There have been contradictory trends in migration policies in advanced countries since the 1990s: states have actively recruited desirable immigrants while they continued to deter and exclude unwanted migrants. The case of Japanese state not only represents this trend, but also shows a profoundly paradoxical case in the sense that it officially negated incorporation of “immigrants” consistently though it has built up multiple channels of transnational labor supply for their urgent needs. It is particularly so because Japan has maintained the divergent policies in the middle of well-known demographic crisis with aging population.
