Feedback to “To Get Over the Barrier: Immigration System in Japan”
(by Lenka Kissová)
Firstly, the topic is quite interesting for me personally for two reasons. One of those is my
insufficient knowledge in the field of Japanese migration policy and the environment in
which migration occurs. The second reason is such a similarity with the situation in Slovakia.
Point after the point the draft reminded me the Slovak case in all of its aspects.
The content of the paper seems to be very complex. However, I miss a concrete questions that
should be answered in the paper. I understood the aim of explaining the basic information on
the situation of migration in the country. I agree with this point as I consider it important to
have a basic frame of the phenomenon including numbers, statistics, concrete policy
measures and so on. I have also identified the ambition to point at several problems tied to
migration in Japan, or better to the unwillingness to open more to foreigners. I see also in my
country the attitudes towards migrants and migration which are more negative than positive
(also according to statistical data on the attitudes toward migrants in Slovakia). I really
appreciate the tendency to offer solutions, to explain more clearly the potential solutions of
identified problems. However, I think there are so many problems that could be identified in
the case of migration and attitudes towards migrants. There are lots of factors that influence
the attitudes including stereotypes, media, political discourse and much more. There are
identified problems of identity and the potential conflict of those, erroded national culture,
fear (whether real or socially constructed) from violation of national security, fear from
illegal migrants or the problem of “taking away the job” of Japanese people. These are
numbers of potential or yet identified problems, however, I consider them to belong to more
different sets of problems according to theri character, whether cultural, political, economic
or other. I consider not to be a problem have all these groups of problems in the paper,
however, I suggest to make some order among them, I mean to group them somehow
according to some logic. Or another possibility would be to focus on one or two of them. This
is what I mean by missing the main question. I think that for example only the issue of
cultural aspects of sovereingty problem which is definetely naearly connected to the issues of
identity would be the topic for a paper. The same could be applicable for political as well as
economic issues.
Overall, I consider the paper to be interesting and I will looking forward to read it.
All the best!