The EU Migrant Generation in Asia: Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities 9781529225020

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Helena Hof

The EU Migrant Generation in Asia Middle-Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities

G l o b a l m i g r at i o n a n d s o c i a l c h a n g e

Global Migration and Social Change series  

Series Editor: Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham, UK

The Global Migration and Social Change series showcases original research that looks at the nexus between migration, citizenship and social change.

Forthcoming in the series: Mediated Emotions of Migration Sukhmani Khorana Social Networks and Migration Relocations, Relationships and Resources Louise Ryan

Out now in the series: Migration, Health, and Inequalities Critical Activist Research across Ecuadorean Borders Roberta Villalón Navigating the European Migration Regime Male Migrants, Interrupted Journeys and Precarious Lives Anna Wyss Postcoloniality and Forced Migration Mobility, Control, Agency Edited by Martin Lemberg-Pedersen, Sharla M. Fett, Lucy Mayblin, Nina Sahraoui and Eva Magdalena Stambøl

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Global Migration and Social Change series Series Editor: Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham, UK

International advisory board: Leah Bassel, University of Roehampton, UK Avtar Brah, Birkbeck, University of London, UK Sergio Carrera, CEPS, Belgium Elaine Chase, University College London, UK Alessio D’Angelo, Middlesex University, UK Alan Gamlen, Monash University, Australia Andrew Geddes, European University Institute, Italy Roberto G. Gonzales, Harvard University, US Elżbieta Goździak, Georgetown University, US Jonathan Xavier Inda, University of Illinois, US David Ingleby, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Anna Lindley, SOAS University of London, UK Cecilia Menjívar, University of California, US Peter Nyers, McMaster University, Canada Jenny Phillimore, University of Birmingham, UK Ben Rogaly, University of Sussex, UK Paul Spoonley, Massey University, New Zealand Susanne Wessendorf, London School of Economics, UK Amanda Wise, Macquarie University, Australia Elisabetta Zontini, University of Nottingham, UK

Find out more at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/global-migration-and-social-change

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA Middle-​Class Aspirations in Asian Global Cities Helena Hof

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2500-​6 hardcover ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2501-​3 ePub ISBN 978-1-5292-2502-0 ePdf The right of Helena Hof to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Andrew Corbett Front cover image: Getty Images/d3sign Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents Series Preface List of Figures and Tables List of Abbreviations Glossary Notes on the Author Acknowledgements

vi vii viii ix xi xii

Introduction

1

PART I Spatial Mobility to Asia: Moving Ahead by Moving Out 1 The EU Generation and Their Migration Motivations 2 Destination Singapore: The Dream of a Cosmopolis 3 Global City Tokyo: Japan’s Diversification from Within

21

PART II Organisational and Career Mobility: Seizing Security, Success and Self-​Realisation 4 Singapore: Professionalising the Self 5 Tokyo: (Dis)Embedding in the Japanese Labour Market 6 Career Trajectories through an Intersectional Lens

83

23 51 66

85 103 121

PART III (Im)Mobility through Differentiated Embedding: The Ties That Bind 7 Immobility and Emplacement: Making the City Home 8 Belonging through Romantic Relationships

145

Conclusion

186

Appendix A: Positionality: Researching Migrants as a Migrant Appendix B: Demographic Profiles of Interlocutors References Index

198 203 212 242

v

147 167

Series Preface Helena Hof ’s The EU Migrant Generation in Asia brings to the fore the life trajectories, migratory projects and aspirations of young EU migrants in two Asian global cities, Tokyo and Singapore. The book paints a rich, finegrained portrait of a group of young people juggling the dream of spatial and social mobility central to the EU project, middle-class aspirations, and the consequences of the economic and financial crisis of the 2010s – as well as being on the verge of the COVID-19 pandemic that deeply disrupted international mobility and led to protracted border closures, particularly for non-nationals. In the chapters of her book, Hof vividly captures and nuances the challenges young men and women face in the attempt to fulfil their aspirations in Asia. For many, moving away from Europe is the fulfillment of a dream and also the realisation that social status, professional recognition and economic gratification are hard to achieve on the continent in the current economic conjuncture. However, the reality of migration and settlement in Singapore and Tokyo, even for those who are often portrayed as privileged migrants, is far from trouble-free and often requires compromises and renegotiations of initial expectations. We are delighted to have The EU Migrant Generation in Asia in our series. Alert to internal divisions and gender dynamics, the book offers novel perspectives on the EU generation outside its ‘comfort zone’ and invites readers to bring class back into the analysis of migration and mobility. It shows how personal and intimate relationships and lifestyle choices are intertwined with professional aspirations and the search for social mobility, and argues that migration to Singapore or Tokyo is, for the EU generation, an alternative route to middle-classness in times of social and economic transformation and global rising precariousness. Nando Sigona Oxford, 15 July 2022

vi

List of Figures and Tables Figures 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2

