AN EMERGING LOCAL ACTOR: THE ROLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN JAPAN'S REFUGEE POLICY

Abstract

This thesis examines the ways in which universities in Japan have contributed to refugee assistance through facilitating their holistic integration. Currently, scholarships have largely focused on Japan’s restrictive refugee policy, non-compliance to international protection norms, as well as the roles of public and private actors in the country’s long history in refugee assistance. Yet, there is still a lack of research on the role of higher education in the protection of refugees in Japan, which in recent years has gained prominence in public discourse. Through a triangulation approach involving document analysis and semi-structured interviews regarding (i) three higher education initiatives (the Japanese Initiative for the future of Syrian Refugees, the UNHCR-Refugee Higher Education Programme, and the Syrian Scholars Initiative) and (ii) a university-level student refugee support group, I analyse the roles universities have played in assisting refugees inside and outside of Japan. Applying the holistic integration model, I argue that universities in Japan have, through top-down and bottom-up approaches, contributed to refugee assistance by facilitating their holistic integration on social, interactional, and subjective levels. While universities have institutionally adapted to provide selected refugee students with the means to improve their integration into Japanese society, certain institutional and internal barriers still exist, limiting iii their contribution to more generic assistance that do not address refugee students’ needs nor larger public attitudes towards refugees in general. This led most of the responsibility to tailor refugee-specific needs to fall on external organisations and informal student networks. In contrast, university students adopt a grassroot approach to bridge the gap between the Japanese and the larger refugee communities, facilitating a more welcoming environment for refugees. In this manner, universities through administrative and student levels complement each other to not only improve refugees’ fit into the environment, but also influence change in the environment itself.