Immigrant Japan?  Sounds like a contradiction but millions of immigrants make their varied lives in Japan, dealing with the tensions between belonging and not belonging in this ethno-nationalist country. 

Why do people want to come to Japan? Where do immigrants with various resources and demographic profiles fit in the economic landscape? How do immigrants narrate belonging in an environment where they are “other” at a time when mobility is increasingly easy and belonging increasingly complex?  Gracia illuminates the lives of these immigrants by bringing in sociological, geographical, and psychological theories - guiding the reader through life trajectories of migrants of various backgrounds, while also going so far as to suggest that Japan is already an immigrant country. 

Deborah Milly from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and author of New Policies for New Residents commented “Liu-Farrer’s interpretive analysis of the voices of migrants and immigrants provides a distinctive perspective on the relationship between migration and belonging in Japan. It reveals how these subjects engage Japanese society and policies to create a space for themselves as immigrants.”.

Gracia is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, and Director of Institute of Asian Migrations, Waseda University, Japan. She is a Co-Investigator of the New and Old Diversity Exchange (NODE) UK-Japan network and a close associate of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) at the University of Birmingham.

To read more about 'Immigrant Japan' and to purchase the book visit the Cornell Universty Press website.

View more information about the New and Old Diversity Exchange (NODE) UK-Japan network.