The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
University of California, San Diego

CCIS

Labor Market Incorporation of Immigrants in Japanand the United States: A Comparative Analysis

By Takeyuki Tsuda
University of California, San Diego

Wayne A. Cornelius
University of California, San Diego

Working Paper 50
April 2002

IZA Discussion Paper No. 476
April 2002

ABSTRACTLabor Market Incorporation of Immigrants in Japan and theUnited States: A Comparative Analysis
The most commonly used model of labor market incorporation among immigrants in the
United States analyzes their earnings largely as a function of human capital variables suchas education, language competence, age, length of residence and employment experience inthe receiving country. However, such a simple model is not necessarily cross-culturally
applicable and may lose much of its explanatory power in other societies, where immigrants
encounter different labor market conditions. This paper estimates multivariate models of
wage determination among samples of foreign workers interviewed in 1996 in San Diego
County, California, and the Japanese industrial city of Hamamatsu. In contrast to San Diego,
the standard measures of achieved human capital do not significantly influence immigrant
wages in Hamamatsu. Instead, ascribed human capital (e.g., gender, ethnicity) has a muchgreater impact on immigrant wages in Japan than in the United States. Although the use ofsocial networks by immigrants to find jobs has a significant impact on wages in bothcountries, the effect is positive in Hamamatsu, whereas it is negative in San Diego. The
paper draws on data from ethnographic studies in Japan and California to suggest
explanations for these divergent results. More generally, the paper illustrates the importanceof reception contexts (host societies) in determining labor market outcomes for immigrant
workers.

JEL Classification:
Keywords:

J15, J24, J31, J61, D63

wage determination, immigrants, labor brokerage, social networks

Wayne A. Cornelius
Center for Comparative Immigration Studies
University of California-San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0510
USA
Tel.: +1 858-534-7852
Fax: +1 858-534-6447
Email: wcorneli@ucsd.edu

3Introduction: Human Capital and Immigrant Labor Market Incorporation
The most commonly used model of labor market incorporation among immigrants in the
United States analyzes their earnings largely as a function of standard human capital variables,such as education, language competence, age, and employment experience in the host society.
Particular emphasis has been placed especially on the number of years of education upon arrivalin the U.S. as a determinant of immigrant wages (see, for example, Borjas 1995), sometimes witha bow toward aggregate labor supply and public policy variables (Bansak and Raphael 1998;
Dávila and Pagán 1998; Phillips and Massey 2000).

However, such a simple model is notnecessarily cross-culturally applicable and may lose much of its explanatory power in othersocieties, where immigrants encounter different labor market conditions.
Drawing on data gathered for a comparative study of the role of immigrant labor in the
United States and Japanese economies (Cornelius and Kuwahara, 1998), this paper estimates
multivariate models of wage determination among 837 foreign workers interviewed in 1996 in
San Diego County, California, and the Japanese industrial city of Hamamatsu. 1 In addition to theusual human capital variables, our models incorporate a number of variables that cannot bemeasured using census data (e.g., decennial census data and the U.S. Current Population
Survey), such as legal status, mode of job-seeking, and characteristics of the firm in which theimmigrant is employed.

The result is a much fuller picture of the labor market incorporation

process among foreign workers in the United States and Japan, which also reveals importantvariations in the explanatory power of certain individual characteristics from one national
context to the other.

In contrast to San Diego, the standard measures of human capital do notsignificantly influence immigrant wages in Hamamatsu, Japan, because of the differences in the

1 The research assistance of Magnus Lofstrom, Rafael Vergara, and Luis Estrada is gratefully acknowledged.

4labor market and in the recruitment and utilization of immigrant workers, as well as the muchgreater value placed on the worker’s ethnicity among Japanese employers.

Instead of achieved

human capital variables (such as education, language ability, number of years in host country),
ascribed human capital (gender, ethnicity) 2 has a much greater impact on immigrant wages inJapan than in the United States. Although the use of social networks by immigrants to find jobs
has a significant impact on wages in both countries, the effect is positive in Hamamatsu, whereas
it is negative in San Diego.
The dependent variable in both models is the natural log of hourly earnings, whichenables us to interpret the estimated coefficients as the impact that the independent variable hason earnings as a percentage.

Tables 1 and 3 present the means and standard deviations of thevariables used in each model, in addition to the expected signs of the estimated coefficients. The
model for foreign workers in San Diego incorporates some data that are not available for our
Hamamatsu sample. Specifically, it is not possible in the case of Hamamatsu workers to matchcharacteristics of the firm in which they are employed with the workers, except for the broad
sector of the economy to which the firm belongs (manufacturing, construction, or services). The
sampling procedure used for the San Diego portion of the study3 generated detailed data on thefirm in which the immigrant was working, including the percentage of foreign-born persons in

2 Ascribed and achieved status is a classical distinction in the sociology literature (see e.g., Giddens 1989, McCalland Simmons 1978:168-169). Ascribed status simply refers to a social status that has been inherited or assigned bybirth and cannot be changed or modified (e.g., sex, race, ethnicity, and kinship status). In contrast, achieved statuses
are actively acquired by the individual by personal effort, ability, experience, and social recognition and include
occupational and educational status, social group membership, and professional rank. Of course, the distinction is
not always clear-cut, since an ascribed status such as ethnicity can be manipulated, disguised, or even changed, andcan therefore sometimes be "achieved." Even sex and race can now be modified. The ascribed or achieved natureof certain social statuses, such as nationality, are ambiguous, since they can both be ascribed (by descent or place ofbirth) or achieved/acquired (by naturalization).
3 For details concerning the sample design and interviewing procedures for both research sites, see Cornelius andKuwahara (1998).

5
the production work force, the annual turnover rate among production workers, and whether
native-born U.S. workers are part of the firm’s applicant pool for entry-level production jobs.
The better performance of the San Diego wage determination model (which explains 50 percentof the observed variation in wages) as compared with the Hamamatsu model (which explains 33
percent of the variance) can be attributed largely to the availability of additional information on
the San Diego workers, which enabled us to include more of the theoretically relevant
explanatory variables.
The San Diego model includes nine industrial-sector dummy variables, representing thenine sectors of the San Diego economy in which immigrant workers and their employers were
sampled.

The reference sector is the restaurant sector, in which average wages for entry-level

workers were reported (by both employers and workers) to be the lowest. Therefore, the signs of
the estimated coefficients for employment in the other eight sectors represented in the model are
anticipated to be positive. In the Hamamatsu model the reference industry sector is the relatively
high-paying service sector.

Hence the expected signs for employment in the manufacturing andconstruction sectors are negative.
Results
The results from our regression model analyzing immigrants’ earnings in Hamamatsu,
Japan (Table 4) indicate that none of the standard human capital variables (what we call achieved
human capital) that might be expected to increase wages proved to be statistically significant at
the p<.05 or p<.10 level.

These include age, educational level, Japanese language ability, timeliving in Japan (only one of the three forms of this variable--months cubed--is statisticallysignificant, and barely so), and job seniority (years with the current employer).

In short, the6achieved human capital that foreign workers bring with them to Japan (or acquire after arrival,e.g., Japanese language competence) has very little impact on the wages they earn.
In contrast to achieved human capital, ascribed human capital variables (sex andethnicity) are much more important as predictors of immigrant in Hamamatsu.

The ascribed

attributes of sex (female) and ethnicity (being nikkeijin, i.e., Japanese descendants from SouthAmerican countries admitted to Japan under special visa categories)4 both have a very significant
influence on wages.

As expected, given the traditionally high degree of wage discrimination

against women in Japan, female status is strongly and negatively related to wage levels (30percent lower compared to 4.5 percent lower in San Diego). On the other hand, nikkeijin ethnic
status is strongly and positively related to wages (25 percent higher).
The results from our model of wage determination for foreign workers in San Diego(Table 4) are quite different. Consistent with the standard wage determination model, all of thestandard achieved human capital variables are statistically significant and have a positive impact
on wage levels.

These include English language fluency, job seniority (years with currently

employers), years of schooling, and time spent in the United States.

In contrast to theHamamatsu case, the ascribed attributes of sex and ethnicity have significantly less effect on thewages of immigrants.

Female immigrants earn 4.5 percent less than men, but the result is notstatistically significant.
The acquisition of a job through immigrant social networks is strongly related to wages
for both the Hamamatsu and San Diego samples, but in the opposite direction. In Hamamatsu, if
an immigrant was hired through relatives or friends, the person’s wages were 20 percent higher
4 Brazilians of Japanese ancestry (nikkeijin) comprised 61 percent of the registered foreign-born population in

Hamamatsu at the time of our fieldwork in the city. Nationwide, Japanese-Brazilians constituted 15.7 percent of thetotal of registered foreign nationals in 1997 (calculated from Iguchi 1998). On the evolution of the return migratory
flow of Brazilian Nikkeijin to Japan, see Tsuda (1999a).

