Abstract

As of the 2020s, Japan is ageing at the fastest rate in the world, and its traditional family, gender and economic structures continue to change. In response to the decline in the active workforce, a major shift in labour migration policy was finally observed at the end of the 2010s. Focusing on the employment patterns of migrant care workers, this chapter aims to identify the following three points: first, the historical developments of migration and care policies, second, the actual conditions and classification of various migration programs for care workers, and third, Japan’s present employment model in the long-term care sector and future prospects from a cross-national perspective. This chapter shows that even after major policy reform in labour migration in the late 2010s, from a macroscopic cross-national perspective, Japan’s migrant caregiver employment model did not change significantly. In contrast, when focusing on the changes in migration pathways for care workers, there was clearly a tendency towards the deskilling of migrant care workers.