Multiculturalism and Conflict Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific Migration, Language and Politics

This book is open access under a CC BY license.
Japan has recently promoted a number of initiatives that can be termed an opening to the world and the Asia-Pacific in particular. These have origins in Japan's globalization generally and multicultural policies more specifically. The chapters in this book are grouped in three parts—theories, language, and migration—and they explicate details of multiculturalism in the Asia-Pacific, largely focused on Japan, but including cases that extend beyond Japan as well. Alternative understandings based on analyzing conflicts and moving towards reconciliation underscore the urgency of viewing multiculturalism in Japan and the Asia-Pacific from perspectives that are firmly based in the region. Themes such as immigration, identity, foreign language education, politics and language, English language policies, dual citizenship, foreign labor policies and movements, and higher education are all addressed in the individual chapters. This book will be of interest to scholars of multiculturalism in a wide variety of fields.

Kosuke Shimizu is Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Afrasian Research Centre, Ryukoku University, Japan. He is currently working on critical theories, non-Western IRT, and philosophy of the Kyoto School and published articles in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, the Cambridge Review of International Affairs and others.

William S. Bradley is Professor of Anthropology and Education, Ryukoku University, Japan. He is co-editor of Education and the Risk Society (with S. Bialostok and R. L. Whitman, 2012) and has published papers on multiculturalism and culture, higher education policy, and societal risk.

1. Introduction; Kosuke Shimizu and William S. Bradley
PART I
2. Multicultural Coexistence in Japan: Follower, Innovator, or Reluctant Late Adopter?; William S. Bradley
3. A Critical Analysis of Multiculturalism and Deviant Identities: Untold Stories of Japanese Americans without Nations; Takumi Honda
4. Theorizing Multiculturalism: Modeling the Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion in School-Based Multicultural Settings; Lee Gunderson
PART II
5. Who Owns Our Tongue? English, Academic Life and Subjectivity; Kosuke Shimizu
6. Preservice and Inservice English as a Foreign Language Teachers' Perceptions of the New Language Education Policy Regarding the Teaching of Classes in English at Japanese Senior High Schools; Toshinobu Nagamine
7. An Alternative Approach to Foreign Language Education in Japan with a View Toward Becoming a Multicultural Society; Mitsunori Takakuwa
PART III
8. Female Domestic Workers on the Move: Examining Global Householding and Global De-Householding in Today's World; Rieko Karatani
9. Multiculturalism as a Determinant of the Transit and Final Destinations in the Stepwise Migration of Filipino Nurses; Maria Reinaruth D. Carlos
10. Who Benefits from Dual Citizenship? The New Nationality Law and Multicultural Future of South Korea; Shincha Park
11. 'Global Jinzai,' Japanese Higher Education and the Path to Multiculturalism: Imperative, Imposter or Immature?; Julian Chapple