Abstract
This paper is aimed at examining the validity of macro-micro models with regard to international migration, based on my research on the migration processes of Japanese-Brazilians to Japan. Dominant theories of international migration, which focus on macro-structural imbalance of labor demand and supply or motivations of potential migrants, are inadequate in the following two ways. Firstly, it cannot explain why fewer people migrate than theoretically expected. Considering the unequal distribution of job opportunities, people in the South should have migrated in a much larger scale. Secondly, it is also left unexplained why so many people migrate out of so few places with similar economic conditions. In the case of Brazilian migration to Japan, the number has been increasing even during the long-term recession since 1992. Examining these problems using migration systems theory, two insights are derived with regard to macro-micro linkage. (1) Macro-structural factors cannot be translated into individual decisions to migrate unless macro and micro conditions are mediated by meso-linkage (imigration systems). (2) Linking macro and micro directly may lead to an oversight of a range of sociological facts though it is often theoretically heuristic.
