International Workshop: Comparative Perspectives on the Transformation of East Asian Labor Markets through International Skilled Migration, Tokyo University, November 2, 2024

This workshop seeks to explore changing labor markets in East Asian immigration regimes through international skilled migration. Three East Asian economies, namely Japan, South Korea (hereafter Korea) and Taiwan, similarly undergo an accelerated demographic decline and a labor shortage. These countries are in dire need to attract and secure long-time skilled professionals in order to maintain economic growth, to remain competent in global markets, and counter challenges arising from population decline and the fourth industrial revolution.
These three economies have recently introduced new immigration policies to attract skilled professionals.
For example, Korea and Japan have created new visa categories, such as the E-7-S visa in Korea, J-Skip and J-Find visas in Japan, and Taiwan’s the Taiwan Employment Gold Card. Previous research dominantly compared these three countries’ immigration policies in labor-intensive sectors, comparative research on skilled migration remains scarce. While low-skilled migrants are treated as temporary labour, skilled migrants are often offered pathways to permanent residency. Thus, the acceptance of skilled immigrants might profoundly change the domestic labour market. Through international skilled migration, this workshop hence seeks to better understand shifting immigration regimes and labour market conditions in East Asian economies.
Next to skilled migrants the workshop also sheds light on foreign entrepreneurs in innovative sectors and on firms relying on these skilled foreign workers. The focus on the diversifying employment patterns of skilled migrants in these three countries as well as on the meso-level of firms – both foreign-born and domestic – is necessary to understand changing dynamics in the globalizing labor market within the East Asian region. The objective of the workshop is therefore to understand how different actors in the three countries – government, firms, and individuals/employees – shape the transformation of the domestic labor market, adjust to or proactively seek out opportunities in the increasingly internationalizing/globalizing labor market, and navigate the problems associated with this transformation.
The conference is organized by Helena Hof (University of Zurich / Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany),
Aimi Muranaka (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), and
Kikuko Nagayoshi (ISS, University of Tokyo).
This workshop is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and Toshiba International Foundation

Program details: Find flyer here (PDF, 285 KB)

University of Tokyo, Institute of Social Science (ISS)