Unemployment rate among young people in the EU and selected member states, 2005–​19 Explanatory three-​level typology of motivations for moving Total population Singapore, June 2020 Population and population structure in Singapore Growth of the number of young EU citizens (aged 25–34) in Japan, 2006–​20 EU citizens by prefecture of residence in Japan, 2006, 2011, 2017, 2020

28 37 60 61 80 81

Tables 1.1 Types of movers and their main features B.1 Singapore B.2 Tokyo

vii

36 204 208

List of Abbreviations CBD EP

EU FDI HDB HRM MNC MRT PAP PR PRC SME TCN UX design VIE

Central Business District Employment Pass. The most common visa for university-​educated foreigners in expert or professional jobs in Singapore. Equalled with the visa for the highly skilled/​foreign talents European Union foreign direct investment Housing and Development Board of Singapore human resource management multinational corporation Mass Rapid Transit system, Singapore’s public underground train system People’s Action Party. Strongest political party in the Republic of Singapore permanent residence (in Singapore, Japan, as well as third countries) People’s Republic of China small and medium-​sized enterprises third country national user experience design Volontariat International en Entreprise, French overseas full-​time internship programme. Eligible to EU graduates up to the age of 28

viii

Glossary ang moh

Old Chinese-​dialect term for White people in Singapore, sometimes derogatory.

boundaryless career Career developed through extra-​o rganisational networks and firm change(s). Engineer/​Specialist The most common skilled work visa category for in Humanities/​ foreign residents in Japan. International Services expatriate

Employees on a home-​country contract who are sent abroad for a previously determined period of time on a corporate assignment.

gaijin

Abbreviation of the Japanese word for ‘foreigner’ (gaikokujin; literally ‘person from outside [of Japan]’), often used with a racialised connotation referring to White people.

Global North/​ Global South

Common categorisation of countries often equated with developed countries (Global North) and developing countries (Global South)

gurōbaru jinzai

Japanese for global human resources.

foreign talent

Foreigners on a highly skilled visa in Singapore.

heartlands

Residential areas of suburban Singapore, characterised by government subsidised housing complexes.

Non-​Residents

Foreign residents in Singapore on a work, student or dependent visa; not permanent residents. ix

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

Residents

Population in Singapore considered as permanent, composed of the Singaporean Citizen Population and foreign residents with permanent residence.

salarīmen

Japanese term for white-​collar worker, associated particularly with male Japanese employees.

seishain

Permanent employee of a Japanese firm. The term implies the idea of secure, if not lifetime, employment, complemented by numerous fringe benefits for employees.

Self-​initiated expatriate

Human resource management term for expatriates who are not sent by a corporation but migrate independently and work on local contracts abroad.

shūkatsu

Abbreviation for shūshoku katsudō. Japanese word for the institutionalised activity of searching for a full-​time job while still in education. In English, ‘job hunting’.

West/​Westerner

Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand/​ people from the named regions. Chapter 1 comments on the racial aspect of the label Westerner.

Japanese expressions This book uses the modified Hepburn system of romanisation. The phonetic transcription of any given Japanese term is provided in rōmaji, followed by its translation in English in brackets.

x

Notes on the Author Helena Hof is Senior Research and Teaching Fellow at University of Zurich/​Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Her research interests include socio-​cultural change and the labour market in Japan and Singapore, international migration, gender, global cities, and startups and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Her recent publications include ‘EU migrant retention and the temporalities of migrant staying: A new conceptual framework’ (2021, with Simon Pemberton and Emilia Pietka-​ Nykaza), ‘When “global talents” struggle to become local workers: The new face of skilled migration to corporate Japan’ (2021, with Yen-​Fen Tseng) and ‘Intersections of race and skills in European migration to Asia: Between white cultural capital and “passive whiteness” ’ (2020).

