Policy change and national identification: the discursive institutionalism of Japan’s migrant admission policy

This article examines the discursive strategies and institutional context that led the Abe administration to change Japan’s migrant admission policy. For the past thirty years, Japan officially refused to admit migrant workers and instead relied on a side-door policy. However, in 2018, the Japanese government introduced the Specified Skilled Worker Program, marking the first official migrant worker program in post-war Japan. Key factors behind Japan’s reluctance to admit migrants and its reliance on the side-door policy include the pivotal roles of the bureaucracy, institutional constraints, and negative public perceptions of migrants. To overcome these obstacles, the Abe administration employed top-down decision-making within institutional frameworks and used discourses such as the ‘utilisation of foreign human resources’ to justify the reform while framing it as ‘not an immigration policy’ to ensure its legitimacy. Additionally, the discourse surrounding ‘competition for human resources’ and Japan as ‘a chosen country’ motivated the policy reform by emphasising the need to enhance national competitiveness. Drawing on the framework of discursive institutionalism, this article demonstrates that discourses in specific institutional contexts play a critical role in explaining the shift in Japan’s migrant admission policy and reflect changing national identifications.