教育を通じた移住過程における移民の社会的統合 : 元留学生の社会意識に注目した分析

Abstract

The educationally channeled migratory process (ECMP) is gaining its importance not only in Japan but also in many developed countries. This is because international students are deemed as ideal migrants in terms of not only their high human capital but also their high socio-cultural adaptation to the host society, who are likely to be free from any type of conflicts in their incorporation. However there are a few researches on ECMP, because it has been taken as just a temporary stay in the host society rather than a gateway to permanent settlement. The present study aims to reveal the role of ECMP on immigrants’ social integration into the host society in terms of their social mind to the Japanese society. The hypothesis is that the higher educational attainment in Japan, the higher their social integration in terms of their social mind. The data utilized is the panel survey of immigrants in Japan (PSIJ), which is the first-ever national sampling research on international students and the former ones in Japan. As a result, it revealed that acculturation/feeling of friendship to the Japanese society, and involvements to activity of co-ethnics are partially complementary/trade-off, where Japanese fluency is a key to determining them. Yet, a feeling of integration is adversely influenced by just higher Japanese fluency, and rather positively determined by their higher income. These are originally assured to be obtained in ECMP, but are not necessarily relevant with ECMP in this study. We can therefore conclude that the hypothesis of the present study can be theoretically applicable, however its actual applicability depends on the actual performance of Japanese educational institutions per se.