• Misako Nukaga Professor, the Graduate School of Education, the University of Tokyo
• Tomoko Tokunaga Associate Professor, the Institute of Human Sciences, the University of Tsukuba

• Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director

Based on the book Second Generation Immigrants in Japan: Cross-Ethnic Comparison of “Newcomer” Children Today, written by Mutsumi Shimizu, Akira Kojima, Hiroki Tsunogae, Misako Nukaga, Akiko Miura, Kohei Tsubota (Akashi Shoten, 2021)  (in Japanese)

As Japan opened its door to overseas workers amid a declining population and labor shortage, the number of children with immigrant backgrounds has steadily increased since the 1990s, thus dismantling the country’s mono-ethnic myth. How do these second-generation immigrant children born and/or raised in Japan experience acculturation? What are their educational and occupational outcomes in the host society and how do they relate to acculturation patterns? The Second Generation Immigrants in Japan: Cross-Ethnic Comparison of “Newcomer” Children Today (published in Japanese) offers the most comprehensive portrait to date of the second generation immigrants’ developmental pathways and adaptation outcomes in Japan. It is based on in-depth interview data from 170 youths whose parents migrated from Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Brazil, Peru, and the Philippines. From these voices, the authors provide a detailed analysis of diverging acculturation and adaptation processes within the second-generation youth in Japan, highlighting the impact of school, community, and peer-group forces that are unique to Japan, as well as transnational social spaces that the youth engage in.

Misako Nukaga is a Professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Tokyo. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2009. Her research interests lie at the intersections between immigration, ethnicity, gender, and education. From a cross-national comparative perspective, she studies how children with immigrant backgrounds experience acculturation through schooling in the host society, particularly focusing on the effects of unequal structures in which they are embedded. Her recent work examines identity formation and educational achievement of second-generation immigrant youth in Japan, and considers culturally inclusive and socially just education for minority students.

Tomoko Tokunaga is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Human Sciences at the University of Tsukuba. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (specialization in Sociocultural Foundations of Education) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interest includes the anthropology of education, immigrant education, youth studies, and participatory action research (PAR).