Category Archives: International Soc

Bright Side of Global Cities

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by Misato Okumura

Today, more and more global cities are created in developing countries. The big firms in developed countries come to there to open their new business with cheaper costs and the governments there improve infrastructure and build nice facilities to welcome them. The reconstruction of developing countries kicks out local people who used to live there before the firms coming and also it makes the difference between rich people and poor bigger. The government in developing countries ignores their citizens to get business opportunity to develop their countries. But does it have only bad effects to their citizens? Their inviting the big firms to their countries has some advantages for their citizens too. I’ll show the 3 biggest points to support my opinion.

First, staying in developing countries will bring the workers in developed countries new discoveries. We, developed countries know a lot of things about other developed countries because we have had trading connection for a long time. But maybe it will be first time for the workers to stay in the countries for that long and they will find what attractive culture is there and introduce it to the world. This is good for the developing countries because the world may start looking at their country and if so, the government needs to start working on the structure of the society such as rich-poor balance. Moreover having the big firms brings a lot of profitability to their country and they can use it for their social security system. The difference between rich and poor is one of the biggest issues in developing countries. It will be better if they invite the big firms.

Second, global cities produce employment. This is not only because construction of global cities and improving infrastructure will produce a lot of employment but also the workers in developing countries need a connection with local people to run their business there. They need to work with an interpreter and sometimes a cultural instructor so they will get global connections from each others. This will be good opportunity for both of them to learn other culture in this globalizing world. And if they got an opportunity of cultural exchange at local level, it will work great for understanding their each culture and ethnicity.

Third, if the government makes a rule in which the firms need to share their technology and skills with the workers in the host countries, it will help their country develop. This is what China actually does in their special economy district. I think this can avoid “drain brain” and helps produce skilled local workers.

In conclusion, I think these 3 points are good side of global cities.

Why does the gap between poor immigrants and rich immigrants exist?

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by Ayana Nishizaki

Last week, in my post about ‘International Immigration’, I was wondering why poor immigrants stay poor while the rich get richer. Though my study, the causes are different ones than I expected. There are two main reasons: educational opportunity, and inefficient use of human capitals. I would like to discuss these reasons in terms of ‘illegal Hispanic immigrants’.

Immigrants of America are divided into two groups: legal immigrants who can speak English and illegal immigrants who can’t speak English well. Recently, increasing the number of illegal Hispanic immigrants is one of the big problems. They try to stay longer after the tourist VISA expired because it takes long time and much money to get the right of permanent residence.

The first reason of the gap is their education. According to one reading, Gross Enrollment Ratio of Hispanic is 57％ while that of American is 80％. Most illegal immigrants don’t have enough money to take educational opportunity. Therefore, they have no choice to get low income jobs. On the other hand, educational cost of the high quality school is getting higher. It means only the rich can get high quality education and tend to get high income jobs. Therefore, the gap is still not getting close.

As the second reason, human capitals of immigrants are not used effectively and correctly. Recently, new immigrants are more highly educated than old immigrants because the number of immigrants who graduated from universities is increasing. However, immigrants are still faced with a difficulty to get acceptation of a job they want. The problem comes up when immigrants enter host country and show their qualification and ability to employers. These qualifications that they got in home country are not necessarily useful in host country. Even if these qualifications of home countries are similar to those of host countries, their ability of communication, language knowledge, and adopting culture are different from those of natives. There is a fact that there are many opportunities to get jobs like house keeper and restaurant server. However, when it comes to more high-skill-required jobs such as IT manager, it seems more difficult for immigrants than natives. Therefore, some high educated Hispanic immigrants have no choice to work what they really don’t want because of unpractical use of their ability.

From this study, I realized that the problem of the gap is caused by less education opportunity and inefficient use of human capitals. I though the main reason was merely their poor economic situation. However, even if some immigrants achieved high academic ability, they can’t get jobs they really want. In my view, that point (how difficult it is for immigrants to get acceptation from employer in terms of language skills, ability of adaptation) is one of the barriers when they assimilate. Therefore, as one of the solutions, I think government should clarify what kind of skills and ability in each jobs is exactly necessary in host country and inform immigrants of the clear criteria. By doing so, immigrants can make their life plan (such as which skills is necessary to get in advance) to reach their goal and also employer can easily measure and their ability and communicate with them.

