for the national exam to get license while they continue to work. If they couldn’t pass the exam, they have to go back to their home country as well as they can’t get opportunity to work in Japan. The exam is written by many difficult kanji even for Japanese and very few workers can pass it. In addition, they can prepare for the exam only for 3 or 4 years. Since this reality, the government is criticized by media and citizens and the situation has come better through only gradually.

Many criticisms focus on their sever conditions to pass the exam, but I think there are another important point for foreign workers. They are all young people who are from Muslim countries. I wonder if they can easily get use to differences of culture and customs between Japan and their home countries. Are they allowed to wear scarfs during work time? When and where they pray? Aren’t daily meals which are supplied by their reception facility prohibited for religious reason? Don’t they feel homesick? I had many questions so research and seek answers, but I could find little information. Dose it imply that these cultural problems get little attention in the society?

Japan has accepted many workers and now, the amount of them are more than 1,400. They will support Japan society and many of us will reap a benefit thanks to them. Therefore, we, Japanese have to think about it and suggest alternative way that they can live in Japan without such cultural obstacles.

I think it is helpful for workers to make community for foreign nurses and care givers like many immigrants in the world make and manage their cultural community. If it is difficult to gather, SNS like facebook can be useful. Sharing their stress, working condition, information about exam, and way to deal with cultural problems, they can get alternative home and find comrades. By strengthen ties among workers who have same nationality, it will become easier to support workers for their home country’s government and also strengthen ties between workers and their home country.

I think it is important not to make these workers an issues lays in host and home countries, but key persons who have good influence over ties between host and home countries as well as labor shortage problem.

Reference

Takashi Yamazaki『看護・介護分野における外国人労働者の受け入れ問題』(Problems on accepting foreign workers for nursing and care giver) http://www.ndl.go.jp/jp/data/publication/refer/200602_661/066101.pdf accessed in 2012, Oct.

Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry『外国人雇用対策』(Employment Policy for Foreign Workers) http://www.mhlw.go.jp/seisakunitsuite/bunya/koyou_roudou/koyou/gaikokujin/index.html

Non-Japanese and Hafu in Japan

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by Maho Machida

Nowadays, in Japan, many “hafu” can be seen in variety shows and fashion magazine. So, many Japanese people associate cool or cute people who are white and Japanese with “hafu”, I think. And I have never pay attention to how “hafu” form their identity in Japan before I learned it in class. I think many “hafu” who live in Japan experience some hardships which we Japanese don’t notice.

Referring to these people as “hafu” seems to be controversial. In my opinion, this term doesn’t include negative meanings. However, by calling so, we unconsciously distinguish non-Japanese from us. So, some feel uncomfortable with this labeling, if they have their identity as Japanese as they are brought up in Japan. In addition, there is a possibility that the term “hafu” imply incomplete Japanese. Therefore, these days, it becomes better to use “double” instead of it. But I think that both “hafu” and “double” could prevent them from participating in Japanese group. Both are sort another category different from “Japanese”. Therefore, it would be the best way to call them as their name, like Japanese people. The more the globalization proceeds, the more Japanese society gets diversified. So, I hope a flexible and generous society where there is no need to use “hafu” and “double”.

Japanese idea of citizenship is ethnic and exclusive, I think. There are some limits on jobs and the right to vote for non-Japanese. Historically, we have shaped our own identity and made a system in relatively homogeneous country. Japan seems to be not able to keep up with dramatically changing members of Japan. More and more people have got married to non-Japanese. Moreover, more and more people have come to Japan as immigrants and worker. Nevertheless, the number of signboards and menu cards written in both Japanese and English in Japan seems to be small, I think. And, some Japanese still have a prejudice against “gaijin”. For example, they think Japan becomes unsafe as the number of “gaijin” increases. However, in fact, the number of crimes committed by foreigners in Japan is not very large. Because of its rarity, it is focused on too much.

Thanks to the development of the Internet, we get connect more easily with the world. By using SNS, we communicate more easily with people from all over the word. In that point, our generation is more open to non-Japanese people than the past. So, I hope that Japan become comfortable to live in for non-Japanese people.