Guest Professor Gracia Liu-Farrer (Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies) joins MC Assistant Professor Robert Fahey (Waseda Institute for Advanced Study) to explore skill-based migration policies in Asia, a region with more people on the move than any other. Japan features heavily in the discussion, with its increasingly liberal migration policies despite its persistent image as a country comparatively closed to immigration. Professor Liu-Farrer also explains the social construction of skill—how skill is constructed and valued in political, social, and economic contexts—and how migration stands to address societal issues such as demographic crises and labor shortages both in Asia and more broadly.
Link to transcript:
https://www.waseda.jp/top/en/news/83220
About the Guests:
Guest Professor Gracia Liu-Farrer
Dr. Gracia Liu-Farrer is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, and Director of Institute of Asian Migrations, Waseda University, Japan. Her research investigates cross-border migration and immigrants’ socioeconomic and geographic mobility in Asia and Europe. Her articles have appeared in International Migration Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and International Migration. She co-edited Routledge Handbook of Asian Migration (2018, with Brenda Yeoh) and authored monographs Labour Migration from China to Japan: International Students, Transnational Migrants (Routledge, 2011) and Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-nationalist Society (Cornell University Press, 2020).
MC Assistant Professor Robert Fahey
Dr. Robert A. Fahey is an assistant professor of political science at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study in Tokyo, Japan. His research interests include populism, polarisation, the effects of conspiracy theory belief, and Japanese politics. He is currently working on a series of large-scale surveys aimed at discovering what kinds of conspiracy beliefs are widespread in East Asian countries, and how those beliefs impact the political and social life of those nations.