xi

Acknowledgements This book is the product of a long academic journey spanning several countries and having started with a dissertation project that has grown and developed after completion of my PhD.1 Bringing this journey to an end would never have been possible without the tremendous support of many people along the way. First and foremost, I wish to thank the young migrants who shared the concerns and joys of their migratory experiences with me. Follow-​up interviews as well as continued emails and social media messages over the years have signalled their interest in this research and have encouraged me to write an academic book that I hope is of interest to an audience beyond that of university libraries. I would like to sincerely thank my dissertation committee, whose four members have greatly influenced my academic thinking and writing. Gracia Liu-​Farrer has been an incredible source of knowledge, inspiration, critical reflection and motivation and has been an example of a researcher’s passion for academic work. Her dedication to her advisees’ work has impressed me and has been a guide for me when writing while balancing teaching, institutional responsibilities and my personal life. Discussions with and teaching by Glenda Roberts have directed my interest to the human side of critical academic inquiry of workplace and migration issues and have sparked my enthusiasm for ethnographic practice and writing. Miloš Debnár offered the needed support from early on during my PhD when uncertainties over the design of my doctoral project and the choice of the group in focus of the research abounded. Adrian Favell believed in my research when he agreed to co-​ advise my doctoral project. His theoretical ideas have sharpened the analysis and helped positioning this book at the intersections of separate academic fields, including Japanese/​Asian regional studies, migration research, and the sociology of work and youth in the European Union.

1

This book has evolved from the author’s doctoral dissertation, which has been uploaded on Waseda University’s repository. The author holds the full rights of the published online version of the dissertation. xii

Acknowledgements

Many more mentors and colleagues have supported me along the way. At Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Laavanya Kathiravelu was a wonderful source of information and inspiration for my first field trip to the country in 2015. Two years later, Chris McMorran helped me find my way through the National University of Singapore (NUS) and connected me to its Japanese Department. Furthermore, conversations with Brenda Yeoh and Michiel Baas of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS, and their feedback on conference presentations and article drafts have pushed me to think through binary migrant categories and sensitive issues of race and ethnicity. Last but not least, Peidong Yang at Nanyang Technological University has been a role model of publishing as a young academic and kindly took the time to provide feedback on a draft chapter of this book. In Tokyo, the Graduate-​School of Asia-​Pacific Studies (GSAPS) at Waseda University has facilitated my research for many years and has provided the necessary institutional and logistical support for fieldwork, participation at conferences and academic exchange. Jotaro Kato and Noriko Fujita have been companions on conferences and for discussions and helped with the right nuances in Japanese titles or expressions for my research, for which I am grateful. My friends in Tokyo and Germany supported my enthusiasm for research and listened to problems when needed, for which I want to thank you Jasmin Roth, Chimin Kawa, Momoko Ozawa, Katja Wickles, Misato Hashimoto, Reina Kusui and Ayano Osanai. My special thanks goes to Kim Suan Lim, my dear friend at GSAPS, and Tricia Okada, who turned our writing group into an anchor during my postdoctoral fellowship at Waseda, as well as to Aimi Muranaka and Megha Wadhwa, who shared the ups and downs of life as a junior academic with me. I also want to thank Karen Shire, Nana Oishi, Kumiko Kawashima, James Farrer, Ryoko Yamamoto, Gabriele Vogt, Jamie Coates, Jie Zhang, Jenny Phillimore, Anne Stefanie Aronsson and Yen-​Fen Tseng for stimulating discussions and constructive feedback during different stages of research and writing. In Zurich, David Chiavacci has supported the completion of this book by commenting on the proposal draft and by always offering an answer to academic questions. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to become a member of the collaborative research group at UZH and of WriteLab at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, which took the time to critically comment on the revised chapters of this book. Finally, I particularly want to thank Lin (Lynn) Yu Ng and Zanete Zujeva for their assistance over the course of compiling interview transcriptions, proofreading, copy-​editing and formatting of this book. Beyond their support as research assistants, I appreciate Lynn’s and Zanete’s thoughtful reflections on the clarity and nuances of my writing which have improved the book as it stands. xiii

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THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

I am indebted to the financial funding I received along the way of completing this research project. Without the MEXT (Japanese government) scholarship for graduate school, the Haraguchi Memorial Asia Research Fund for the field trips to Singapore and the Early Career Scientists award by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science I would not have been able to study in Japan, collect the data in Tokyo and Singapore, nor present my analysis globally and develop the project into a book. I would never have had the drive nor the confidence to embark on the journey of book writing if there was not my family, close friends, and my husband. They all believed in me and gave me the energy to continue despite setbacks and self-​doubts. I am grateful to my parents for providing what they could to prepare me for what literally became a global life and for their unflagging support and patience during hectic and emotionally constraining times. I also want to thank my parents-​in-​law for their warmth when starting the revisions for this book in a new country after many years in Tokyo. My sisters have always been both family and friends. Thank you for visiting me in my adopted home, for listening and giving feedback and for the many joyful times that balanced out the research-​intensive ones. Finally, thank you Ondrej for going through all this together with me and for sharing this mobile story.

