The Future is Foreign: Women and Immigrants in Corporate Japan
Thu 21 May
|Room 712, Building 19, Waseda University
In this talk, Hilary Holbrow discusses how white-collar migrants from Asia and the West fare after finding employment in elite Japanese firms, exploring the extent to which they evade, or remain constrained by, existing patterns of inequality.
Date and Venue
21 May 2026, 19:00 – 20:30 GMT+9
Room 712, Building 19, Waseda University, Japan, 〒169-0051 Tokyo, Shinjuku City, Nishiwaseda, 1-chōme−21−１ 早稲田大学 西早稲田ビルディング
About the Event
Abstract:
Japan's foreign population has grown exponentially since the liberalization of its border control policy in 1989. But, because political discourse paints the foreign population as temporary, research on non-citizens' experiences and outcomes relative to comparable Japanese is in its infancy. In this talk, I discuss how white-collar migrants from Asia and the West fare after finding employment in elite Japanese firms, exploring the extent to which they evade, or remain constrained by, existing patterns of inequality. I find that women, regardless of national origin, fall to the bottom of the stratification hierarchy, while immigrant men experience little or no disadvantage. The study demonstrates that, despite Japan’s reputation for xenophobia, in contemporary white-collar workplaces gender is a far sharper axis of inequality than is foreign origin.
Speaker:
Hilary J. Holbrow is Assistant Professor of Japanese Politics and Society at Indiana University. A sociologist by training, her scholarship examines gender…