ABSTRACT
International migration has emerged as a central issue across many Asian countries over the last two decades. Over this period, Japan has received a sizeable number of immigrants comprising ethnic Japanese from Latin American countries, Southeast Asian females, trainees from abroad, and undocumented migrants (Cornelius and Tsuda 2004). However, the Japanese government has no social integration programme for these immigrants at the national level because it has assumed that immigrants are temporary sojourners who will return to their home countries in the near future.2
