This paper examines the effects of the fundamental change in Japan’s immigration policy on migrant workers based on a case study of the expanding Technical Intern Training Program in the construction industry by focusing on the growing relationship between Japan and Vietnam. An increase in the number of trainees in occupations related to construction work since 2011 has led to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism implementing a substantial guest worker program for trainees who have completed the training program named “Urgent Measures Concerning the Utilization of Foreign Human Resources in the Field of Construction” in 2015. This has been done ostensibly to meet the labor demand for facilities for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. The long-term purpose of the program, however, is to create a transnational labor pool of skilled workers in construction. Field research was conducted in Japan in 2015 and in Vietnam in 2016 to explore the motives behind and roles played by multiple actors involved in creating a new industrial structure, such as supervising organizations, accepting employers, and dispatched instructors to training centers of sending organizations. The analysis showed that despite the passive attitude of many actors toward expanding acceptance, a few model cases of positive promotion for training and recruiting foreign workers have a significant implication on the transformation of the construction labor market in the context of aging society in transition.

ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is blurring the boundaries in time and space between work and the home, although they have been historically separated. It gives the possibility to work anytime and anywhere in time and space at home. Also it can bring private time or communication into the workplace. In this paper, research has been conducted with interviews and a descriptive diary study of 6 dual-earner families with infants, to study ICT use and its impact in their daily life, about 1) work at home with ICT use and 2) ICT private use at the workplace. The results show that for some participants having extra work as management or in busy periods, the working time with ICT eroded their personal time. And ICT at the workplace is privately used to communicate between husbands and wives to coordinate housework and childcare, or to obtain emotional benefit. ICT mediates contexts of work within the family domain and encourages concepts of work efficiency and productivity to distribute housework and childcare into tasks and controlling time. Moreover, ICT private use at the workplace has raised consciousness towards the family by shifting the points of contact with families into work time and space.