Linking Language, Trade and Migration: Economic Partnership Agreements as Language Policy in Japan

✍ Scribed by Ruriko Otomo

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 232
• Series: Language Policy, 33
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book examines the effect of trade policy on language which represents an underrecognized area in the field of language policy and planning. It argues that trade policies like Japan’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) have important consequences for national language (education) policies and for discourses about language and nation. Since 2008, Japan has signed the EPAs with Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam to recruit migrant nurses and eldercare workers and manage their mobility by means of pre-employment language training and the Japanese-medium licensure examinations. Through the analysis of these language management devices, this book demonstrates that the EPAs are a manifestation and representation of contemporary language issues intertwined particularly with pressing issues of Japan’s social aging and demographic change. As the EPAs are intertwined with welfare, economy, social cohesion, and international political and economic relations and competitiveness, the book presents a far more complex picture of and a richer potential of language policy.

✦ Table of Contents

Series Editor Foreword
Language Policy Book Series: Our Aims and Approach
Preface
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
1.1.1 Why Trade Policy?
1.1.2 Why Language in Trade Policy?
1.1.3 Why the Economic Partnership Agreement?
1.1.4 Structure of the Book
References
Chapter 2: Trade Policy as a Language Policy
2.1 The Economic Partnership Agreement
2.2 Historical Background
2.3 Eligibility
2.4 Quotas
2.5 Recruitment, Screening and Matching
2.6 Pre-Employment Training
2.7 On-the-Job Training
2.8 Exam Preparation
2.9 Educational and Financial Assistance
2.10 The National Licensure Examinations
2.11 Summary
References
Chapter 3: Policy Discourses in the EPA Programme
3.1 Introduction
3.2 General Trend of the EPA Research
3.3 Language Ideologies in the Existing EPA Research
3.3.1 The Undue Focus on Language Acquisition
3.3.2 The Dominance of Standard Japanese
3.3.3 The Uncritical Reference to JLPT
3.4 Language Policy and Planning for the EPA Programme
3.5 Policy Texts
3.6 Summary
References
Chapter 4: Policy Actors and Goals in Negotiation
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Roles, Participation, and Relationships
4.2.1 Governmental Agencies: Visible Policy Actors
4.2.2 Training Providers: Invisible Yet Influential Policy Actors
4.2.3 Vocal Sectoral Organisations
4.2.4 Inconspicuous Japanese Language Educators
4.2.5 Agentive Host Institutions
4.2.6 Deprived Participation: Candidates as Objects and Commodity
4.3 Goals
4.3.1 The EPA Programme as a Workforce Recruitment Policy
4.3.2 The EPA Programme as an Internationalisation Policy
4.3.3 The EPA Programme as a Humanitarian Foreign-Aid Policy
4.3.4 The EPA Programme as a Cultural/Linguistic Outreach Policy
4.4 Summary
References
Chapter 5: Language Training as a Site of Language Policy Creation, Interpretation and Appropriation
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Triviality of Language
5.3 Double Monolingualism
5.4 Ignorance of Local Varieties
5.5 The Monopoly of Standard Japanese in the Training Context
5.5.1 The Making of Good Learners
5.5.2 Ideology of Maximum Exposure
5.5.3 Native-Speaker Ideologies and/or Shifting Responsibility?
5.5.4 Candidates’ Japanese Language Ability Under Fire
5.6 Summary
References
Chapter 6: (Re) Marking the Boundaries: Language Policy as a Process
6.1 The Examinations under Investigation
6.2 JLPT as Jack-of-All-Trades
6.3 The Exam Advisory Panels: Overview
6.3.1 Structural Features: Sequence, Discussant, and Scheduling
6.3.2 Fair Examination for Whom?
6.3.3 Examination as a Sacred Cow
6.3.4 Exam Reforms as a Threat to Japan’s Fame and Healthcare Quality
6.4 Dismissing the Progressive Reform Idea
6.4.1 (Not) Translating National Licensure Examinations
6.4.2 Discrediting the Use of a Communication Skills Test: Two Discursive Moves
Ignoring and Undermining the Potential of Communication Skills Tests
Drawing a Boundary Between Professional Communication and General Communication
6.5 We Don’t Accommodate you
6.6 The Examination Reforms Thereafter
6.7 Summary
References
Chapter 7: Challenges and Prospects for the EPA Programme: Implications for Japan’s Language Policy and the Discipline of Language Policy and Planning
7.1 Introduction
7.2 A Stream of Change: Carework and Japan’s Labour Migration
7.3 The EPA Effect?: Language Research and Testing
7.4 The Future of the EPA Programme
7.5 The Future of Language Policy Studies: Tie-in Language Policy and Language Policy Arbiter
7.6 Conclusion
References