Contesting Precarity in Japan: The Rise of Nonregular Workers and the New Policy Dissensus by Saori Shibata

Author:Saori Shibata [Shibata, Saori]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Labor & Industrial Relations, Political Science, World, Asian, Economic Policy
ISBN: 9781501749940
Google: PuSuDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52786902
Publisher: ILR Press
Published: 2020-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

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PRECARIOUS LABOR AND THE CONTESTATION OF POLICYMAKING IN JAPAN

This chapter explores ways in which precarious workers, including unemployed and homeless workers, have mobilized in ways that have posed a challenge to the political process of neoliberalization. In this sense, the chapter seeks to explore the ways in which Japan’s nonregular workers have increasingly become important for policymakers to consider in their efforts to manage Japanese society. In considering the impact of Japan’s precarious workers’ movement on policymaking in Japan, the chapter highlights three cases through which we can witness the effects of opposition mobilized by Japanese precarious workers on policy outcomes. The cases are opposition to the Worker Dispatch Law (WDL), organized by a network of activists and precarious workers, including the Antipoverty Network and the Committee for the Amendment of the Worker Dispatch Law; a campaign orchestrated by Moyai and the unemployed to influence the level of social welfare benefits; and the movement against the sales tax. In each case, we witness political elites being forced to respond to successful mobilizations by precarious workers and organizations that have emerged to represent their interests. These mobilizations have served to attract public attention to the impact that neoliberal government policy has on precarious workers. When faced with criticism and opposition from the public, on each occasion governments were forced either to compromise on policy goals or proposals or to abolish or postpone policies to reduce criticism. While precarious workers were not always able to achieve all of their goals, collectively they have become an important actor that is able to gain concessions or raise significant obstacles to the implementation of neoliberal policy options so that their demands must be accommodated in some way. It is this new capacity for precarious workers to influence policy outcomes in Japan’s political economy that this chapter sets out to explore.

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