7than if they were not recruited through a social network. Likewise, job recruitment throughprofessional labor brokers has a statistically significant and substantially positive effect on
wages. In contrast, when foreign workers find jobs through social networks in San Diego, wages
are lower by 20 percent.
However, there are also some similarities in the results from the two countries.

Legal

status (entered illegally) is not a significant predictor of wages, either in Hamamatsu or San
Diego. As expected, the higher the percentage of foreigners in the work force at the immigrant’s
place of employment, the lower the hourly wages received.

This is consistent with our findingthat the most immigrant-dependent firms in San Diego pay lower wages, averaging $5.04 perhour (in 1996) for entry-level production workers, as compared with $6.02 per hour in lessimmigrant-dependent firms (Cornelius and Kuwahara 1998: 20).5

We found this wage

differential to be much less pronounced in Hamamatsu, where highly immigrant-dependent firms
were paying only $0.12 per hour less for entry-level production work than less immigrantdependent firms (not a statistically significant difference).

Also, the model for San Diego showsthat if some native-born U.S. workers apply for the same kinds of jobs done by immigrants in agiven firm, the immigrant employees of the firm are likely to be earning 10 percent more than his
counterparts in businesses where native workers are absent from the job applicant pool. This is aclear indication of upward pressure on wage scales, in firms that are not completely dependenton immigrants as production workers.

Finally, all of the dummy variables in the San Diegomodel for sector of employment are statistically significant predictors of wages.

For example,

immigrants employed as construction workers earn 49 percent more than those working in

5 For this comparison, highly immigrant-dependent firms were defined as those that scored above the mean for oursample of firms in terms of the percentage of foreign-born persons in the production work force; those that scoredbelow the mean were classified as less immigrant-dependent firms.

8restaurants.

Likewise in Hamamatsu, the negative coefficients for being employed inconstruction or manufacturing mean that workers in those sectors are earning less than those
employed in services (e.g., manufacturing workers earn 27 percent less per hour; construction
workers earn 26 percent less, but that result is not statistically significant).

Achieved Human Capital and Wages
One of the most striking differences in the wage determination estimates for Hamamatsu
and San Diego concerns the explanatory power of standard achieved human capital variables
such as educational background, language competence, length of stay, and employment
experience in the host country. In contrast to their importance in San Diego, the absence of any
statistically significant relationship between these variables and wages among foreign workers in
Hamamatsu is quite striking. What are the differences in the labor markets of the two countries
that produce this wide divergence in results?

Why does the standard wage determination model

for immigrant wages, which works so well in the U.S. context, not apply to Japan, as illustrated
by the Hamamatsu case?
Although Japan was, for a number of decades, the only advanced industrialized country
that did not rely on a significant number of immigrant workers, it has now succumbed to theincreasing global movement of populations.

Because of the acute labor shortage that developedin the late 1980s and growing economic disparities vis-à-vis Third World countries, Japan
currently has well over 800,000 foreign-born laborers.

Foreign workers are concentrated in theindustrial manufacturing and construction sectors, but increasingly they are found in foodprocessing and service industries as well.

They perform “3K” jobs (the Japanese acronym fordirty, dangerous and difficult), mostly in small and medium-sized businesses.

Japan has an

ethnically diverse immigrant population, with significant numbers drawn from various countries

9in Latin America, East and Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

The foreign-born population

includes over 275,000 immigrant workers from the South American countries of Brazil, Peru,
Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay who are predominantly Japanese descent nikkeijin. In addition,
about 40,000 foreign "trainees" have been admitted annually since 1990, most of whom are notreceiving any technical training but are working simply as unskilled laborers in Japanese
factories (Oishi 1995).

There is also a substantial population of illegal foreigners, estimated by

the government at 252,000 in March 2001.

Most immigrants working illegally in Japan enteredlegally, on short-term tourist visas.
When Education and Language Do Not Matter
The reasons why the achieved human capital possessed by immigrant workers in
Hamamatsu had no significant effect on their wages were quite evident from ethnographic
interviews with employers and Brazilian nikkeijin workers (Tsuda, forthcoming-b).

For instance,in contrast to employers in San Diego, Japanese companies and the labor brokers who hire andsupply Japanese companies with foreign workers attach almost no importance to the immigrant's
educational background (years of schooling).

As a result, higher educational level does notcorrespond with higher wages, as would normally be expected.

When hiring Brazilian nikkeijin

workers, the most important criteria used by all employers to screen applicants were visa status(whether the person has a valid visa that permits employment), Japanese language ability, andethnicity (whether the applicant is of pure Japanese descent [nikkeijin ], of mixed heritage, or
non-nikkeijin ).6

Other factors considered included age, personality, and attitude (whether the

person seems diligent), and past employment history (some employers avoid workers who have

6 The impact of ethnic status on employment will be discussed further in the next section.

10
switched jobs too often in the past).7

Almost none of the employers seriously considered theapplicant's educational background in the home country, although the nikkeijin were often welleducated, white-collar workers in Brazil.

Most either did not inquire about past education or

asked the question as a matter of procedure but did not consider it important. The reason is thatthe vast majority of the Brazilian nikkeijin are hired for unskilled, manual jobs for which
previous education has no impact on performance (Sellek 2001: 100-101).

Most of the jobs

require only simple and repetitive physical tasks that anyone can learn, either immediately orwith a short period of training, regardless of the worker’s level of formal education (Cornelius
and Kuwahara 1998). A labor broker explained as follows:
As a procedural step, we generally ask about the person's educational backgroundand the type of work he did back in Brazil, but we don't care about such issues. We
are looking for simple manual laborers, and for such work, previous occupationaland educational differences simply don't matter. Anyone can do this kind of workand ability differences don't show up between people of different social
backgrounds.
Some Japanese employers even claim that the better-educated nikkeijin perform less wellas unskilled workers because they have been spoiled by white-collar working conditions and airconditioned offices and are less prepared to cope with the physical demands and fast pace offactory work. 8

Such a view was expressed by a labor broker who specializes in hiring Brazilian

nikkeijin:
Lots of the nikkeijin are well educated and some are quite intelligent, but they can't
do the work as well as a typical unskilled Japanese worker with only a high school
education because they have no experience with manual labor. They may have

7 These employers feel that nikkeijin workers who have a history of changing jobs are likely to quickly leave even if

hired.
8 The nikkeijin who have the most difficulty with factory work in Japan are those who were housewives and neverworked outside the home in Brazil. Youth without prior job experience are also sometimes viewed by employers as
unreliable.

11been extremely brilliant in Brazil, but they come to Japan and realize they can't
compete with uneducated Japanese factory workers.
Very few nikkeijin are hired for higher-paid, semi-skilled or technical jobs in which
educational background and learning ability would be relevant.

One labor broker explained that

he would usually supply computer manufacturing companies with better educated nikkeijin while
sending nikkeijin with agricultural backgrounds to companies that require hard physical work,
although he felt that what is more important is not previous education but the individual's work
ethic.

However, labor brokers who make such distinctions based on the educational backgroundof their nikkeijin workers are quite rare because most deal with companies that use immigrants
strictly as unskilled laborers.

Previous education seems to have an effect on wages only for

those bilingual nikkeijin who are hired as translators and liaisons (either in the factory or incompany offices) and serve as intermediaries between Japanese managers and nikkeijin workers.
College-educated nikkeijin are usually preferred in for these higher level positions, which pay
better wages than job on the factory assembly-line.

However, only a very small number ofnikkeijin are hired for such "culturally skilled" jobs.

In this manner, because most employment

is for unskilled factory work where previous education is irrelevant, the nikkejin with more yearsof schooling are not rewarded with higher wages.
The same general conditions apply for the employment of non-nikkeijin foreign workers.
Although they are relatively well-educated, they again work predominantly as unskilled
immigrant laborers.

Because foreign workers in Japan are predominantly confined to low-level,

unskilled jobs for which a college or advanced degree earned abroad has no impact on work
performance, educational background does not improve their employability or ability to obtainhigher level jobs and wages.

This contrasts with immigrant workers in San Diego, who areemployed in a wider range of jobs at various skill levels.

