2010年代における日本の外国人労働者政策の急変

～1990年体制はなぜ崩れたのか～

抄録

Since the amendment of the immigration act in 1990, the Japanese foreign workers policy had been guided by two major principles. One is an active acceptance of professionals and engineers (principle A). And the other is a rejection and restriction of manual and unskilled workers (principle B). After a large-scale reamendment of the immigration act in 2009, however, the Japanese government started to introduce new kinds of foreign workers policies, which deviated from the above-mentioned two principles in a fundamental way. This paper investigates the reason why such a sudden policy change had been carried out during this decade. The paper analyzes the transcripts of speeche acts made by members in the Cabinet office's major policy-making meetings, such as the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (Keizai Zaisei Shimonkaigi), and shows that some of the members in the meeting tried to destroy past principles by challenging the validity of the concept of manual and unskilled workers and abusing the concept of highly skilled talent in order to open the way to accept unskilled foreign workers.