Employment as an anchor: the prospects of emerging East Asian skilled migration regimes through the lens of migrants’ access to the labor market

This paper uses social anchoring to emphasize the psychological dimension of foreign professionals’ access to employment in South Korea and Japan. South Korea’s “occupation-centered” employment system provides relatively easy access to migrants in high-tech fields. However, migrants outside such fields face psychological insecurity because of stringent visa regulations and limited job opportunities. In contrast, migrants in Japan’s “organization-centered” employment system have easier access to stable employment, but only if they conform to Japanese homogenizing business norms. In sum, highly skilled migrants may not foresee a promising future in either country given the elusiveness of socio-psychological security.