Thus, the different structure of the

12
immigrant labor market in Japan helps to explain why the usual relationship between educational
level and wages does not obtain among foreign workers in that country.
Japanese language competence as an achieved human capital variable is considerably
more important for immigrant employment than years of education.

As noted above, language

ability is one of the most important criteria used by employers when hiring foreign workers andthose who speak Japanese well are more likely to find jobs. However, as our regression analysis
reveals, Japanese language competence generally does not influence wages.

In other words,

although foreign workers who speak some Japanese have a considerably easier time finding
employment, they are not necessarily given higher-paying jobs because they are employed as
low-level, unskilled manual laborers.

For instance, Japanese employers who use nikkeijin

workers generally do not pay Japanese speakers better salaries because they do the same type ofunskilled work as nikkeijin who do not speak good Japanese. In some factories, nikkeijin who
speak Japanese are given slightly more technical jobs than the purely physical tasks assigned tomost others, but these are different from technical and skilled jobs that would pay higher wages.
Again, the only observable subgroup who are rewarded by higher salaries for their Japanese
proficiency are the very small number of nikkeijin who are promoted to lower-level supervisory
jobs on the factory floor9 or become cultural intermediaries and translators in company or broker
offices.

The situation is quite different in San Diego, where jobs at more varied skill (and wage)

levels are available for immigrants, allowing those who speak English to benefit over their nonEnglish speaking colleagues who cannot be hired for such jobs.
Employment on the Margins and the Marginality of Employment Experience

9

Those promoted to low-level supervisory positions do not always received better pay.

13
Education and language ability are not the only achieved human capital attributes that do
not produce significant wage differentials among immigrants in Hamamatsu.

The data also defy

the commonsense expectation that the longer immigrants stay in the host society or with a certain
employer, the higher their wages. Time spent in Japan and length of employment at a particularcompany are not reflected in higher wages, because foreign workers continue to do unskilled
manual labor and do not advance to more skilled and higher-paying jobs within the company
even over an extended period of time.
In the case of nikkeijin workers, their perceived "temporary" status is one of the primaryreasons why they remain confined to lower-paid, unskilled jobs regardless of how long they
actually reside in Japan.

Most nikkeijin workers are target-earners, wishing to earn as muchmoney as possible during a short two or three year sojourn.

They change companies veryfrequently as they constantly search for jobs with higher hourly wages, better working
conditions, and more overtime opportunities.10

Their tendency to switch jobs often is reinforcedby their employment status as informal, causal workers, who are always dismissed before regularJapanese workers whenever production levels decline at the company.
Because the Japanese-Brazilians are acutely aware that they are marginal workers with nojob security who can be dismissed at any time, most of them do not develop any type of loyalty
or commitment to their employer and therefore do not hesitate to leave the company for purely
economic motives (often without properly informing the management).

Some Japaneseemployers want their nikkeijin workers to remain at their firms for longer periods and frequently
lament the high turnover rate, which persists despite their efforts to retain the nikkeijin through
10 It was rare to find nikkeijin in Hamamatsu who felt that they would remain at the same firm even if they found a

better job, because they wanted to demonstrate their loyalty to the firm and gain the trust of their employer. A few
Brazilian nikkeijin mentioned that they would not change jobs because of the uncertainty and brief loss of pay (whiletransferring to the new firm).

14
incentives such as higher pay, partial bonuses, and improved housing conditions.

"The nikkeijinswitch firms if they find a job that pays even one yen more," is a common complaint heard
among Japanese employers (this has become less of a concern now with the prolonged Japanese
recession). Even as the length of their sojourn in Japan increases, few nikkeijin remain at one
company long enough to advance to more skilled, higher status, and better-paid jobs.
The most important reason why neither time spent in Japan nor with a specific employer
raises wages among foreign workers is their status as a marginal and informal labor force. Most
unskilled immigrant workers in Japan are hired strictly as hi-seishain (informal, casual workers)
or kikan-shain (temporary contract laborers) and are not put on the promotion track to receive
gradual salary increases over time like regular Japanese workers (seishain).

This is especiallytrue for foreign workers who are recruited and employed by labor broker firms.
Japan has always had a system of labor broker firms (called assen gaisha) that havetraditionally supplied companies with an informal work force of native-born, part-time, seasonaland day laborers, although the system was more widespread in during the earlier stages ofindustrialization (Sellek 1996: 254).

This casual and readily disposable labor force served as an

economic cushion for Japanese companies, giving them the flexibility needed to adjust to
business cycles.

As the supply of Japanese female part-timers and internal seasonal migrants(dekasegi workers) became insufficient during Japan's severe labor shortage in the late 1980s, theincreasing number of immigrant workers began to supplement them.

A number of Japaneseassen gaisha began to broker foreign workers as well, while new labor broker firms were alsoestablished that dealt exclusively with foreign laborers.

As a result, foreigners are increasingly

entering the marginal sector of the Japanese labor market, which was traditionally reserved
exclusively for casual Japanese laborers (see Stevens 1997).

In fact, most Japanese employers

15
prefer nikkeijin workers to part-time or temporary Japanese hi-seishain, because the nikkeijin
work harder and more seriously, put in longer hours, and are more willing to do overtime, night
shifts, and physically arduous tasks.
Labor brokers constitute the indirect employment system (kansetsu koyo) for foreign
workers in Japan and are most active among the nikkeijin . The nikkeijin are technically hired bythese labor broker firms, which then place them in various Japanese companies.

Not only dothese labor brokers give the nikkeijin direct access to a wide range of jobs; they also handle thepaperwork needed to acquire a visa and finance all travel expenses, which are later deductedfrom the workers’ salaries.

Labor brokers also provide housing, transportation to work, medical

and accidental insurance, and an array of other employment and social services.

Labor

brokerage has become a highly profitable business in Japan, since brokers charge heavy fees fortheir services and deduct a considerable amount from the hourly wages of the nikkeijin. Labor
brokers have been known to abuse nikkeijin workers by charging exorbitant fees and kickbacks,
refusing to pay wages, withholding passports (to ensure that nikkeijin workers do not leave thebroker), and deceiving them with false promises about high wages and favorable working
conditions.
The

indirect,broker-based

employment

systemenables

Japanesecompanies

toconveniently use the nikkeijin workers as a disposable labor force that can be expanded or shrunkat will, enabling companies to adjust to constant fluctuations in production in a cost-effective
manner.

Since the broker firm employs the nikkeijin, Japanese companies simply "borrow" acertain number of them from a broker for a limited period of time when production increases.
When the workers are no longer needed, they are conveniently "returned" to the broker firm,
which then transfers the excess workers to another company that needs their labor.

Since they

16
are employees of the broker firm and do not belong to the companies at which they work, thenikkeijin’s situation contrasts sharply with that ofregular seishain workers who are hired

directly by the company and gradually promoted over time to higher positions with better
salaries.

Instead, Japanese employers simply pay the outside broker firm a certain amount ofmoney for the temporary use of its laborers. As a result, even if the nikkeijin stay in a certain
company for an extended period of time, they do not receive any substantial pay raise. This alsomeans that as long as the nikkeijin remain employees of broker firms, a longer stay in Japan also
does not result in gradually higher salaries, since they are simply transferred from one company
to another at a fixed wage rate.
Although some Japanese companies employ nikkeijin workers directly rather than
through labor brokers, they remain a distinct minority.

Various labor brokers and employment

agencies (local employment stability offices as well as the Nikkeijin Employment Center inTokyo) estimate that about 80 percent of the nikkeijin rely on labor brokers to find work inJapan. Despite the high fees and occasional abuses, most nikkeijin workers choose labor brokers
over direct employment by Japanese companies for a number of reasons. Brokers generally offer
extensive employment, housing, and other services to the nikkeijin (all in Portuguese) that few
Japanese employers can match.

In addition, since each broker firm has extensive contacts withnumerous Japanese companies, this gives the nikkeijin instant and easy access to a wide range ofjobs at various firms, to an extent that would be impossible if they had to find and apply to eachof these employers individually.

Not only does the labor broker system greatly facilitate theemployment search in this manner, it also provides greater job security (especially during arecession).

When nikkeijin workers are dismissed at a given company, their broker simply

transfers them to a different company, enabling them to avoid unemployment.

Nikkeijin who

17wish to change jobs for personal reasons are also frequently accommodated. Since labor brokers
are much more pervasive in Brazil and in Japan than companies or agencies that employ
nikkeijin directly, most new nikkeijin workers from Brazil are automatically channeled into thebrokerage system.

