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Regulatory approaches to managing skilled migration: Indonesian nurses in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Michele Ford  and
Kumiko Kawashima
Michele Ford
Affiliation:
The University of Sydney, Australia
Kumiko Kawashima*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Australia
*
Kumiko Kawashima, Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the Japan–Indonesia Economic Partnership Agreement, an agreement that has allowed Japan to supplement its local healthcare workforce while continuing to sidestep the thorny issue of labour and immigration policy reform and Indonesia to increase its skilled workers’ access to the Japanese labour market at a time when it was making a concerted effort to reorient migrant labour flows away from informal sector occupations. Despite the programme’s many problems, it has contributed to the use of trade agreements as a mechanism for regulating labour migration, and so to the normalisation of migrant labour as a tradable commodity rather than a discrete area of policy-making, with all the attendant risks that normalisation brings.

Keywords

F16J24J61M550150Care workIndonesiaJapanlabour migrationtrade agreements
Type
Non-Symposium Articles
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 27 , Issue 2: Symposium: Permanent Productivity Crisis - the Productivity Commission’s role in economic and social policy in Australia , June 2016 , pp. 231 - 247
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2016

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