Healthcare, language and a free-trade agreement

Institutional logics of on-the-job Japanese language training for migrant healthcare workers

Bibliographic Data

ID11294188
AuthorsRuriko Otomo (0000-0003-3002-8162, Hokkaido University , Kita 17, Nishi 8, Kita-ku , Sapporo , Hokkaido Japan, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume39
Issue3
Pages343-367
Publication date2020-05-27
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMultilingua (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0167-8507 • E-ISSN: 1613-3684
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/multi-2019-0007
OpenAlexW2998880864
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited22

Faced with a pressing demand for eldercare workers, Japan signed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) to recruit workers from Southeast Asian countries. The EPA limits the employment period for migrant workers, unless they successfully pass the healthcare licensure examination in Japanese. Therefore, they receive on-the-job training and prepare for the examination, making their host institutions partly responsible for assisting the training and exam preparation. In this system, migrants’ Japanese ability, tested against a strict standard, is the key to their being successfully accepted as good workers. Migrant workers and their employers are thus important actors in a neoliberal logic in which mastering a specific language practice and demonstrating it on standardized tests is deemed important for one’s social mobility. To analyse how this logic is realised in a healthcare workplace, this paper draws on fieldwork data in an eldercare home employing EPA workers. The operation scheme of the EPA and institutional policy will be highlighted as underlying mechanisms for the creation of neoliberal subjects. I argue these measures primarily support the hierarchical relationships between Japanese and non-Japanese, and between employer and employee. I also discuss consequential ways in which on-the-job training has differentially impacted employment trajectories of the migrant workers

Business · Economic growth · Economics · General partnership · Health care · Labour economics · Licensure · Migrant workers · Political science · Public relations · Training (meteorology · Employment and Welfare Studies · Law · Medicine · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Nursing

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