Sustaining Social Cohesion through Voluntary Return Policies?
In this piece, the author explores the variations of voluntary return policies that exist among receiving, economically-advanced countries. The source of these variations maybe lies on the different understandings of social cohesion and how to achieve them.
Migration and immigration have become extremely politicized (or perhaps their politicization have become more visible) in the last few years, with many nationalist parties and organizations using them to further their narratives by presenting them as something to be feared. It is extremely easy to use fear to rally unity, so long as the them is to be feared, which then acts as a binary to the us as a uniting factor. Migration and immigration are therefore important concepts in understanding social cohesion, as they involve elements of inclusion and exclusion of certain groups within a society. The policies that concern them demonstrate how the governments want control of the different groups in the society based on migration, citizenship, and ethnic statuses.
Of course, countries have different policies at different levels addressing different issues of migration. However, one striking type of migration control that exists in some countries is known as “voluntary return” or “voluntary repatriation”, which enforces the return of migrants to their countries of origin. However, in the countries that do have explicit policies, there are major differences on the policy objectives. It is in such differences where it is possible to observe how these policies are used to sustain the policy-makers’ understandings of social cohesion at the socio-cultural sphere. If we were to define “social cohesion” to be “understood as the degree to which a ‘sense of togetherness’ is manifest in a collectivity of people, of which trust is an essential component”, then certainly the voluntary return policies act as instruments in achieving this.
Voluntary return policies exist in most Western European countries, where there are monetary incentives to return to one’s home country. In France, a returnee can be paid up to 2,500 euros to leave, and the government encourages the returnee to use that money to set up small business in his or her home country. In Germany, allowances are also given and reintegration is supported. On the other hand, Japan has an interesting model – whilst in most of Europe, these policies target asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants, the Japanese policy encourages the voluntary return of legal immigrants. Why this is the case may help distinguish the difference in conceptualization of social cohesion, this “sense of togetherness”, between Japan and Western Europe.
(Image from the Polish Government)
In Japan, many of those who returned to their country included labor migrants and their children who were second-generation migrants. These people, unlike their counterparts in Western Europe, were legal. Japanese migration policies are extremely ethno-national, and it was also in this voluntary return policy that the ethnic element was noticeable. Those who were encouraged for voluntary return were mostly of the dekasegi population (literally translated as “working away from home”) – low-skilled migrants usually from Latin America who were invited to participate in the Japanese labor market in the late-20th century. When the recession in 2008 hit, many of them were either unemployed or were asked to leave so more opportunities can be given to Japanese citizens.
Since 2008, migration in Japan has increased in numbers (albeit slowly) amidst a declining population, meaning that the total share of foreign residents has increased. While Japan continues to uphold its closed immigration stance, new policy changes included easier migration for nikkeis – a term that refers to Japanese diaspora and their descendants. Puzzlingly, Latin American countries have the highest share of nikkeis, and new policies now allow fourth-generation nikkeis to immigrate to Japan. Given that just a decade ago, citizens from the same countries were asked to leave (including their children who only knew Japan as their home), it can be assumed that the real objective of the voluntary return policy was not for economic reasons, but rather to maintain national identity and a more cohesive country built around the Japanese ethnic identity.
As Erin Chung notes, the “new” immigrants from Latin American countries that were invited to work in Japan in the 1990s contrasted the “old” immigrants in Japan, which were highly-assimilated Asians of Korean and Chinese descent and westerners who accepted the coexistence based on visible difference. These “new” immigrants did not assimilate nor coexist; this posed new challenges to Japanese policy-makers and the existing immigration framework, which did not address societal implications – the issue of social cohesion with increased migration.
In contrast, the Western European policies on voluntary return are specifically for illegal immigrants. It is less ethnically-pronounced, rather focusing on immigration status (legal/illegal) as justification to repatriation. The element of “fear” that these illegal immigrants pose to the society is in accordance to the narratives of the political platforms that exists, which claims that the citizenship status of the migrants is threatening to the “social togetherness”. In Japan, the ethnic element is more important, prompting the government to push for a voluntary return policy that targets legal immigrants and more shockingly, their children, whilst expanding immigration of nikkeis and other desirable groups – i.e. the high-skilled workers usually from more developed countries.
In the subject of social cohesion, there have been attempts at explaining the difference between Europe and Asia (for example, see here). Although this piece has been hugely generalized, comparing the policies on voluntary return and their objectives between Japan and Western Europe can provide better understanding of different conceptualization of “social cohesion”, where there is a contrast between homogeneity in Japan as a source of social cohesion and public safety in Western Europe. Furthermore, this difference itself shows that identity-politics come in different forms, and there are no convincing ontological grounds to repatriate migrants for the “betterment” of the societies.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect any editorial policy.
Kiyomi Ran recently graduated from King's College London with a BA in International Relations from the Department of War Studies. As a Chinese-Japanese-American living in the UK being a first-generation, a 1.5 generation, and a second-generation-immigrant, she is interested in comparative migration policies and the role of national identities in social policy. Her thesis will compare family migration under immigration policies of Japan and South Korea.