Unveiling coloniality and reproduction of racialized others in Japanese migration policy

Exploitation of migrant workers has been happening all over the world. Investigating labour migration policy with the lens of colonial matrix of power, I argue that concurrent labour migration policy is used as a tool to sustain historically created power hierarchies. This paper expands decolonial perspectives into Asia by starting from Japan as a former colonial power to expose coloniality in migration policy and explore its implication. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews as well as a focused group discussion and program documents of Technical Intern Training Program (TITP) in Japan, I elucidate how historically informed racial ideology has been (re)produced and is articulated through migration policy. Moreover, this paper explicates how division of labour is deeply intertwined in capitalism and is operated by exploiting invented racial and gender categories that are articulated through domination via the dehumanization of the Other. The analysis takes its departure from the idea of ‘trainee’, demonstrating how TITP is used to reinforce colonial matrix of power, systematically putting migrants into ‘low-skilled’ positions, which reproduces the idea of ‘Japaneseness’ as superior to Other Asian countries. Throughout the research, by integrating decolonial approach, this paper aims to hold their multiple selves not just as ‘migrant workers.’