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Japanese Labour Migration to China and IT Service Outsourcing: The Case of Dalian

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Abstract

In this chapter, I trace the trajectory of Japanese IT service labour migration to the northeast Chinese city of Dalian from its emergence in the mid-2000s up to the present. Drawing on literature research and interview data obtained between 2013 and 2015, I examine the experience of Japanese migrants and the role they play in the expansion of Dalian's service outsourcing sector. Multinational firms increasingly use offshore outsourcing to reduce labour costs associated with low-end IT service jobs, such as assisting individual users of computer products and testing mobile phone apps. Young Japanese are hired in Dalian as skilled migrants, and work alongside bilingual Chinese workers to serve customers based in Japan. Their starting salaries are comparable to Japanese minimum wages, and their socio-economic gains are not straightforward. Through the research findings, this chapter highlights the interlinkages between China's ambition to build a post-industrial economy, and changing youth labour in Japan.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, for example, have live-in domestic worker visa programmes to facilitate temporary immigration, most commonly for those from the Philippines and Indonesia. Issues of human rights protection for these workers and grassroots labour activism have gained considerable attention in recent years (e.g., see Piper 2005; Yeoh and Annadhurai 2008).

  2. 2.

    Circular migration usually involves migrants taking round trips for the purpose of work, including long-term movements to overseas locations. For a discussion of competing definitions of the term, see Newland (2009: 6–10).

  3. 3.

    In December 2010, Dalian had by far the largest takers of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test per capita in China (Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting 2012: 23).

  4. 4.

    Dalian was first established by Russia and later by imperial Japan as a port city in a strategic location. The development of Dalian’s manufacturing sector itself was made possible by Dalian’s history as the industrial centre of Manchukuo (Hess 2011), a puppet state established by imperial Japan.

  5. 5.

    Dalian is in the Liaoning Province, which shares the border with North Korea, as well as with the Jilin province, which includes the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. As one of the largest economic powerhouses of northeastern China, the city attracts jobseekers, including ethnic Korean Chinese, from around the region .

  6. 6.

    Time Series Data, Table 9 Employee by age and type of employment (yearly average) http://www.stat.go.jp/data/roudou/longtime/03roudou.htm#hyo_9 (accessed 1 August 2015).

  7. 7.

    For a discussion on the link between the Japanese labour market under recession and a form of youth migration, see Kawashima (2010, 2014).

  8. 8.

    Young Japanese people who leave Japan for non-employment reasons may find it difficult to regain the previous salary level and job status upon returning to the country (Kawashima 2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Kumiko Kawashima

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  1. Kumiko Kawashima
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Correspondence to Kumiko Kawashima .

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  1. University of Xiamen, Xiamen, China

    Angela Lehmann

  2. University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

    Pauline Leonard

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Kawashima, K. (2019). Japanese Labour Migration to China and IT Service Outsourcing: The Case of Dalian. In: Lehmann, A., Leonard, P. (eds) Destination China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54433-9_6

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