The problem Japanese Brazilians face when going back “home”

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by Chie Munemori

Today a great number of immigrants are living with us in Japan. Each of them has various types of reasons for leaving their home countries and migrating to Japan. In the case of Japanese Brazilians whose ancestors are Japanese who migrated from Japan to Brazil in the past hundred years, they immigrated back to Japan because of financial disaster which happened in the late 1980’s. They wish to get good job and send remittance to families in Brazil, and some of them even decide to settle down in Japan for rest of their lives. In fact, in spite of their dreams, the present situation surrounding them in Japan is against their wills. The circumstances are difficult for them in the extreme. Below I present some of those problems they face and also potential resolutions of them.

One is that most of Japanese Brazilians have citizenships of Brazil and they are already not familiar with the culture, customs, and social system of Japan. It means that many of them tend to have difficulties with their daily lives right after coming to Japan. For example, in my hometown Hiroshima, many Japanese Brazilians are there and one of my friends in my schooldays is also the one. She and her family did not understand even easy sentences written or spoken in Japanese so that they always had to ask their neighborhoods problems such as how to throw out garbage and to pass of a circular in their area. Response to this situation, some mayoral governments and local communities have started providing them with free support services such as Japanese school, offices to look for a job and to rent a house, desks to teach them how to pay taxes, and so on. Komatsu city in Ishikawa prefecture is the one of those local governments.

Secondary, Japanese compulsory education system does not include foreign children as its target because the Constitution of Japan in Article 14 says “All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as provided by law” but Japanese Brazilians are not included in “all people”. In other words, in this article “all people” means people who have Japanese citizenship. That’s why public elementary schools in Japan do not have proper curriculum of Japanese for children who are not Japanese in it. And worse is that some of young Japanese Brazilian students in elementary school are ill-treated by classmates since they do not understand Japanese. In such cases, those students become not to go to school because of that. To result these problems, administration need to modify its educational system to give them chance to learn Japanese in public school as their human rights. Additionally, teachers in school need to teach students cross-cultural understanding between Japanese and those who have different cultural back grounds from them.

In conclusion, it is necessary to change our social system not only for Japanese Brazilian but also for us Japanese under the situation of decreasing birthrate and aging population. Japanese Brazilian is potential power in Japanese society. We have to reconsider their rights and life conditions.

Should Japan allow dual citizenship?

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by Asako Morita

At the present day, Japanese government does not allow a person to have dual or multiple citizenships after the age of 22. The person who has it needs to choose one citizenship he or she wants to hold. Many European countries and Australia for example, allow dual citizenship since numbers of people immigrated there. Along the globalization, it is more convenient and easier for us to live another country. Global economy is now expanding all over the world and flow of people is more active. Although Japan is a nearly homogeneous country, more and more people are facing difficult choice.  In this short essay, I would like to argue why Japan needs to allow dual citizenship at the view of rights of residents and making ties to global society.

First, if the person who already holds dual citizenship and has lived or has ties to Japan, they should have rights as a citizen. Becoming the citizenship means citizens have rights which people usually regard them as perfectly normal. The disqualification of becoming public workers and election rights are unfair to the person who lives in Japan for a long time and pay a tax as almost same as “Japanese”. They may want to become Japanese citizens but also they still do not want to give up on their other nationality of their roots. It is not they do not like Japan but the choice of their identity is an extreme to them. The Japanese politicians concern that admitting dual citizenship leads to undermine national loyalty. However, people who live in Japan for a long time or related to Japan must have feeling for the nation somehow. Pessimistic fear of manipulation of the nationality takes valuable rights from a number of people.

Second, the advantages of admitting dual citizenship are remarkably large. Especially, the tie to people from other countries become strong and it enhances economic advantage. Many Japanese who are quite active and achieves successful outcome in other countries have to give up on Japanese nationality. Once they let the nationality go away, they hardly come back to Japan and the relation to Japan easily fade when generation passes. The case of Ireland, which admits dual citizenship, proves people who once left the country for immigration and succeeded in various fields lately came back and produces prosperous economic condition. I think in this global trend, Japan should be tolerant to dual citizenship so that Japanese business can easily recruit a talented person who have experienced in another countries. We should not forget many variable Japanese people who live all over the world.

Therefore, I believe Japan should admit dual citizenship. As globalization move advance and more and more flow of people are active, the advantages of admitting dual citizenship are getting bigger and conservative perspective takes rights of great number of people away. I think it is advisable for the Japanese future to admit dual citizenship for not losing more Japanese all over the world.

Does Japan need to accept more immigrants or not?

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by Takumi Matsumoto

Today, our world is going to be globalized and the borders of country are vanishing little by little. Many people are traveling all over the world for business, sightseeing, or migration. In this situation, we are required to consider “How should Japan play an active part in international situation?” China overtook Japan as world’s second-biggest economy last year and we have been influenced by Europe’s debt crisis. In addition, we had the big earthquake on 11th march last year. Things in Japan are not good in terms of economy. In my opinion, Japan has to discuss about immigrants and immigration system in order to accept more immigrants. There are several reasons for that. But, we have to develop the plan slowly and carefully.