According to local employment security offices and the Nikkeijin

Employment Center, the number of nikkeijin who inquire at their offices to seek direct
employment has increased with the prolonged recession (mainly because they have lost theirprevious jobs), but there is no indication that the general reliance on labor brokers among thenikkeijin is diminishing.
In turn, Japanese employers generally favor the indirect broker employment systembecause it is more convenient than directly hiring nikkeijin workers themselves. Because brokers
recruit the nikkeijin, take care of their visas, and provide them with housing, transportation,
insurance, and other services, the employer does not incur these obligations. In fact, all that theemployer has to do is to submit a request for a certain number of workers and pay the broker
firm. In addition, because employers can readily "borrow" and then "return" nikkeijin workers tothe broker firm, brokered nikkeijin are sometimes much more cost-effective than nikkeijin who
have been hired directly under contracts and cannot be readily dismissed during a decline inproduction.

Although some employers avoid brokers because of their murky legal status andabuses, most seem to succumb to the system's convenience.

One Japanese employer candidly

described the benefits of relying on the broker system to obtain nikkeijin labor:
The labor broker system is by far the most convenient means of getting the labor
we need for temporary purposes. We call a local broker one day and tell him weneed X number of additional workers. In a few days, the broker deposits thenecessarily number of workers at our doorstep. When we no longer need thenikkeijin, we call the broker again, and they take back the workers almost at a
moment's notice. If we were to hire the nikkeijin ourselves, we would have tofind them through personal contacts or ads, interview them, then provide themwith housing and take personal care of them. When we want to get rid of them,

18
we would have to wait until their contracts expire. With brokers, they take care of
all this for us. Now we get most of our nikkeijin workers from brokers and have
reducedthenumber
of
those
who
are
directly
employed.
Because of these various incentives for both nikkeijin workers and their employers, it isevident that the nikkeijin will continue to be employed primarily through the labor broker
system.

Since brokered workers are always utilized as a readily disposable and informal labor

force of outside contract workers who are temporarily “borrowed” and “returned” according tofluctuations in production, as long as nikkeijin remain dependent on the labor broker system, they
will be confined the peripheral sector of the Japanese labor force.

Workers who are employedthrough labor brokers are constantly shifted from one company to another and are hardly everhired permanently as regular workers by Japanese firms and placed on the promotion track withregular salary increases (see Nishizawa 1995).

As a result, regardless of how long the nikkeijinremain in Japan or with the same employer, they do not experience a substantial increase inwages.11

Although the proportion of non-nikkeijin foreign workers who rely on labor brokers issubstantially smaller, they face the same conditions of perpetual marginalization as temporary
and unskilled workers who fill casual and disposable jobs with little hope for regular promotion
and gradual salary increases over time. Indeed, the involvement of brokers in the recruitment offoreign workers in general in Japan is increasing rather than diminishing (Iguchi 1998).12
Foreign workers who are employed directly by Japanese companies (chokusetsu koyo)
without the mediation of labor brokers are in a somewhat different situation. The abuses of thebroker system are completely eliminated and the companies themselves assume the necessary
11 Again, the only individuals who receive a substantial promotion and better salaries are the small minority of bi-

lingual nikkeijin who become translators and cultural intermediaries.
12 The Japanese Ministry of Labor’s annual survey of employers who use foreign-born workers found that the

average number of indirectly employed (“brokered”) foreign workers per firm increased from 20.8 to 22.5 from1999-2000, while the number of directly employed (“non-brokered”) foreign workers was up from 6.6 to 6.9 in thesame period. The survey results can be accessed at
http://www.jil.go.jp/kisya/syokuan/20001204_02_sy/20001204_02_sy.html.

19
housing, transportation, and other related costs.

Since foreign workers hired directly are

employees of the company (and not outside workers borrowed from a broker firm), they areusually given short-term contracts (for the nikkeijin, the contract usually lasts from six months toa year with the possibility of renewal).

As a result, they usually stay at one firm for a longer

period of time and the turnover rate is considerably lower than for brokered foreign workers.13
Although immigrant workers employed directly by the firm tend to be more stable, theyremain a temporary and disposable labor force of short-term contract laborers and do not become
permanent seishain workers who are placed on the regular promotion track. As a result, when
production levels decline, employers simply dismiss them after their contract period expires.
This is true even for those foreign workers who have remained at the same firm for an extended
period of time. The perception among Japanese employers that nikkeijin are strictly a temporary
and peripheral labor force (undoubtedly reinforced by their propensity to switch jobs frequently)
persists and stigmatizes even those who have apparently made a long-term commitment to acertain firm. Since employers remain uncertain about whether the nikkeijin will leave the firm in
the future (or return to Brazil), they are reluctant to make them permanent and regular seishain.
The inability of most nikkeijin to speak Japanese proficiently may be another barrier thatprevents them from being treated equally with regular Japanese employees.

In fact, only one

informant in Tsuda's sample had become a seishain at his company. This individual had not only
remained at the same company during his entire stay in Japan (five and a half years), he had
decided to remain in Japan indefinitely, had made an unequivocal commitment not to leave thefirm, and spoke Japanese almost fluently.

13 In one survey of nikkeijin workers by the Japan Statistics Research Institute, 48.5 percent of those employed bybrokers had changed jobs, while the percentage was only 21.2 percent for those employed directly (Yamamoto
1994).

20
Thus, length of residence and employment in Japan do not correlate with higher
immigrant wages for a number of reasons.

Because of their perceived “temporary” status, thetendency to switch jobs frequently (especially among nikkeijin), and their employment throughlabor brokers and short-term contracts, foreign workers in Japan remain a marginal and informal
labor force restricted to unskilled, temporary jobs.

As a result, they do not advance to moreskilled, higher-level jobs and experience any substantial increase in wages over time.
Length of stay in the United States and labor-market experience have a much greater
impact on immigrants’ wages in San Diego County because the immigrant labor market is much
more differentiated.

Although some immigrant workers in San Diego remain casual andtemporary laborers, a much wider range of jobs is available to them in terms of occupational
categories and skill level, and a much higher proportion of these jobs are permanent or at least
long-term in character (see Cornelius 1998).

In addition, there is no entrenched system of labor

brokers that encourages employers to use immigrant workers as an informal and temporary labor
force to be conveniently hired and fired according to fluctuations in production.

Thus, many

immigrants in San Diego County work for extended periods at the same company and move up
the job ladder, which has a significant impact on wages over time.
Ascribed Human Capital and Wages
Although immigrant workers in Japan confined mostly to unskilled, temporary jobs
where achieved human capital makes little difference, some are able to find higher-paying jobs
within this peripheral labor market .

However, what enables certain immigrants to obtain thesejobs is not personal abilities and credentials acquired over time but ascribed human capital(characteristics that have been inherited or assigned by birth, which cannot be obtained by

21
personal effort, ability, or experience).

The two ascribed human capital attributes thatsignificantly increase immigrant wages in Japan are gender (male) and ethnicity (nikkeijin ).
These ascribed attributes are key determinants of wages because Japan is a country withstrong gender and ethnic discrimination, which significantly disadvantages women and ethnic
groups of non-Japanese descent.

Women in Japanese society face considerable wage and labormarket discrimination because of persisting traditional gender attitudes, according to which they
are expected to dedicate themselves to the family and household at the expense of a personal
career and to stop working once they get married and have children.

Because their career

aspirations are not taken as seriously as men, they are mostly relegated to part-time jobs or
subordinate occupational positions and face significant barriers to promotion.

Not only have

women been unable to obtain jobs at the same level as men, they are paid less for the same typeof job.

As a result, a significant gender gap in wages persists, despite anti-discrimination laws14

and more frequent litigation by Japanese women.
Although both male and female foreign workers in Japan are employed in predominantly
unskilled jobs, men earn 30 percent more than women. For some groups of immigrants, women
are in a different line of work than men.

For example, among foreign workers from certain

Southeast Asian countries (especially the Philippines), a substantial proportion of women workas bar hostesses and "entertainers," while men work in factories or in construction. However, forother groups like the nikkeijin, women frequently do the same types of jobs as men in the same
factories,15 but men earn substantially higher wages. This is one of the principal grievances that

14 Japan has ratified the 1985 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against

Women (CEDAW).
15 Certain manufacturing industries that require more physically demanding labor tend to rely more on malenikkeijin workers. As expected, most nikkeijin workers in construction are men.

22nikkeijin women have in Japan. In contrast, there is much less gender discrimination in the San
Diego immigrant labor market, where men earn only 4.5 percent more than women.
Similarly, ethnicity has a larger effect on wages among immigrants in Hamamatsu than in
San Diego.

