The everyday spaces of global labour migration: Migrant workers as political agents in Japan

A massive influx of immigrant labour to Japan became the most discussed social "problem" in its media as well as official and academic circles around the late 1980s. More recently, the prospect for the exponential decline in the size of the workforce due to Japan's demographic changes has re-mobilized the dispute about the future direction of its so far, strictly regulated immigration policy. With these situations in mind, this project aims to problematize the historically prevailing perception of the escalated inflows of immigrant workers to the Japanese labour market as the national concern imposed from outside of Japan on its ethnically and culturally homogeneous society.;The central argument advanced in this study is that: Transnational labour immigration to Japan is an ongoing social practice in which immigrants as labourers and residents have currently participated. They have simultaneously challenged and reconfigured social relations of (re)production and the modern nation-state in Japan in the era of globalizing market civilization.;I use a qualitative research method to substantiate this argument and generate knowledge pertaining to the "lived experiences" of immigrant workers in Japan. In particular, the diverse narratives of immigrants, most of which are the product of my field research in Japan and the Philippines, are systematically presented and analyzed. The purpose is not only putting a human face on the socially marginalized group too often obscured by statistics but also illuminating their complex everyday struggles that are "invisible" for the broader audience.;This research is guided by historical materialist epistemological and ontological premises and sheds light on the everyday spaces of immigrant workers in their links with the restructuring of the global political economy. Drawing on the neo-Gramscian framework, along with various conceptual insights drawn from the literatures of migration, citizenship and geography, it addresses: How far and in what ways do the contestation and negotiation of immigrant workers as political agents explore and identify the contradictions in existing social and institutional structures in which discrimination and oppression are based on nationality, race, ethnicity, gender and class and the possibilities for their changes?...