Looking East and Beyond: Indian IT Diaspora in Japan

Abstract

Since the 1980s there has been considerable global economic and political realignment, with Asia as a significant centre. Japan’s dramatic rise in the post-World War II era, the rise of poverty-stricken East and Southeast Asian economies based on multinational-driven manufacturing growth, and more recently China and India’s wider and deeper engagement with the world economy have cumulatively created a dynamic Asian region. The character of the global economy has undergone fundamental shifts with rapid development of technology and innovations, dispersion of industrial investments worldwide and emphasis on exports. Asia’s place in this tumultuous process is not in doubt. However, there is another development accompanying this geo-economic shift, namely, the movement of people across national boundaries. The deployment of information and communications technologies (ICT), and the corresponding services revolution, leading to tradability of services, has redrawn the boundaries of firms. Companies increasingly rely on the mobility of highly skilled professionals to run their operations globally and they obtain services from providers located outside of the company and possibly outside the country. The increasing reliance on international outsourcing (or offshoring) has contributed to a new layer of globalisation with the international movement of high-skilled professionals, with significant national policy implications (Bhagwati, 2009; Menz, 2011).