In relatively monoethnic countries with high ethnic discrimination like Japan,

immigrant groups of the same racial descent as the native-born population can be highly favored
over other foreigners and enjoy considerably better employment and wage conditions.

This isbecause the maintenance of ethnic homogeneity is highly valued and seen as critical for thecountry's prosperity and social harmony.
In Japan, the nikkeijin ("ethnic Japanese") from South America are, by far, the most
preferred among all foreign workers.

Both employers and labor brokers give first priority tothem when hiring foreign workers.

Since the nikkeijin workers are in the greatest demand,

Japanese employers have to pay high wages in order to attract them and prevent them frommoving to firms that offer better wages.16 Hourly wages for some nikkeijin equal or exceed thoseof Japan-born workers (Mori 1994: 627), and only the larger and more reputable companies are
generally able to afford them.

In our Hamamatsu sample, nikkeijin wages were 25 percent

higher than those of other foreign workers.
A key reason why the nikkeijin are preferred over other foreign workers is undoubtedly
their legal status:

They are, by far, the largest group of legally admitted foreign workers inJapan. However, this preference also has an important ethnic component. Many employers feela certain amount of cultural affinity with the nikkeijin because they are Japanese descendants. In

16 During the height of the Japanese labor shortage in the late 1980s, companies sometimes offered such amenities

as furnished apartments, free utilities, free plane tickets to Brazil (for visits), and other perks to retain their nikkeijin
workers.

23
other words, the nikkeijin are assumed to be the most culturally Japanese, making them moredesirable as workers. As one Hamamatsu employer put it,
We have both nikkeijin and non-nikkeijin workers at our firm, but we notice that the
nikkeijin have a better work ethic. Those with Japanese blood are more diligent.
They think more like the Japanese and are easier to relate to. The nisei [second
generation] are the most orderly and punctual because their parents are Japanese.
As you get further away in terms of generation, they become more Brazilian anddon't work as seriously. They quit their jobs if the salary is better elsewhere
because they care more about economic benefit than human relations. But they arestill better than complete foreigners, who have no ninjo [Japanese human feeling].
Such attitudes are based on a common assumption that those who are "racially" Japanese will
also be "culturally" Japanese to a certain extent, because they have been raised by Japaneseparents (see Kondo 1986; Tsuda 1998; Tsuda, forthcoming-a).

In fact, a substantial number of

employers whom we interviewed in Hamamatsu preferred nikkeijin workers who spoke very
little Japanese over non-nikkeijin foreigners who spoke some Japanese.

One labor broker

claimed that about 50 percent of his corporate clients preferred nikkeijin workers over all otherforeigners, even if they did not speak Japanese at all.

In others words, ascribed ethnic humancapital is so valued by employers in some cases that it completely overrides achieved linguistic
human capital, even if the later is technically more relevant to job performance.

Consider thecomments of one Japanese employer, who expressed an extreme version of a general view thatwas not uncommon among his colleagues:
I always hire nikkejin workers before I look at other foreigners. Because thenikkeijin are of the same blood, they share some Japanese values and we feel asense of affinity to them, even if they don't speak the language. We may be able
to more easily explain work instructions to foreigners [of non-Japanese descent]who speak Japanese, but they are in general no good. They aren't as majime[honest,serious]andreliable.
The ethnic preference for Japanese descendants is so strong that Japanese employers
generally prefer pure Japanese descent nikkeijin over nikkeijin of mixed descent. Employers and24labor brokers often emphasize that when interviewing nikkeijin for a job, they look at the "face"of the applicant. According to one labor broker,
After we check their visa status and see if they can understand Japanese, we lookat their faces closely to see if they are pure Japanese descent or look like they are
mixed-blood. Most companies prefer workers who have a more Japanese face.
Although a few employers denied that they discriminated on this basis, many expressed such
ethnic preferences. Some claimed that those of mixed blood are less culturally Japanese, are lesseasy to relate to, and have more undesirable attributes. Among nikkeijin workers, it was generalknowledge that the mestiços have a harder time finding jobs in Japan.

In fact, some mestiços

who look sufficiently Japanese "pass" as pure Japanese descendants (and hide their mixed
descent background) in order to improve their employment prospects.

Even among pureJapanese-descent nikkeijin, there is even some employer preference for nisei (second generation)over sansei (third generation) nikkeijin.
Employers of nikkeijin workers generally favored Brazilian nikkeijin over Peruvian
nikkeijin.

In general, the Peruvian nikkeijin do not speak Japanese as well as the Brazilian

nikkeijin, and a higher proportion are of mixed descent. In fact, a substantial percentage of the
Peruvians are not of Japanese descent at all, but enter Japan as "fake nikkeijin" with false
documents.

Because Peruvian nikkeijin are less preferred by Japanese employers, they earnlower wages than their Brazilian counterparts and are three times more likely to be fired(Kitagawa 1993:78).
Smaller and less established subsidiary firms unable to afford nikkeijin generally have tosettle for less (ethnically) desirable foreign workers, such as those from East or Southeast Asiaand the Middle East, who earn progressively lower salaries (Kajita 1994:73).
one small employer illustrates this quite well:

The comments of25
We're always being pressured by our parent company, which keeps telling us,“lower your costs, lower your costs.” But we small companies, unlike mediumsized businesses, can't afford nikkeijin wages.
So we have to hire Asians[foreigners from Asia] or even Iranians. If it's Iranians, they are cheap and work
hard. We can't do without them.
The existence of this hierarchy of ethnic preference (basically correlated with wage levels) was
acknowledged by another employer:
When it comes to hiring foreigners, there are clearly several levels based on likeand dislike. We feel the closest to the nikkeijin, so they work at the best firms withthe best wages. Then come Chinese and Koreans, whom we find less preferable
and therefore, they work in less desirable jobs. At the bottom are Bangladeshis andIranians, who work in the smallest companies that pay the lowest wages. We avoid
interacting with Middle Easterners the most, so they get the worst jobs. It reallyshouldn't be this way, but it just is.
Because of such strong ethnic preferences based on shared racial origins, even immigrantminority groups that are culturally Japanese but of foreign descent can still face considerable
ethnic discrimination on the labor market.

For instance, although most members of Japan’s

Korean-Japanese ethnic minority have been born and raised in Japan and are culturally
indistinguishable from majority Japanese, they continue to be subject to serious employment
discrimination simply because of their Korean descent and have not yet escaped from theirsocioeconomic marginalization (Weiner 1997:83).
While there is some evidence of an ethnic hierarchy of preference among San Diego
County employers as well, it is not nearly as strong as in Hamamatsu and there is no single groupof immigrants (comparable to the nikkeijin in Hamamatsu) who receive significantly higher
wages than other fractions of the recent immigrant population.

A substantial stratum of San

Diego businesses preferentially hire Mexican or other Latino immigrants over native-bornworkers because of their perceived strong work ethic: 54 percent of the employers interviewed in26
San Diego expressed the view that, in general, immigrants are more hard-working than nativeborn employees.
The Economic and Social Functions of Immigrant Networks
Another intriguing difference between the results from Hamamatsu and San Diego relates
to the impact of migrant social networks on wages. In Hamamatsu, foreign workers who foundjobs through relatives or friends received wages that were 20 percent higher whereas those who
used social networks to obtain employment in San Diego received wages that were 8 percent
lower.

Similar to achieved and ascribed human capital variables, the impact of social networks

on wages depends on the characteristics of the immigrants and of the labor markets into which
they have been incorporated.
Since most foreign workers in Japan consider themselves to be temporary migrant
workers, they wish to earn as much money as possible during their sojourn. As a result, they use
their social networks of relatives and acquaintances primarily to find higher- paying jobs withmore overtime.

For instance, nikkeijin workers constantly exchange and compare information

with acquaintances about the wages and hours of overtime offered at other firms, and theyquickly switch to those firms if compensation is higher there. Nikkeijin who move to other areasof Japan are frequently asked by their acquaintances to inform them about better-paying jobs
elsewhere.

As a result, foreign workers who have less extensive social networks in Japan havefewer opportunities to find better-paying jobs and tend to be stuck with lower wages.

In otherwords, the social networks of the nikkeijin primarily serve an instrumental, economic function: tosecure a succession of higher-paying jobs, in order to maximize economic returns in a limited
period of time.

27
Why do social networks lead to higher-paid jobs among foreign workers in Hamamatsu
while generating “negative social capital” (Portes 1998: 15-18) for immigrant workers in San
Diego, lowering wages by about 8 percent?

