The rise and fall of diasporic bonds in Japanese-Peruvian “Return” migration

Two decades after Japanese-Peruvians and other South Americans of Japanese descent began to migrate back to Japan, the return-migration phenomenon has ended. Induced by the Japanese government in the name of shared ethnicity, Japanese policymakers now largely regard return migration as a failed policy. It failed because return-migrants did not, in the view of policy- makers, assimilate, integrate, or “make it” in Japan as expected. Thus, once-imagined ethnic bonds ceased to exist in Japan. However, ethnic bonds sustained themselves well outside Japan. The Japanese-Peruvian community in Peru has thrived and maintained continuous ties with Japan. What explains the rise and fall of diasporic ethnic bonds? Drawing on my ethnographic research in Japanese-Peruvian communities in Peru and Japan, I found that diasporic ethnic bonds are cultivated or weakened depending upon where diasporic populations are located in relation to their ancestral homeland, and how such ties are utilized, for what, and by whom.

Between ideology and pragmatism: the politics of dual nationality in Germany

This article discusses the policy and politics of dual nationality in Germany. It contrasts the policy reality, in which dual nationality is tolerated in a wide range of cases, with Germany's continued opposition in principle to this phenomenon. It then analyzes political, cultural and electoral factors to explain why this opposition persists despite these widespread exceptions. In conclusion, the article argues that by continuing formally to oppose dual nationalities, Germany in effect discourages naturalizations and thereby continues to operate a broadly exclusive citizenship.

Negative assimilation:how immigrants experience economic mobility in Japan

This paper examines the economic mobility of foreign migrants in Japan. In a country that is largely regarded as homogeneous and closed to outsiders, how and to what extent do immigrants achieve economic success? A survey conducted by the authors revealed that the conventional assimilationist perspective does not fully explain immigrants’ economic success in Japan. Migrants from the West experience what Chiswick and Miller (2011) refer to as “negative assimilation.” That is, their earnings decline over time in Japan. While negative assimilation was not clearly observed among immigrants from neighboring Asian countries, wages among them did not increase with the length of their stay in Japan. For both groups, the skills they brought from abroad were found to be largely accountable for their economic success, while locally specific human capital, such as education acquired in the host society, did not contribute to their earnings.

Beyond securitisation : Western Mediterranean international relations from a security perspective 1989-2002

Following the end of the Cold War and the ensuing changes to the international landscape, thinking about security has tended to become more discursive and interpretative in nature. What counts as security has increasingly derived from security discourses (that is, 'securitisation') and uncertainty about the multi-faceted future facing various countries and regions. Within this post-Cold War discourse, the Western Mediterranean has emerged as a region fraught with latent and manifest threats in the economic, political, societal and military sectors. Improved access to EU markets for Maghrebi exports; the security of energy supplies to the EU from Algeria and Libya; lack of democracy and the advance of political Islam; the flow of northward migration and worries about law and order in France, Italy and Spain; the growth in military expenditure and weapons proliferation in the Maghreb; all have been central to the securitisation agenda. However, this agenda has often lacked credibility especially when inter-linkages have purportedly been established between economic underdevelopment and political instability, between the advance of political Islam and the threat to energy supplies, or between immigration and the threat to national identity. Such inter-sectoral linkages distract from the credibility of those 'securitisation instances' which correspond to reality; the former linkages have often been exploited by extremist politicians in south-west European countries as well as by regimes in the Maghreb to advance their respective interests. Thus, securitisation may defeat its main purpose; it may generate responses out of keeping with the aims proclaimed at the outset, aims centred on the countering of real threats and the ensuring of greater stability.