ABSTRACT
Studies on social class in Japan have paid little attention to foreign migrants’ mobility patterns. Whether this is due to lack of data or to the small, and thus negligible, number of foreign residents (estimated at 1.5 percent of Japan’s total population1), it has reinforced the tendency to focus exclusively on individuals’ achieved status (e.g. education and skill levels) rather than ascribed status, such as ethnic and national origins. This lack of attention may have reinforced the widespread notion that Japan is a credential-oriented society, at least in comparison to other industrial – above all, more ethnically heterogeneous and stratified – societies.
