Migrant Workers’ Movements in Japan and South Korea

Abstract

Migrant workers’ movements (MWMs) in South Korea and Japan are newcomers to the world of social movements, and they are peculiar in that the Japanese and Korean nationals leading the movements are fighting to advance the rights and humane treatment of individuals inside their territorial borders but outside their national polities: foreign workers at the bottom of the economic ladder.¹ The notions of equality, fairness and justice that these groups raise incorporate dimensions or interpretations that are new and challenging to both societies. Both South Koreans and Japanese traditionally have understood equality as stemming from one’s membership in the ethnonational collective. But the presence and difficult plight of migrant workers from poorer parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America challenge this basis for equality and force the liberal interpretation (that is, the idea of individual human rights) into social discourse more emphatically. Moreover, understanding how Japanese and Koreans address the new realities of discrimination and disenfranchisement may tell us something about their past and continuing treatment of those who have long been discriminated against and marginalized: for example, Korean minorities in Japan.