12. Fashioning and Contesting Precariousness: Unauthorized Migrant Workers in Japan

Within the alleged advent of the ‘gap society’ (kakusa shakai) in twenty-first century Japan, an association of migrant workers with disadvantaged, non-regular jobs seemingly reflects dominance of discriminatory discourses against these workers, which takes for granted the production of them as precarious subjects. This chapter seeks to denaturalize and re-politicize such a presumption, particularly focusing on unauthorized migrant workers in Japan. In doing so, it seeks to press forward two interrelated arguments about the practices of producing and contesting precariousness. First, it is argued that immigration controls, which regulate the transnational inflows of workers and define the conditions under which their entry is authorized or denied, help to fashion precarious labour in ways that respond to capital’s demand for greater labour market flexibility through the creation of institutionalized uncertainty. Second, this chapter also argues that unauthorized migrant workers, who may be portrayed as being at the forefront of precariousness due to their extremely uncertain, insecure, and unstable conditions fundamentally attributable to their status of ‘illegality’ in Japan, are not simply powerless victims but rather are political actors who contest and negotiate such conditions even at the most subaltern level.