As long as foreign workers consider themselves tobe temporary migrants driven by a strictly economic mentality, they tend to shift from one job toanother in search of the highest wage.

However, once they decide to remain long-term or

permanently in the host country, such purely instrumental motives begin to subside.

In contrast

to Hamamatsu, the proportion of self-reported permanent settlers is much higher among foreign
workers in San Diego (63.9 percent versus 9 percent).

Instead of dedicating their lives

exclusively to work and attempting to earn as much as possible, such long-term immigrants
become more concerned with quality of life issues and social wellbeing.

In addition, as they

become less obsessed about earning the highest possible wage by switching firms, they remain
for longer periods at a certain job. As a result, they no longer focus exclusively on the wages
they receive, but also begin to value working and social conditions on the job.
Accordingly, immigrant social networks in San Diego are used for more diverse social
purposes, going beyond simply providing access to better-paying jobs.

For instance, throughtheir extensive social networks, Mexican immigrants locate jobs with socially satisfying
conditions, at companies where Spanish is the predominant language and whose work force
includes clusters of relatives and friends. The owner of the firm is more likely to be a Mexican
immigrant as well.

Immigrant-owned businesses in San Diego almost exclusively haveimmigrant (often co-ethnic) labor forces and tend to pay lower wages, holding constant otherrelevant firm characteristics (Cornelius 1998: 122-125).

However, labor turnover rates inimmigrant-owned businesses in San Diego are lower than in U.S. native-owned firms, which

28
suggests that the incentives of a workplace culture in terms of ethnic solidarity, ease ofcommunication in the native language, and family ties offset any economic disadvantages.
In sum, immigrants in San Diego seem to use their social networks less for narrowly
instrumental economic purposes (to find jobs with higher wages) and more for expressive social
motives (to find jobs with ethnically satisfying working conditions).

Although such jobs may

pay slightly lower wages, immigrant workers are compensated in other ways.

Conclusion: Marginality, Human Capital, and Social Mobility
Our comparative analysis suggests that the relative impact of achieved versus ascribedhuman capital variables on immigrant wages depends heavily on the specific immigrant labormarket and employment system that operates in a particular country.

Although it seems self-

evident that immigrant wages are determined by achieved human capital endowments and past
employment experience, this generalization seems to apply only to immigrant labor markets thathave reached a certain level of internal diversity and not to those that are still relatively
homogeneous.

In Japan, foreign workers are predominantly found in uniformly unskilled, low-level, and temporary jobs for which the human capital that immigrants have acquired (education,
language competence, time spent in Japan, employment experience) has little relevance and does
not lead to better jobs with higher wages.17

17 The inability of achieved human capital to influence immigrant wages also explains why increased age does not

result in higher wages either (again in contrast to the San Diego situation). Since the previous background of theimmigrant is not considered when hiring, older workers (with more educational and occupational experience) are notgiven better jobs with higher wages. Instead, both older and younger immigrants are employed in similar,
temporary, unskilled jobs at the entry level with comparable wages. In addition, since many nikkeijin are sojourners
and not permanent residents, age also does not necessarily correlate with longer residence or employment in Japan.
At any rate, we have seen that neither length of stay in Japan nor length of employment at a certain firm leads topromotions or higher wages .

29Immigrants are concentrated in the peripheral labor market in Japan partly because of thenature of the employment system and partly because of the immigrants’ sojourner mentality.
Because foreign workers are hired either through labor brokers or on short-term contracts, theJapanese employment system strongly encourages the casual use of immigrant labor.

In

addition, since foreign workers generally see themselves (and are seen) as temporary dekasegi
who wish to earn as much as possible in a short period of time, they do not remain at the samejob for very long.

In turn, the high self-initiated turnover rate (especially among the nikkeijin)

faciliates their use by employers as an informal, disposable labor force that can be conveniently
adjusted according to business cycles.

Even those foreign workers who have remained with thesame employer for a considerable period are still regarded as temporary, casual workers and are
not made into regular, permanent seishain.
In this manner, foreign workers are effectively confined to low-level and temporary jobson the economic periphery and remain unable to incorporate themselves into the regular labormarket where wages can be expected to increase over time according to personal background,ability, and experience.

Therefore, individuals who have acquired human capital (either

previously, or in Japan) are not rewarded with higher-level jobs with better incomes, as is usually
the case. In the case of Japanese firms, it is unlikely that a “jobs ladder” for foreign workers will
begin to emerge as long as they are utilized as temporary reserve workers by the labor brokeragesystem, are directly employed only as short-term contract laborers by Japanese companies, andregard themselves as temporary dekasegi migrant workers. For those immigrants who resolve tostay indefinitely or permanently in Japan, this seriously inhibits their long-term economic
mobility (in terms of occupational status and wages).

30
In the absence of a significant relationship between achieved human capital and wages
among foreign workers in Japan, only ascribed human capital has a significant impact on income
levels.

Instead of personal credentials which can be acquired by individuals over time, it seems

that predetermined characteristics, such as gender (being male) and ethnicity (being nikkeijin),
are what provides access to better jobs with higher salaries within the limited confines of theperipheral labor market.

In a country with significant gender discrimination that continues tocherish and insist on ethnic homogeneity, Hamamatsu employers strongly value and prefer men
over women and ethnically similar nikkeijin over non-Japanese-descent foreigners as employees,
and are willing to pay higher wages to acquire such workers.
In the case of San Diego County, there is much more diversity both among immigrants
and the jobs available for them. Although the San Diego immigrant pool does include short-termsojourners and repeat migrants, there are many more long-term immigrants or permanent settlers
who are not as prone to constantly change jobs.

As a result, immigrants are not invariably

perceived by their employers as strictly temporary workers.

In addition, labor brokers who

promote the casual use of immigrant labor do not have a significant presence in the San Diegolabor market, and the vast majority of immigrants are not hired as short-term contract workers.
Compared to Hamamatsu, San Diego’s immigrant labor market has a greater variety job
types, ranks, skill levels, and degrees of employment stability.

Because immigrants are notconfined to temporary employment on the periphery of the labor market, achieved human capitalis rewarded by employers, enabling at least some immigrants to escape entry-level jobs andadvance to higher-status, more stable, and better-paying positions through the acquisition ofhuman capital (especially English language competence).

When compared to the importance of

31
achieved human capital, acquired human capital (gender and ethnicity) seems to have much lesseffect on wages in San Diego.
In addition to achieved and ascribed human capital, the impact of immigrant social
networks on wages also varies considerably according to differences in the characteristics ofimmigrants and the labor markets in which they are embedded.

Because of the preoccupation

among temporary-minded dekasegi migrants in Japan with maximizing their short-term
economic returns, not only do they switch jobs frequently for better wages and more overtime,they use their personal social networks to do so. As a result, jobs that are found through relatives
and acquaintances have substantially better wages.

In San Diego, a much higher proportion of

immigrants intend long-term and permanent residence in the United States, and these “settlers”
tend to utilize their personal networks to find jobs with more satisfying working and social
conditions (with relatives and friends working at the same firm), even if it means accepting aslightly lower wage.
Since immigration to Japan is still in its incipient stages, it remains to be seen whether
immigrant labor markets in Japanese cities like Hamamatsu will eventually evolve toward the
San Diego model.

Does contemporary Japan represent a general first stage in the developmentof immigrant labor markets where foreign workers are initially confined to marginal jobs?

As

the number of immigrants increases, permanent settlement becomes more common, andimmigrants make more long-term commitments to their jobs, do they invariably escape theperipheral sectors of the economy and enter the mainstream labor market?

Does an initiallyrestricted immigrant labor market always become more diversified and varied over time,enabling immigrants to use their achieved human capital to improve their occupational level and32
income?

Or, can foreign workers in certain countries be perpetually marginalized as an

unskilled, temporary, and causal labor force?
In the near future, it is likely that foreign workers in Japan will continue to be confined tothe peripheral job market where achieved human capital is not related to higher wages.

This isnot just the result of a deeply institutionalized system of labor brokerage, which employs foreign
workers as a marginal and readily disposable work force. In addition, there has been a long-term
casualization of the Japanese labor market, due to the increasing demand in the Japanese
economy for a cost-effective, informal labor force of temporary workers.

Japanese companies

have been under considerable pressure to "restructure" (called risutora in Japanese) byincreasing efficiency, downsizing, and streamlining in order to cut production costs in the face ofrising international competition.

