Abstract
This paper critically examines studies on Japan's urban ethnicity, focusing on the limits of the Chicago paradigm dominating this field. The defects of the Chicago school involve disregard of structural and institutional factors such as the state and the market. The disregard of the state apparatus results in overlooking the securitization of migration in the last decade. In addition, the lack of labor market analysis leads to a superficial understanding of migrant communities. The author suggests two alternative approaches that make full use of legacies of urban sociology: (a) bringing the state and market back in by way of the new urban sociology and (b) uniting subfields of urban sociology with the notions of space and place.
