Migration continues to be a major area of policymaking globally. Decisions about how to best manage the economic and social impacts of more diverse populations represent important policy challenges for governments. This is particularly true for industrialized Asian countries like Japan which are turning to immigration as a way of addressing shrinking workforces due to some of the world’s fastest rates of aging.
Recent Japanese resident registry data suggests foreign-born people comprised about 2.6% of the population as of 2025, or about 3.32 million people. While this is much lower than North American and European immigrant-receiving countries, it nevertheless marks a high point for Japan. Not surprisingly, this shift has renewed political and public attention towards how to successfully handle these increasing numbers.
While successive Japanese governments have consciously avoided publicly talking about “immigrants” or “immigration policy”, in practice they have devoted sizable national efforts and resources toward integrating them into society. Under the banner of “multicultural coexistence”, this approach has largely fallen to subnational (prefectural) governments to devise their own local policy plans and initiatives.
As of October 2025, two-thirds (31) of Japan’s 47 prefectures had publicly done so, either as an explicit coexistence plan or as part of broader internationalization efforts. These prefectures tend to have higher shares of foreign-born people (Figure 2). While we can’t say whether these plans reflect or attract growing numbers of immigrants, it is clear they theoretically apply to a large proportion of Japanese citizens and foreign-born people alike.
Figure 2. Share of foreign-born population by prefectures and public presence of multicultural coexistence initiatives.
Yet despite their widespread presence and policy importance, there is little systematic evidence about what is actually in these plans. In our recent study, we analyzed all 31 available sets of multicultural coexistence plans and implementation documents. We thematically identified three key areas: what is multicultural coexistence, why is it needed, and how is it meant to be implemented.
First, multicultural coexistence at the prefectural level involves creating a state of existence where foreign residents and native-born Japanese relate with each other on equal terms. Moreover, policymakers stress how these relationships involve mutual effort by both groups while emphasizing their “naturalness” by using metaphors like atoms or trees. Second, the plans justify coexistence on several grounds including the growing size and driver of change and an opportunity for Japan. Third, implementation ought to happen in two ways: first, by providing key services like language training and disaster preparedness; and second, by promoting greater awareness via intercultural exchanges involving festivals, volunteering, and civic education about rights and responsibilities. Notably, these mechanisms are ideally developed and supported by leaders within foreign-born communities, children of immigrants, and exchange students.
Identifying how prefectural-level plans present multicultural coexistence matters because these elements potentially shape how this approach to integrating immigrants gets put into practice. Although we focused on how these ideas are “imagined” and represented on paper, these documents play important roles in capturing and conveying national efforts at managing immigration to more local levels of government. These subnational levels of policymaking are likely to remain important places for a range of social policies that directly affect newcomers and citizens alike-especially in Asian contexts facing similar demographic challenges.
Read the original article in Policy Studies Journal:
Mariri Niino and William L. Allen. 2026. “Imagined Integration: The Logics of Japanese Immigrant Integration Policy” Policy Studies Journal 54(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.70137.
About the Article’s Author(s)
Mariri Niino is a graduate of the MSc Migration Studies at the University of Oxford and St. Anne’s College. Her research interests are in policy-making and public opinion, particularly around migration.
William Allen is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of Politics and International Relations (PAIR) at the University of Southampton. His research focuses on how citizens engage with information about political and economic issues, notably migration, and what this means for global public opinion and policy-making.
Follow Willian Allen on BlueSky: @williamlallen.bsky.social
Follow the authors on LinkedIn: William Allen and Mariri Niino.
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