by Daisuke Matsumoto

Which do you think is better bilingual or monolingual? Of course, in the U.S. people of English-Only have objection to bilingualism because they are afraid that the primacy of English would become weaker than before. In fact, since the late 1990s, educational policy in the U.S. schools has been moving away from bilingualism, but English-only disregard for benefits of bilingualism (Dyrness 2012).

The benefits of bilingualism for immigrant children are even greater than the benefits of only speaking mother tongue or English-Only. Bilingualism brings up family cohesion and gains self-esteem and stronger cultural identity. Moreover, these days Barack Obama recommended bilingual educations (Kraus 2012). To do so, there will appear a problem how to teach immigrant children. For example, there are many immersion schools, where children are able to gain bilingual by the end of elementary school. If both you and your wife or husband is Japanese, and immigrant to the United States, you should have the children go to immersion school. Then the children can learn both English and Japanese in English. This school has a good point to study main subjects like math or science in English available in the children’s future. In addition, you’d much better have them commit Japanese school on every Saturday. Of course, things, you know, don’t always go according to plan, but, the next suggestions will make you sure that the children will get to become bilingual by the age of 12 years old. There are 11 schools of Japanese immersion program in the United States.

(Miwa 2006)

These school teachers said that we found our students are more likely to acquire both Japanese and English language with increasing cross-cultural understanding, and even develop more self-esteem through this program (Miwa 2006).

Bilingualism, you know, keep Alzheimer’s or dementia disease from aggravating. In addition to the famous effect, some scientists say that bilingualism boosts brain power. According to the study from the U.S. Northwestern University, they monitored 48 healthy students included 23 bilingual students to different sounds―how to tell the speaker’s voice from chatter’s voice. Usually monolingual persons like me would feel unpleasant, and could hardly sound the speaker’s voice in the room of noisy chatter. However, these bilingual students were much better to process only speaker’s sounds. The study also proves by using scalp electrodes to trace the pattern of brainwaves that the bilingual’s brainstem responses work higher. Through this research, you can say that the benefits of bilingualism are very powerful.

Orange zone is the brainstem (Kraus 2012)

References

Dyrness, Andrea. 2012. “English-Only Teaching Ignores Bilingual Benefits” The Hart Courant. May, 23 http://articles.courant.com/2012-03-23/news/hc-op-bilingualism-makes-us-smarter-20120323_1_primary-language-second-language-largest-language-group

Miwa, Mitsuko. 2006. “Immersion Education in the USA―A study on the prospect of bilingual education” PDF. http://www.nier.go.jp/kankou_kiyou/kiyou135-193.pdf

Kraus, Nina. 2012. “Being bilingual ‘boosts brain power” BBC. May, 1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17892521

by Sayaka Kuroiwa

Now there are many Filipinas who work as hostess in Japan. Besides some of them stay in Japan illegally. What makes them do so? One of the answers is ‘poverty’. They had little money in Philippine, so they come to Japan to earn money. They have ‘Japanese dream’. They are choosing ‘unfreedom of hostess work’ than ‘unfreedom of poverty’.

They are often despised because of illegal stay and characteristic of the work. Then, what does a hostess do? They sing with customers, play games, and drink alcohol, and so on. Most of customers are middle age men. The customers go to hostess bar to experience male superiority. Maybe Japanese superiority, too. And they go to feel exoticism. This work is not above other works in social status. But they are working to lead a rich life.

How are hostesses different from/similar to geisha?

There is a similarity between hostesses and geisha. They entertain male customers. But many people have better impression on geisha than hostesses. Actually geisha is tourist attraction in Kyoto. Why? It is because geisha has become one of Japanese traditional things, and many people regard them polite. On the other hand, hostess work often link with sex-work and human trafficking. Actually, the number of Filipinas who became a victim of human-trafficking is increasing in Europe, America, and Japan. So, in 2000, “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime” was adopted. In Asia, ASEAN set a subject to remove women-trafficking.

Should Japan create a “hostess visa”?

