Milos Debnar

Ryukoku University · Faculty of International Studies

This article discusses recent development in the emerging field of white migration studies and particularly focuses on the studies on Western or white migrants in Japan and China in the past decade. It is outlining the main contribution of these studies to critical whiteness studies and migration studies as well as it identifies some of the lacunas...

This chapter examines how whiteness is being reproduced, and simultaneously limited, as a position of power in the context of migration to a non-Western, highly developed destination. It analyses semi-structured interviews with first-generation migrants from diverse European countries focusing on how whiteness becomes a privileging and alienating i...

The chapter analyses the migration patterns of contemporary white Europeans to Japan and juxtapose them with their assumed categorization or representations as expat-like migrants. The empirical evidence demonstrates how Westerns or Europeans in Japan continue to be represented as high skilled, privileged, and unproblematic expat-like migrants in t...

The article deploys the lens of the race-migration nexus (Erel et al., Ethnic and Racial Studies 39:1339–1360, 2016) to compare the racialization of migrants in the UK and Japan. It draws on qualitative data on the experiences of Central-East European (CEE) migrants in the two countries to unpack how whiteness is constructed in relation to differen...

This chapter focuses on different roles of ryūgakusei and aims to further elucidate the particularities, ambivalence and complex meanings of the category international students in the case of Japan. The chapter argues that international students' role is not limited to that of students within the education but spans to the labor market where they e...

This article discusses the resistance of the local community to increasing numbers of inbound tourists and ‘touristification’ of the Gion south district in Kyoto. Gion represents one of the symbols of traditional Japan for both Asian and Western tourists, yet local community members largely oppose their sharply increasing numbers and emphasizes its...

‘Between ethnicity and cosmopolitanism’ analyzes various meanings and representations of the presumed cosmopolitanism of the privileged migrants. Through an analysis of social networks, everyday practices, and discourses of belongings, this chapter attempts to deconstruct such an image by referring to aspects of their sociability that can be ascrib...

This book analyzes the increase in contemporary European migration to Japan, its causes and the lives of Europeans in Japan. Desconstructing the picture of highly skilled, privileged, cosmopolitan elites that has been frequently associated with white or Western migrants, it focuses on the case of Europeans rather than Westerners migrating to a high...

Debnár starts with outlining the history of European migration to Japan and focuses on its contemporary growth since the late 1980s. He points out that despite such historical legacy, relatively high numbers, and contemporary growth which has exceeded the overall growth rate of foreign population in Japan, the case of European or other Western migr...

Race and privilege in integration focuses on the ways in which the white privilege is reproduced through migration, and how this privilege, as a form of capital, is converted into other forms of capital that eventually benefit its bearers in terms of their socioeconomic position. The inclusion of non-(typically) Western and non-English-speaking par...

Debnár attempts to explain the growth of European migration to Japan, especially in terms of the ‘gray zone’ delineated by the apexes of high-skilled and female entertainer migrations. Detailed analysis of three cases in different periods illustrates the changing character of migration and the main factors discussed in the chapter. Through a discus...

Debnár continues his analysis of the limits of the white privilege and starts with the consideration of what he calls a relativizing potential of Japan as a highly developed, non-Western country. This is reflected in various everyday interactions as well as in the labor market. Limited labor market mobility is exemplified in various cases strugglin...

In this paper, I consider the possibility of ‘un-orthodox’, and especially non-economic, motivations among migrants in Japan and attempt for a sociological explanation of such migration. In particular, I focus on the case of Europeans who has moved to Japan and scrutinize their motivations. I analyze what roles play the cultural capital and individ...

(English version available)

(BOOK review)

In this paper, we use panel data on occupations, industries and inequality in Japan between the years 1985 to 2005 and analyse their change in global and nonglobal regions. Considering the social polarization hypothesis from the global cities theories implying specific character of changes in such cities, our results show that growth of specific oc...

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The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the theory of Saskia Sassen from her famous work The Global City regarding relationship between industry, occupation structure and wage inequality and verify the validity of her hypothesis on the case of prefectures in Japan. According to this hypothesis, as an effect of globalization, industries such as profe...

The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the theory of Saskia Sassen from her famous work The Global City regarding relationship between industry, occupation structure and wage inequality and verify the validity of her hypothesis on the case of prefectures in Japan. According to this hypothesis, as an effect of globalization, industries such as profe...

(English abstract) In the age of globalization, the number of foreign nationals living in Japan is growing and their composition is diversifying rapidly. It has also been suggested that the diversification of migrants is a more complex phenomena than mere multi-nationalization, and concepts capable of understanding various aspects of foreign popula...

The aim of this paper is to consider the theory of Saskia Sassen from her work The Global City regarding relationship between industry, occupation structure and wage inequality and to test her hypothesis on the case of prefectures in Japan. According to this hypothesis, as an effect of globalization, industries such as professional services, IT and...