ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on different roles of ryūgakusei and aims to further elucidate the particularities, ambivalence and complex meanings of the category international students in the case of Japan. The chapter argues that international students' role is not limited to that of students within the education but spans to the labor market where they engage both as low-skilled and high-skilled workers, as well as such understanding propels perception of ryūgakusei as a more permanent existence in Japan. On the one hand, more permanent understanding emancipates the ryūgakusei from the connotations with temporary guests limited to their roles as agents of internationalization and created space for acknowledging their role as kōdō (high-skilled) or gurōbaru (global) jinzai (human resources). On the other hand, more permanent connotations of the category ryūgakusei relates them with the category of migrant or imin that still represents unwanted or even inadmissible subjects. The chapter concludes that whereas the meanings of the ryūgakusei category are dynamically changing and the relationship between the inclusion and exclusion is dialectic, the increasing complexities of the meanings obfuscate rather than clarify what it means to be a ryūgakusei in Japan today.
