The Future is Foreign: Women and Immigrants in Corporate Japan

Hilary J. Holbrow

18:00-19:30, May 19, 2026

Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University

In person only / No registration required

Japan's foreign population has grown exponentially since the liberalization of its border control policy in 1989. But, because political discourse paints the foreign population as temporary, research on non-citizens' experiences and outcomes relative to comparable Japanese is in its infancy. In this talk, I discuss how white-collar migrants from Asia and the West fare after finding employment in elite Japanese firms, exploring the extent to which they evade, or remain constrained by, existing patterns of inequality. I find that women, regardless of national origin, fall to the bottom of the stratification hierarchy, while immigrant men experience little or no disadvantage. The study demonstrates that, despite Japan’s reputation for xenophobia, in contemporary white-collar workplaces gender is a far sharper axis of inequality than is foreign origin.

Hilary J. Holbrow is Assistant Professor of Japanese Politics and Society at Indiana University. A sociologist by training, her scholarship examines gender inequality, work and organizations, and immigration. Her prior research has appeared in Social Forces, The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, International Migration Review, Work and Occupations, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Social Science Japan Journal, among others. She is an International Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, and an Associate in Research at Harvard’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.

This talk is organized by Megha Wadhwa (Assistant Professor, Department of English Studies).