I think that Japan should not create a hostess visa. To be sure, I want Filipinas to be protect by law, however, if Japan do so, Japan must allow sex-industry to come into Japan. The difference between hostess work and sex-work are so obscure. If create a new visa, Japan can’t help poor Filipina women truly.  Japan should remove poverty in Philippine first. As Japanese do, Philippine should raise the standard of education of Filipinas. And Japan should help Philippine with ODA, NPO…etc. I insist that creating a hostess visa does not become an essential solution to help Filipinas.

by Sayaka Kuroiwa

Today’s Japan

Today, Japan has become an ageing society gradually, and the number of children in Japan has been decreasing. Actually, I studied the population of Japan is 130,000,000, but today’s junior high school students study it 120,000,000. Japan facing the problem, some social scientists insist that Japan should accept more migrants. If Japan do so, how our society will be changed? And what should we do?

Japanese Society

Japan has one of the most unique cultures in the world. But Japanese people themselves don’t find it. And many of them often think of their society as single-culture one. Nevertheless there are many cultures in Japan even now. For example, there have been many living Koreans and Chinese in Japan for long time. And discrimination against them has remained strongly.

But, recently, Korean and Chinese culture and many tourists come to Japan. Especially Korean singers, actors and actresses are very popular among young people. So, young Japanese people come to accept new cultures.

Transnational Migrants

Now there are some transnational migrants who maintain strong, regular ties to their homelands and organize accept of their lives across national borders. Why do they so? I think one of the reasons is that they come to find their culture clearly by touching a new other culture. I regard that affirmatively. At least, I think it is not wrong, however, it is a fact that they can’t fit into their new surroundings completely.

My Opinion

I think that migrants need not forget their culture, and they may keep their culture and accept only pleased new culture. But I think they should be interested in new cultures. Then, Japan should be ready to receive new cultures. I suggest that education system must be changed the first. Japanese children who have flexible thinking should study that there are many kind of cultures in the world. This is a peaceful way to accept other cultures and other countries’ people.

Reference
Matsumoto Kenichi. 2002. Minnzoku to kokka. PHPsinnsyo.

by Yuuki Tashiro

These days, in Japan, the topic of international migration is discussed eagerly. I think that there are two reasons about it. It is a declining number of children and a tide of globalization. Compared with the US and western countries, the population of migrant is very low. But in Japan, government tries to add to not only foreign workers who engage in white-collar work but also foreign workers who engage in blue-collar work. If a present migrant low in Japan is changed and it becomes more relaxed than this of now, of course, this decision will have big effects on the people in Japan and the international migration.

In this class, I studied the case of Boston about international migration. In Boston, many foreign people came to there depending on the same countries’ people. As a result, colonies where these people live together appeared. Besides, the little Tokyo and The China town is same case. If Japanese government make a low which allow foreign migrant to live in Japan, the same colonies will appear as The US. However, it is also said that such colonies had already existed. For example, I can give the instance of chuukagai, China town and Korean town. These towns were made by Chinese and Korean. I think that there are two problems about this issue. Firstly, it is the coexistence between their culture, language and these of Japan. Japanese society is often said that quite exclusively. There is one proverb which shows this Japanese nature. “gou ni haireba gou ni sitagae ”. This words mean that if you live in other region you should follow the region’s customs. I guess the proverb show Japanese nature well. So some conflicts will occur. However , as China town in Yokohama and Koube, the conflict will become reconciliation as the years went by. Secondly, public services and facilities for migrants is also issue. A lot of these service and facilities deal with them in English or Chinese, Korean. Although, if migrants who can’t speak these language live in Japan, they will be not able to take these services quickly. I think that this problem is related to Japanese education system. Ordinary Japanese are not proud of other language. Besides, multilingualism is not firmly established in Japan because the population of foreign people is low. So it is also important to established multilingualism in Japan to add to migrants.

by Ayana Ebisuno

As world is more globalized, we would feel more comfortable and many things would become more convenient. For example, now we can talk with friends who are in other side of the globe, we can take same classes that is held in American universities even if we are in class rooms in Japan, we can see many news all of the world even if we do not go out from our house if we use the Internet.

More and more students all over the world are studying English as a second language because English have been becoming global common language. On the other hand, there are many languages that are disappearing at fast rate. This problem is known as “language death.” Many people around the world are worried about it. And most specialists agree that no language can survive unless about 100,000 people speak it. But unfortunately, half of the world’s languages are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. And quarter of all languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people. Specialists estimated that about 10 languages disappear every year. And when a language dies, its culture also dies with it. This fact is a worry not only for specialists but also for ordinary people all over the world.

When we lose a language, it means we also lose a lot of important knowledge and understanding of the world we live in. There is also a close connection between language and personal identity. As the number of people speaking a language in a community decreases, there is often increase in social problems. This is one reason why saving language is important even if they only have a few speakers.