However, because Japanese firms have traditionally been

unwilling to fire their regular workers directly (Dore 1986:93),18 they have relied on a large
casual and flexible labor force to reduce production costs. Before the arrival of foreign workers,
the growing demand for more informal and temporary workers in the economy led to a dramaticincrease in Japanese seasonal and contract laborers, female part-time workers, and daylaborers.19

However, the number of temporary domestic workers quickly became insufficient20

and foreign workers are now increasingly supplying the expanding informal sector of theJapanese economy. In contrast to regular Japanese workers, foreign workers hired on short-term
18 Japanese companies (especially the larger ones) rarely eliminate excess workers by direct layoffs but usually rely

on natural attrition (waiting for workers to retire or quit). Other means include encouraging early retirement andmoving unnecessary workers to subsidiary firms. This inability of companies to sufficiently downsize andstreamline their workforces has been one major reason why the Japanese economy has been unable to recover froma decade-long recession.
19 Since the 1970s, the proportion of part-time workers has steadily increased, especially among women (seeCornelius 1995: 405). For instance, in 1980, there were only 5,403,000 part-time female workers, whereas by 1992,
the number had jumped almost threefold to 14,456,000.
20 In 1990, the demand/supply ratio for part-time workers was 4 to 1.

33
contracts or temporarily borrowed from labor brokers are more cost-effective because theygenerally are not paid bonuses or other benefits.21

In addition, they can be quickly disposed ofduring a decline in production unlike regular workers, whom the employer is obligated to retain
at considerable cost even when they are not needed.
In the continuing effort to restructure and become competitive in an expanding global
free market (and thus, recover from the current recession), Japanese companies will become
increasingly dependent on such casual immigrant labor as one important means to raise
productivity and reduce costs.

The reliance of Japanese companies on temporary workers has

traditionally increased during periods of economic uncertainty (Dore 1986:96).

Also, asJapanese manufacturers continue to shift production abroad to Third World countries, Japan's
domestic economy, like other industrialized countries before it, will continue to shift fromindustrial manufacturing to a service-based economy, which also relies heavily on casual andunskilled workers (Sassen 1991).
As long as this increasing demand for an informal labor force persists, it appears that
foreign workers in Japan will continue to be channeled exclusively into the peripheral labormarket of temporary, unskilled, and low-level jobs for which human capital acquired byimmigrants does not translate into occupational advancement and higher wages.

Because of

these structural economic conditions, it will be some time before Japan’s immigrant workers areable to overcome their marginalization in the labor market.

Only then will achieved humancapital become effective as a means to attain better jobs and salaries, allowing immigrants tobecome gradually incorporated into mainstream Japanese society through social mobility.

21 Although nikkeijin workers, the highest paid of all foreign workers in Japan, sometimes earn hourly wages equal

to or higher than Japanese regular workers, they are still cheaper to employ because of the lower cost of benefits andbonuses.

34
References Cited
Bansak, Cynthia, and Steven Raphael (1998) “Immigration Reform and the Earnings of Latino
Workers: Do Employer Sanctions Cause Discrimination?”
Department of Economics,
University of California-San Diego, Discussion Paper 98-20 (August).
Borjas, George J. (1995) “Assimilation and Changes in Cohort Quality Revisited: What
Happened to Immigrant Earnings in the 1980s?” Journal of Labor Economics 13 (2): 201245.
Cornelius, Wayne A. (1995)"Japan: The Illusion of Immigration Control," pp.375-410 inWayne A. Cornelius, Philip L. Martin, and James F. Hollifield, eds., Controlling
Immigration: A Global Perspective, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
------- (1998) “The Structural Embeddedness of Demand for Mexican Immigrant Labor: New
Evidence from California,” pp. 114-144 in Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, ed., Crossings: Mexican
Immigration in Interdisciplinary Perspective. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Cornelius, Wayne A., and Yasuo Kuwahara (1998) The Role of Immigrant Labor in the U.S. andJapanese Economies: A Comparative Study of San Diego and Hamamatsu, Japan. La
Jolla, Calif.: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California-San Diego (April).
Dávila, Alberto, and José A. Pagán (1998) “The Impact of IRCA on the Job Opportunities andEarnings of Mexican-American and Hispanic-American Workers,” International Migration
Review 32 (1): 79-95.
Dore, Ronald P. (1986) Flexible Rigidities: Industrial Policy and Structural Adjustment in theJapanese Economy 1970-80. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Giddens, Anthony (1989) Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Iguchi, Yasushi (1998) “International Migration in East Asia: A Growing Challenge for Japan,”
paper presented at the Fall Workshop of the University of California Comparative
Immigration and Integration Program, University of California-Davis, October 9-10.
Kajita, Takamichi (1994) Gaikokujin Rodosha to Nihon (Foreign Laborers and Japan). Tokyo:
NHK Books.
Kitagawa, Toyoie (1993) Hamamatsu-shi ni Okeru Gaikokujin no Seikatsu Jittai/Ishiki Chosa:Nikkei Burajiru/Perujin o Chushin ni (Survey of Living Conditions and Consciousness ofForeigners in Hamamatsu City: Focusing on Nikkei-Brazilians and Peruvians). Hamamatsu
Planning Section/International Exchange Office.
Komai, Hiroshi (1993) Gaikokujin Rodosha Teijyu eno Michi (The Road to Settlement of
Foreign Workers). Tokyo: Akaishi Shoten.

35
Kondo, Dorinne K.
(1986)
Dissolution and Reconstitution of Self: Implications for
Anthropological Epistemology, Cultural Anthropology 1(1):74-88.
McCall, George J. and J. L. Simmons (1978) Identities and Interactions: An Examination of
Human Associations in Everyday Life. New York: The Free Press.
Mori, Hiromi (1994) “Migrant Workers and Labor Market Segmentation in Japan,” Asian andPacific Migration Journal 3(4): 619-638.
Nishizawa, Akihiko (1995) Nikkei Burajiru/Perujin Rodosha no Shakaiteki Sekai (The Social
World of Brazilian and Peruvian Nikkeijin), pp.129-163 in Inbei Sareta Gaibu: Toshi Kaso
no Esunogurafi (The Hidden Outside: The Ethnography of the Urban Underclass). Tokyo:
Sairyusha.
Oishi, Nana (1995) “Training or Employment?—Japanese Immigration Policy in Dilemma,”
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 4(2-3): 367-385.
Phillips, Julie A., and Douglas S. Massey (2000)
Wages After IRCA,” Demography.

“The New Labor Market: Immigrants andPortes, Alejandro (1998) “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,”
Annual Review of Sociology 24: 1-24.
Sassen, Saskia (1991) The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.
Princeton University Press.

Princeton, New Jersey:

Sellek, Yoko (1996) "The U-Turn Phenomenon among South American-Japanese Descendants:
From Emigrants to Migrants," Immigrants and Minorities 15(3): 246-269.
------- (2001) Migrant Labour in Japan. Hampshire, U.K. and New York: Palgrave.
Stevens, Carolyn S. (1997) On the Margins of Japanese Society: Volunteers and the Welfare of
the Urban Underclass. London: Routledge.
Tsuda, Takeyuki (1998) "The Stigma of Ethnic Difference: The Structure of Prejudice and'Discrimination' towards Japan's New Immigrant Minority," The Journal of JapaneseStudies 24(2):317-359.
------- (1999a) “The Permanence of ‘Temporary’ Migration: The Structural Embeddedness ofJapanese-Brazilian Immigrant Workers in Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 58(3): 687-722.
------- (1999b) "The Motivation to Migrate: The Ethnic and Sociocultural Constitution of theJapanese-Brazilian Return Migration System."Economic Development and Cultural
Change 48(1):1-31.
------- (forthcoming-a) “From Ethnic Affinity to Alienation in the Global Ecumene: The Ethnic
Encounter between the Japanese and Japanese-Brazilian Return Migrants,” Diaspora.

36------- (forthcoming-b) Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Minority Status and Migrant
Nationalism in Transnational Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press.
Waldinger, Roger (1997) “Social Capital or Social Closure?--Immigrant Networks in the Labor
Market.” Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, University of California-Los Angeles,
Working Paper No. 6.
Weiner, Michael (1997) “The Representation of Absence and the Absence of Representation:
Korean Victims of the Atomic Bomb,” pp. 79-107 in Michael Weiner, ed., Japan's
Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. New York: Routledge.
Yamamoto, Kenji (1994) "Nikkei Burajirujin no Rodo Ido" (The Labor Migration of Brazilian
Nikkeijin), pp.61-76 in Kenkyu Hokoku (Bulletin of the Japan Statistics Research Institute).
Tokyo: Japan Statistics Research Institute.

