Late Breaking - Individual Paper
4. Seeing from the Neighbourhood: States, Communities and Human Mobility
This research focuses on Japanese government discourses on asylum seekers. Despite the increasing number of displaced people globally, Japan has adopted restrictive approaches toward those who seek asylum in Japan. Between 1982 and 2023, the total number of individuals recognised as refugees was only 1,420 although there were 105,487 applications for refugee status during the same period. Although Japan has been urged to accept more refugees by international organisations, it has rather tightened control over asylum seekers. In June 2024, a controversial amendment to Japan’s refugee recognition system is set to be enforced, based on the bill approved by the Japanese Diet in June 2023. This amendment entails lifting the suspension of deportation for refugee status applicants who have submitted a refugee status application two times or more, unless they provide new evidence for their claims. Although human rights advocates expressed strong concern about this amendment as it is against the principle of non-refoulement, the same attitude is not necessarily shared by the general public in Japan. According to an opinion poll by a major TV network in Japan, almost half of the respondents agreed with the passage of the bill while only a quarter disagreed (the rest chose N/A). How did the Japanese government present this controversial amendment as legitimate to its citizens amidst international criticism? What is the rationale behind it? This research aims to answer these questions by analysing government discourses on the bill approved in 2023, drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis.
Atsushi Yamagata
University of Wollongong, Australia