We cannot easily say that “language death” problem happened due to only the globalization. That problem has caused by not only globalization but also many other changes, for example, population, personal consciousness, and so on. But I think the problem has something to do with globalization, because it is cultural and economic connection and assimilation to each different country that promote the globalization. Living in the world where the globalization is promoting, it is important to considerate small countries and weak culture and save them.

by Yukitaka Nishina

The number of Americans who were born in foreign countries has risen in recent decades. It reached 38 million in 2007 or almost 13% of the population. When early 1990s, most immigrants came from Europe, but now most immigrants come from other parts of Europe and especially, Latin America.

Immigrants who rooted from Latin America or Spain are called Hispanics or Latinos. They are from such a counties Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or any Central American countries or other Spanish-Speaking culture. In 2008, there were an estimated 47 million Hispanics in the U.S, making up about 15% of the population. Why is that rate increasing? Immigrants come for some reasons, such as to escape poverty or oppression. GDP per capita of the U.S. is about 1.7 times more than Spain, 3 times more than Mexico, as for comparing Honduras, 13 times more. Mexico is ranked 1^st as Child poverty country according to UNICEF. (Child poverty is defined as the share of the children living in the households with income below 50% of the national median). By living and earning money in the U.S, they can get a better life for themselves and their children. Most of immigrants come from developing countries.

Immigrants also come from developed countries. I’ve watched a video on the web. A middle age person lived in Spain earn his living by selling pocket tissues for drivers waiting traffic lights. Most of the cars are passing the street, few are stopped by the signal. Most of drivers ignore him, few tender driver listen to his talk and buy the tissues. He was fired a trading company. Spain was the high growing countries in the EU between 1997-2007. Economic growth was 3.7 per year. It causes Spain joined the EU.  A Spanish price level was lower than other countries in the EU so that the capital came from England, German and France and so on. Since the effect of the Subprime Lending Crisis in the U.S., the domestic real estate finance didn’t work smoothly in Spain. Spanish economy is going down since 2008.  He is a one of the people who is influenced the depression. He can speak English thanks to working for trading company. He wants to go to the U.S. He is a one of the people who want to escape the depression.

There has been some falloff in immigration since 2007, mostly because of the U.S. economic recession, but immigration levels remain high. Hispanics are the largest minority in the U.S., and their numbers are increasing rapidly. By 2050, rate of Hispanics or Latino are expected to make up close to 30% of the population.  Is the day that the U.S will be the country of the Hispanic soon?

by Ryoko Yorifuji

I think about immigration, especially in Europe. In Europe, many immigrants are discriminated for their religion, race and culture.

Recently, Muslim in France became issue about scarf; emblem oh Muslim. Many Muslim women wear scarf for hiding their hairs. Because in Muslim doctrine, women must hide their hairs; female hair is sex symbol. But, the French understood that the doctrine discriminate against women and scarf is symbol of woman discrimination. So France ban from wearing scarf. However, in fact, it says that France hates to flood Muslim symbol in their country, so they forbid scarf. From this issue, Muslim increase in France and French don’t wish Muslim immigrate from their hometown.

The similar issue occurs in Germany. In Germany, a population of Turk increases. And they form Turkish town and live there. German is worry that their town changes to other culture and their works are robbed by Turk. So, sometimes exclusionary movements against Turk occur. The movements are violent, so Turk and peaceful German become anxious. Moreover, both sides more and more oppose to each other. From this issue, the discrimination against race is exists.

Well then, why these immigrants come to Europe? I answer this question.

First, immigrants search their jobs and come to Europe. First I explain about the case of France. In the past, France had many colonies in North Africa. So, many people in North Africa can speak French. And as you know, North African people mainly believe in Islam. After WW2, France needed a lot of the workforce. Then France imported the workforce from North Africa, and carried out. But after the workforce don’t need to France, immigrants continued to live in France and call their family or relative. Therefore many Muslim live in France and oppose to France about religion or culture.

Second, I explain about the Germany’s case. In the case of Germany, Turkey was not German colony. However, many Turk brought to Germany as the low-priced workforce. And similar French case, they called their family, relative or friends and they formed Turkish town in Germany. In the town Turkish is spoken, Turkish goods flood in the town. So the town is seen an entirely different culture by German, and become an object of exclusion.