37

Table 1: Definition and Characteristics of Variables Used in
Hamamatsu Wage Determination Model
Variable

Measurement

Expected Meansign

Std. Dev.

Female (dummy)
AgeYears of education
Speaks/understands Japanese well(dummy)Time lived in Japan
Working illegally in Japan (dummy)
Found job through friend/relative(dummy)Found work through labor broker(dummy)Years with current employer
Nikkeijin (foreigner of Japanese
ancestry)
Construction sector (dummy)
Manufacturing sector (dummy)

Female = 1, Male = 0
Years
Years
Yes = 1, No = 0

+
+
+

0.429
30.31312.719
0.415

0.496
8.649
3.585
0.494

MonthsIllegal = 1, Legal = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0++,-46.475 31.062
0.065 0.246
0.410 0.493

Yes = 1, No = 0

+,-

0.350

0.478

Years
Nikkeijin = 1, non-Nikkeijin = 0

+
+

1.871
0.751

1.754
0.433

Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0

-

0.023
0.783

0.150
0.413

2.341

0.384

Dependent Variable:
Log hourly wage

Natural log of hourly wage

38

Table 2: Regression of Personal and Firm Characteristics on
Foreign Workers’ Hourly Log Wage: Hamamatsu
Independent Variable
Female (dummy)
AgeTime lived in Japan
Age*Time (interaction term)Years of education
Speaks/understands Japanese well (dummy)
Working illegally in Japan illegally (dummy)
Found job through friend/relative (dummy)
Found job through labor broker (dummy)Years with current employer
NikkeijinConstruction sector (dummy)
Manufacturing sector (dummy)(Constant)Β-0.30879
0.00073
0.00310-0.00006
0.004650.03025-0.11035
0.19108
0.16466-0.00264
0.25796-0.21920-0.28020
2.24021

Std. error
0.046480.00580
0.003400.000100.00665
0.051930.108210.058140.06308
0.01362
0.06337
0.16218
0.06587
0.19534

Note: Coefficients are unstandardized ordinary least-square regression coefficients.
The industrial sector reference group is the service sector.
Number of cases: 217
R square: 0.319
Adjusted R square: 0.275
Standard error of estimate: 0.3267

Source: Survey of 336 foreign workers employed in Hamamatsu, Japan, in April-June 1996,
conducted by researchers affiliated with the Institute for Statistical Research (Tokyo), in
collaboration with the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California-San Diego.

Sig.
0.00000
0.900410.36193
0.536900.485140.560840.30906
0.001190.00972
0.846640.000070.178020.000030.00000

39

Table 3: Definition and Characteristics of Variables Used in
San Diego Wage Determination Model
Variable

Measurement

Expected Mean
sign

Std.
Dev.

Female (dummy)
AgeYears of education
Speaks English well (dummy)
Time lived in United States
Found job through friend/relative (dummy)
Working illegally in U.S. (dummy)Years with current employer
Annual labor turnover rate in workplace
Percentage of foreign workers in workplace
Needs English in job (dummy)
Natives apply for same kind of job (dummy)
Agriculture sector (dummy)High tech manufacturing sector (dummy)
Construction sector (dummy)
Hotel & motel sector (dummy)
Landscape and maintenance sector (dummy)
Apparel and textile sector (dummy)
Food processing sector (dummy)
Low-tech manufacturing sector (dummy)
Miscellaneous services sector (dummy)

Female = 1, Male = 0
Years
Years
Yes = 1, No = 0
MonthsYes = 1, No = 0
Illegal = 1, Legal = 0
YearsPercent
Percent
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0
Yes = 1, No = 0

+
+
+
+
+,+
+,+
+,+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

0.330
34.5908.591
0.338
143.665
0.692
0.584
4.668
14.83568.861
0.378
0.408
0.126
0.094
0.091
0.083
0.107
0.121
0.137
0.113
0.035

0.471
10.1744.042
0.474
96.592
0.462
0.493
4.734
16.86624.000
0.486
0.492
0.332
0.292
0.288
0.276
0.310
0.326
0.344
0.317
0.184

Dependent Variable:
Log hourly wage

Natural log of hourly wage

1.826

0.356

40

Table 4: Regression of Personal and Firm Characteristics on
Foreign Workers’ Hourly Log Wage: San Diego County
Independent Variable
Female (dummy)
AgeTime lived in United States
Age*Time (interaction term)Years of schooling
Speaks English well (dummy)
Found job through friend/relative (dummy)
Working in U.S. illegally (dummy)Years with current employer
Annual labor turnover rate (%) in workplace
Percentage of foreign workers in workplace
Needs English in job (dummy)
Natives apply for same kind of job (dummy)
Agriculture sector (dummy)High tech manufacturing sector (dummy)
Construction sector (dummy)
Hotel & motel sector (dummy)
Landscape and maintenance sector (dummy)
Apparel and textile sector (dummy)
Food processing sector (dummy)
Low-tech manufacturing sector (dummy)
Miscellaneous services sector (dummy)(Constant)Β-0.04165
0.007590.00170-0.00004
0.008500.10100-0.08454
0.00987
0.01522-0.00302-0.00154
0.088420.10101
0.21104
0.20957
0.491240.170380.225190.215280.18452
0.248640.28056
1.26916

Std. Error
0.03250
0.002380.000540.00001
0.00425
0.036440.03061
0.03169
0.003410.000900.00075
0.03628
0.03689
0.06623
0.07247
0.066350.07002
0.06355
0.06225
0.06330
0.063800.087430.12992

Note: Coefficients are unstandardized ordinary least-square regression coefficients.
The industrial sector reference group is the restaurant sector.
Number of cases: 373
R square: 0.48
Adjusted R square: 0.447
Standard error of estimate: 0.2644
Source: Survey of 501 immigrant workers employed in San Diego County, California, JanuaryMarch 1996, conducted by the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California-San
Diego.

Sig.
0.200900.001590.00185
0.002640.04600
0.00587
0.00605
0.755510.00001
0.000890.04005
0.01530
0.006490.00157
0.004070.00000
0.015460.000450.00061
0.003780.000120.001450.00000IZA Discussion Papers
No.

Author(s)

Title

Area

Date

461

M. Gurgand
D. N. Margolis

Welfare and Labor Earnings:
An Evaluation of the Financial Gains to Work

3

03/02

462

B. R. Chiswick
Y. Liang Lee
P. W. Miller

The Determinants of the Geographic
Concentration among Immigrants: Application toAustralia

2

03/02

463

E. Wasmer

Labor Supply Dynamics, Unemployment andHuman Capital Investments

5

03/02

464

W. Schnedler
U. Sunde

The Hold-Down Problem and the Boundaries of
the Firm: Lessons from a Hidden Action Modelwith Endogenous Outside Option

1

03/02

465

J. Ermisch
M. FrancesconiIntergenerational Social Mobility and Assortative
Mating in Britain

1

04/02

466

J. E. Askildsen
E. Bratberg
Ø. A. Nilsen

Unemployment, Labour Force Composition andSickness Absence: A Panel Data Study

1

04/02

467

A. Venturini
C. Villosio

Are Immigrants Competing with Natives in the
Italian Labour Market? The Employment Effect

1

04/02

468

J. Wagner

The Impact of Risk Aversion, Role Models, andthe Regional Milieu on the Transition from
Unemployment to Self-Employment: Empirical
Evidence for Germany

1

04/02

469

R. Lalive
J. C. van Ours
J. Zweimüller

The Effect of Benefit Sanctions on the Durationof Unemployment

3

04/02

470

A. Cigno
F. C. Rosati
L. Guarcello

Does Globalisation Increase Child Labour?

2

04/02

471

B. R. Chiswick
Y. Liang Lee
P. W. Miller

Immigrants’ Language Skills and Visa Category

1

04/02

472

R. Foellmi
J. Zweimüller

Structural Change and the Kaldor Facts of
Economic Growth

3

04/02

473

J. C. van Ours

A pint a day raises a man’s pay, but smoking
blows that gain away

5

04/02

474

J. T. Addison
L. Bellmann
A. Kölling

Unions, Works Councils and Plant Closings inGermany

3

04/02

475

Z. Hercowitz
E. Yashiv

A Macroeconomic Experiment in Mass
Immigration

1

04/02

476

W. A. Cornelius
T. Tsuda

Labor Market Incorporation of Immigrants inJapan and the United States: A Comparative
Analysis

1

04/02

An updated list of IZA Discussion Papers is available on the center‘s homepage www.iza.org.