This book overviews the present situation of foreign migrants in Japan, based on the latest and most comprehensive available data, and presents necessary policy recommendations. Special attention is given to workers under the economic recession, along with the condition of non-workers such as pseudo-exiles, self-actualization seekers and marriage/family oriented people. The study presents an analysis of deprivation and discrimination against migrants and examines human rights violations in areas including subsistence, residence, liberty and freedom, social life, culture and political participation. Hiroshi Komai, a foremost scholar in the studies of foreign residents in Japan, demonstrates the progress of settlement and the formation of ethnic communities. Examining the potential of migrants to transform Japanese structures, he proposes a policy to give migrants degrees of citizenship corresponding to the extent to which they have settled.

About Editors and Authors

KOMAI Hiroshi is a Japanese sociologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Tsukuba and Shigakukan University. He graduated from the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Letters, University of Tokyo, in 1964, and completed his PhD in Sociology in 1997. He specializes in immigrant sociology.