After all, a start of immigration in both countries made themselves. So, two countries have to make an effort to get along with each other. They should not discriminate against other culture. Then these countries had better make a system which forbids discrimination or prejudice against different culture. However, perhaps such a case is occurred in other countries. Especially immigration is rapidly spread with globalization. Then how other countries deal with such a problem? It is difficult to solve the issue, but we have to try to settle it.

Reference
Naito M. (2004) “Europe and Islam” Tokyo: Iwanami syoten
Aziz A. Effie F. (2007) “Islam in Europe: diversity, identity and influence” Cambridge University Press: Cambridge

by Momoyo Tanaka

Japan should accept immigrants.  In recent years, because of globalization, immigration that means moving to a foreign country is very active.  According to the lecture in the class, of the 6.5 billion people in the world today, 191 million just under 3 percent are international migrants[1].  Japan is not an exception to this phenomenon, and there are more than 9 hundred thousand immigrants in Japan[2].  There are 3 reasons that I agree with immigration: solving the problem of aging society with a falling birthrate and inter-cultural communication.

First of all, immigration would solve the problem of aging society with a falling birthrate.  Recently, Japanese population is declining rapidly, and one researcher expressed that the population of Japan will be 95 million by 2050 (Now, there are 120 million people.)[3].  If it happens, elderly people retirement plan would not work and they would not have enough medical treatment and nursing.  Then, if a lot of immigrants come to and live in Japan, Japanese economy would be more active, and welfare system would be supported by not only Japanese youth but also many immigrants.  In other words, it would ease the tax of welfare for elderly people burden on youth for each person.

Second, immigration would bring Japan inter-cultural communication.  Though many goods, much money and information are crossing over the world from Japan, it is strange that immigrants are restricted.  Some people may worry about the risk of losing Japanese traditional culture, but in the lecture, early sociological research on the incorporation of immigrants into the host society focused on assimilation.  Also, immigrants are selective in how they adapt.  Once Japan was the racially homogeneous nation, but thanks to immigrants since Meiji era, Japanese are able to communicate globally.  We can learn other language from native speakers, speak language we are learning, make friends from other country even in Japan. A lot of Japanese tend to be introversion, so it is good for many Japanese being apt to turn inward to have a chance to communicate with foreigners.

Immigration brings Japan a lot of economic and emotional advantages.  They would solve the problem of aging society with a falling birthrate, and promote Japanese economy and welfare system.  Also, many Japanese would have chance to communicate with foreigners if immigrants increase.  Thus, Japan should accept more immigrants.

by Akiko Takano

From the late 20th century, the movement of the people cross borders becomes popular more and more. The people work, live and make a family at the place they emigrated. Emigrants usually use the connection with the person who moved another country formerly and move the country. In that way, immigrants began to increase and they make community. What in the world is the international migration? We need to know immigrants to understand and respect their value. I’ll introduce the kinds of immigrants and then focus on transnational immigrants and its problem in this essay.

Immigration can be classified three types. The first is the emigrants to find work. They move another country to get stable job with good wages and affluent life.  Actually, most of the immigrants are certain rich because they need funds to move and local network. The second is refugees who move to escape persecution. The number is not small so refugee is big flow of people and influence global society. Moreover, the illegality emigrant exists, too. Because they do illegal immigration and an over stay, they don’t have the regular stay qualification. Thus, the people who move from the mother country to the other countries have various cases.

The people who cross the border aren’t always settle down in one place. Some people value a connection with the hometown, and go back and forth in homeland and the emigration place many times. They are called “transnational immigrants”. I explain with example of Australian immigrants from China who I met. I went to Australia and stayed for a month this year. Australia is a multiracial nation with many emigrants. My host family was immigrant from China. Their house was Australian style, but meal was Chinese and spoke Chinese at home. They looked leave the custom of the mother country while adopting Australian culture. In addition, they did telephone and Skype with the family in China frequently and said that we returned to China every year. Therefore “transnational immigrants” keep the connection with the family beyond the border and have both of culture and the customs of emigration place and of the mother country.

The movement from the country to the country becomes easier than before, and “transnational immigrants” increased by the development of the transportation, but there is the problem. “Brain drain” happens. “Brain drain” is person with specialized knowledge and technique emigrates to other country whose work condition is better. It means that the elite are lost in the emigrant sending out country. What regulation makes is important to prevent the relations between acceptance country and the sending out country from turning worse.