First reason why I recommend getting immigrants is countermeasure for aging society. Aging society is one of the most serious problems we have in Japan. Some researchers said that the population of elderly people will be one-third of total population in Japan. It means that young people are imposed great financial burden on the health care for elderly. The decline of young people accelerates to make the situation worse. So accepting immigrants brings the labor force and rises up the birthrate. Second reason is finances that they pay as taxes. If immigrants live in Japan, they have to pay taxes. Then government makes most of the money useful for health care or economic recovery.

However, there are difficulties at the same time. For example, many Japanese residences are not willing to accept immigrants partly because they are afraid of increasing criminal rate and a job shortage for Japanese people. According to one research, 48.5% of Japanese firmly refuse immigrants. 19.3% don’t want immigrants that much. 16.8% said that there is no choice but to accept immigrants. It means 74.6 % of Japanese have a hesitant idea for immigrants. Besides, Japan doesn’t have good enough immigration system. If we accept immigrants easily and carelessly, immigrants will get old and become a part of aging society, even though they give us great labor force in few decades.

In conclusion, Japan cannot make requirements for immigrants loosely now because of insufficient system or law for immigrants. But we finally have to accept immigrants in the future in order not only to make Japan better, but also to make futures of world better. We need to think about Japan and immigrants.

The Perception on Migration in This Endangered World

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by Hiroki Matsukura

This world where we live is endangered. Why? This is because albeit through two destructive wars with cruel inhumanity, we, it seems, have not found where the monster of mass-destruction is hiding himself. However, in fact the monster has not perfectly hidden himself from our eyes. He showed his tail. The economic or monetary crisis in 2007 and its aftermath seen as the euro crisis in these days might be his ‘tickling.’ There is no longer need to say the detail about these crises, which shows that without any doubt this world got tied closely together through the market which is deregulated well by the policies of liberalism.

Free trade, reducing taxation, and deregulations… These liberal or neo-liberal ideas and systems, which are sometimes too extreme and too drastic, made our world smaller and more efficient (Balaam and Dillman 2011, pp.43-46). As the thoughts and the structures going, we grew up technologies, especially information technology. I can easily know what my friend on the back hemisphere doing now with handy devices. Not only that, we can fligh overseas quite easily and more inexpensively, compared with the just a few decades. We can express about ourselves as we live in the transnational way. However, in the aspects of international immigration, we cannot say we get such convenience on it. We can find some obstacles on living in other country, for example as workers. Of course, EU assures its citizens of the free immigration inside its territory though this must be one extreme exception (Nugent 2010, pp. 335-339).

Why do not states try to completely let the immigration free? From realistic view, the reason will be that the governments, which race their powers in this international society, cannot tolerate, for their respect on victories of relative gain, the flow of too much wealth from their states to others because of immigrants’ remittances (Balaam and Dillman 2011, p.57). Or it is difficult for them to accept living in transnational ways in the first place because it may lead to an outflow of resources such as people who are talented for keeping and raising states’ status and powers. In addition, the borders are one of the items which the governments more easily and more directly deal with compared to the market.

As one of other perspectives, which I would like to emphasise on this post, the reason might be that the free migration implies nothing but the diffusion of poverty at the same time of movement of wealth. On the theory of liberalism, free trade including labour and financial commodities finally makes benefits on society as such forms as elimination of poverty (Balaam and Dillman 2011, pp.33-38). However, we know what the theory led to through the crises. States got too much of deficits, banks and companies are pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. What we can imagine the free migration leads to is the loop of poverty. On the global level, people will start to search for jobs, or the places they sell their labours. That will make wages cheaper and cheaper. They continuing the process, the wealth will be monopolised by the really small limited group of people. We perhaps can say the realisation of free migration means more tangible way of man-made catastrophe than the finance, which cannot be seen as substance, did.

The monster seeks the chance of barking. Interdependence liberals vociferously asserting will turn into MAD, the mutually assured destruction. We should keep it in our minds that each of us has an invisible switch of mass-destructive weapon through global economics guaranteed by the extreme liberalisation. The weapon, Global Poverty, will globally kill people i.e. us. On the point of it, one of our last forts might be paralysing the completed liberalisation of migration at the present.

Bibliography

Balaam, D. N. and Dillman, B. 2011. Introduction to International Politics Economy. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

Nugent, N. 2010. The Government and Politics of the European Union. 7th ed. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

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.