Events

Time: Monday, July 7, 2025, from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM (JST)
Venue: DAICEL Studio, 1st floor of Science Commons Bld. (Center for Education in Liberal Arts and Sciences), Osaka University Toyonaka Campus (and online via Zoom)
Languages: Presentation will be in English. Comments and Discussion will be in both English and Japanese

Registration: Please register from the URL or QR code on the flyer.
https://forms.office.com/r/y6qfavGcTZ

【Presenter】
YUNCHEN TIAN（JF-Nichibunken Fellow, International Research Center for Japanese Studies）

【Discussant】
FACUNDO GATASINO (Lecturer, The University of Osaka Global Japanese Studies Education and Research Incubator)

【Summary】
How do civil society organizations adapt when the ‘rules of the game’ change? I highlight the effects of the 2017 reform of the TITP, which mandated the creation of “supervisory organizations” as legally distinct, non-profit intermediaries between migrants and employers, in addition to a new regulator, the Organization on Technical Intern Training (OTIT). I analyze published data on disciplinary actions by OTIT against “supervisory organizations” and employers from its 2017 establishment onwards and conduct supplementary interviews with community unions and other migrant support organizations in Gifu, Hiroshima, and Saga Prefectures engaged in TITP migrant advocacy to argue that the implementation of the OTIT framework altered the activities and roles of civil society groups. Highly limited in their fiscal and organizational resources, many community unions support their activities mediating labor disputes and sheltering migrants by charging a percentage of successful settlements and a per diem fee for room and board. As OTIT officially offers these services free of cost, its implementation directly affects the organizational model of community unions. Indeed, community unions have reported changes in the number of consultations and total migrants served, with the cases they do receive often being too complex or nuanced for OTIT and necessitating the networks and experience of more established actors. As a result, I highlight that community unions have been displaced from some adversarial roles such as directly representing TITP workers in arbitration into collaborative ones such as taking on complex and difficult cases, introducing workers to workplaces with better conditions, and exchanging information with government officials at regular hearings.