Citizenship, Colonial Past and Immigration Policy : A Comparative Study between Japan and the United Kingdom

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This paper focuses on the origin of current immigration policies of Japan and the United Kingdom. While most of the post-industrial states chose to receive immigrants for economic purposes in the past (even though they may regret it now), neither Japan nor the UK relied on such external labour resources for their economic reconstruction after World War Two and high-speed development thereafter. Instead of governmental choices of bilateral agreements to recruit 'foreign' labour, these two countries turned to 'internal' mobility of their labour force. By using the word 'internal', the newly recruited were not necessarily domestic, but people from within the former imperial boundary. The civil status the respective government gave to those people who had moved was starkly different between Japan and the UK. The consequence of the War that determined the fate of the empire of course was an important factor. Nonetheless, the exclusion of former colonials from formal citizenship in Japan's case was not a logical consequence but a deliberate political decision. On the other hand, full formal citizenship of former colonials in the UK has not provided full social membership. By comparing those two former imperial countries, this paper tries to see the correlation between the treatment of former colonials and the current immigration policy.
2006-03-31