ABSTRACT
The post-World War II economic development trajectories of the USA and Japan are familiar but the inter-connectedness of the two economies, as well as their substantial divergence, are less appreciated. Although this study focuses on India and Japan, the scope of mobility is international and the context is the world capitalist economy. No other country besides the USA can boast of as large and as highly developed a system of capitalism. Correspondingly, the USA is the destination for the largest number of immigrants and technical professionals. There has been little theorizing relating the contemporary mobility of people to changing structures of capital accumulation, especially with respect to Japan, and particularly from the demand side. The broader shift in the USA and later Japan from manufacturing to services attests to the similar trajectories of advanced capitalist countries. The specific dynamics vary but the direction of change is similar and indicates the decreasing relevance of manufacturing in accumulation. The growth in services, especially tradable services, suggests that the demand for technical professionals will increase. If the domestic availability of such workers is inadequate, international labor markets have to be tapped. However, as shown in Chapter 4, despite the broad similarities of the two countries’ trajectories, adjustment to international mobility has been halting in the case of Japan despite the shifts in accumulation structures.
