ABSTRACT
This study deals mainly with issues concerning the ‘criminality’ of foreigners in Japan in the context of the debate on foreign labour. However, this enterprise poses something of a dilemma. Speaking of the ‘criminality of foreigners’ carries the risk firstly of overemphasising the status of being foreign, and secondly of assuming that criminality of foreigners is of a special or peculiar type. Ethnocentric pre-suppositions can easily enter such a study, obscuring the view of structural features of society at large. The status ‘foreigner’ is just one attribute that pre-structures position in society and possible living conditions. First of all, therefore, the explanatory potential of general criminological theories must be fully exploited in order not to blur perception of the general social texture by concentrating on foreignness. However, the stigmata ‘illegal’ and ‘foreigner’ overshadow the whole existence of those so-labelled, and where foreigners are linked with illegality there is risk of a dual degradation: as a foreigner and as a criminal. This situation, of course, must not be misunderstood or neglected.
