Abstract
Comparing two groups of refugees and their asylum policies in Japan, this article challenges the claim that the spread of international human rights norm causes the expansion of rights for international migration. Based on the multilayered citizenship theory that posits boundaries between illegal migrants, temporary residents, permanent residents, second and first class nationals in an immigration policy, this study suggests the following. Refugees extracted concessions from the Japanese government through a legal path, while the government introduced a segmented residential rights scheme into the asylum policy in an attempt to limit the spread of the international human rights norm. Due to the automatic segmentation of the migration process, refugees have been forced to modify their migration strategies.
