Labor contracting in international migration: the Japanese case and implications for Asia

"This paper is intended to be a prelude of a study on intermediaries in international migration in Asia, based primarily on the Japanese case. In the next section, I introduce the legal framework of labor contracting in Japan.... In Section 3, I pick up several actual examples of the channels of migrant workers coming to Japan. They are: (i) Japanese-descended migrant workers from Brazil, (ii) job-trainees from China, (iii) entertainers from the Philippines, (iv) ¿slavery' women from Thailand, and (v) workers smuggled from China by snake heads. This illustrates differences according to types of migrants, as well as common features across them. In Section 4, I try to explain the features by using simple economic concepts. Section 5 considers a broader Asian context. Section 6 concludes with a summary of major findings in this paper."