The Integration of Immigrant-Origin Youth in Japan: Theoretical Insights from Narratives on School Experiences

This book examines Japan’s transformation into a country of immigration, offering a timely perspective on how a society long regarded as homogeneous is adapting to new forms of diversity.

Drawing on 62 in-depth interviews with young people of Chinese, Korean, and Brazilian origin, it explores how the children of immigrants navigate Japan’s demanding education system and the broader challenges of social inclusion. Schools emerge as crucial arenas where opportunities for integration intersect with persistent inequalities, shaping young people’s life chances and identities. Combining rich personal narratives with established theories of immigrant incorporation, the book bridges empirical and theoretical research, situating Japan within global migration debates. It challenges the notion of Japan as an exceptional case, demonstrating instead how its experience mirrors wider international patterns of demographic change, labour shortages, and cultural negotiation.

Offering fresh insights into immigrant integration in a non-Western context by making Japan’s case a vital reference point for understanding how societies worldwide respond to increasing diversity, this book will appeal to scholars, students, and policymakers in sociology, migration studies, education, and Japanese studies.

Giulia Dugar, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences and the Department of Languages, Literature and Modern Cultures, University of Bologna, where she teaches respectively courses on qualitative methodologies for social sciences and Sociology of Asian Countries. Her research interest lies at the crossroad of sociology, migration studies and Japanese area studies. During her doctoral experience, she investigated path of integration of immigrant-origin youths residing in Japan, with a special focus on their school incorporation. In addition to her academic post, she periodically collaborates with the Fondazione Leone Moressa think tank (Venice, Italy), where she assists in drafting national reports on the economic aspects of Italian migration.