3 衣服産業における生産過程の国外移転と女性移住労働者の導入(III 投稿論文)

抄録

This paper examines the relationship between international relocation of the production process and the introduction of migrant workers by Japanese firms, using the garment industry as an example. In the 1990s, many Japanese manufacturers in the garment industry moved their factories to China, searching for a low wage labor force. At the same time, the firms, where the relocation of production process was difficult, utilized foreign trainees as low wage labor forces. In the UK and the US, domestic manufacturers lost a large share of the market to overseas suppliers in the 1980s. Those firms, which managed to survive, came to rely on homeworkers and female migrant workers who were employed by ethnic minority entrepreneurs. The imigrants society which provides such a labor force does not exist in Japan. From the 1990s, foreign trainees were introduced as a young and low wage labor force. Because the trainee is an "unfree laborer" who does not have the freedom to move, firms can secure a stable labor force at a lower wage. In that sense, foreign trainees were in the same position as female migrant workers in the UK and the US. The foreign traineeship program promotes internationalization of the labor market in two ways. First, it enables smaller firms to secure a low wage labor force. Secondly, it raises a laborer's skill level by training and helps larger firms transfer their production process outside the country. The more production abroad is expanded, and the labor force, with a certain level of skill, increases, the more the source of the labor force supply to Japan increase.