xiv

Introduction It was a chilly morning in March 2014, when I met Claire for our first interview. It took me a few minutes to find her at the Japan Railways Shinjuku Station South Exit gate, reminding me that this was not the best meeting point for a busy Saturday morning. Finally, I spotted the dark blonde woman among the crowd of shorter Japanese teenagers, and we made our way to one of Shinjuku Southern Terrace’s coffee shops. Shinjuku is one of Tokyo’s bustling commercial centres, and, at this time of the day, it was full of young shoppers and middle-​aged people dining at exclusive lunch gatherings. Claire is French. I met her at a university-​affiliated dance circle, where university students and early-​career Japanese and foreign employees mingle, dance, go out and form friendships, and, sometimes, romantic relationships. Claire invited me to one of her house parties, an attempt to deepen her networks in her chosen country of residence –​Japan. At the party, I met her French and Japanese friends, both young employees and students in their final years of university. Claire’s network reflected her personal development in Japan. A major in Japanese business management, Claire encountered Japanese communication and working culture through university exchange and an internship. Friends from these pre-​full-​time employment stays in Japan made up her network to date, but her initial inspiration was her brother, who had migrated to Tokyo ten years earlier. She jokingly remembered how ‘he wrote my name in katakana,1 and it was so cool that I really wanted to learn this language’. Claire’s parents’ accounts of life abroad before she was even born and the family’s extended travel sparked her desire to live abroad as an adult herself. After her decision to major in Japanese studies, Claire realised that her résumé did not fit the French labour market, where she had never worked. ‘Jobs are hard to find in France, [but] here I am exceptional as a foreigner. I have something more, though also something less. I bring diversity, so it is an advantage, compared to being in France.’ Over coffee, Claire shared her confusion over her new relationship with a Japanese male. She admitted that, in some ways, this relationship was also

1

Syllabary, one of three components of the Japanese writing system. 1

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

an attempt at trying to understand Japan and Japanese people. This was also true for her job, where she struggled to adjust to business practices in the marketing department of her French firm. While the upper management was French, her immediate colleagues and superiors were all Japanese. Claire was anxious that not conforming to unwritten rules, for instance, the unofficial Japanese business practice of staying in the office until late, when everybody has finished work, could threaten her tenure in the company. I met Claire a few more times in Japan, most recently in early 2016, before she left the country. It was her farewell party, and she and her current French boyfriend were about to embark on a new opportunity in Singapore. It took another year for Claire to reply to my inquiry email about her new life. Claire had sensed a glass ceiling in the Japanese business setting and hoped for an internal transfer to the Singaporean entity, especially since her boyfriend had already found a job in the Southeast Asian city-​state. However, Singapore had already started tightening its visa regime at the time, and the Singapore branch could not sponsor her work visa. In Japan, Claire’s contract was not extended either. Claire only replied to my email when, after ten months of searching for a job in Singapore, involving frequent travel due to her lack of legal residence status, she finally landed a job as a data analyst in a security firm, a task she had previously done at her job in Japan. Fast forward to summer 2021, when I last talked to Claire. She had returned to France in 2020, after four years and two jobs in Singapore. Restructuring within her firm would have transferred part of the operations, including her current position, to Shanghai. Claire considered her desire to be closer to her family and her boyfriend’s wish to return to France, and eventually, she decided to put a stop to her life in Asia. Back in Paris, working as an entry-​ level data analyst in a tech start-​up, Claire reflected with mixed feelings: ‘It’s a journey, right? It’s a lot of thinking over what you really want to do, and deciding, okay, this [current] company gave me the opportunity to be a data analyst, even though I’m not an engineer. And in France, it’s quite something, because they are very focused on the degree that you have. … It’s a bit weird, because when you’re abroad, you know everyone that actually made this choice of being abroad [did so] as a kind of high priority in their life. … And you do what you can to make that happen. Even though this may not be the smartest move in terms of career or in terms of pay or whatever, but you accept that, to make being abroad happen.’ Claire spoke about the crux of young adulthood and her early career abroad, especially in Asia, and, with it, about the core interest of this book. The choice of living abroad in a country like Japan –​a formerly non-​immigrant country with work visa regulations and a complex language –​demands 2

Introduction

investment and sacrifice. These range from the struggle to survive in a different business and linguistic context, rather than focusing strategically on career development, the lack of professional networks, and alienation from family and friends back home. This book is about one specific group of European millennials, whom I call the European Union Generation, hereafter, the EU Generation. They are middle-​class university graduates who encountered pre-​employment mobility in their youth and who have grown up both with the idea of intra-​European border-​crossing as normal, if not normative, and with Asia’s rising power, as opposed to the onset of political, economic and social crises in the West.2 This book is an attempt to make sense of the EU Generation’s mobile trajectories in and across Asia. It seeks to understand how young adulthood, early career decisions and physical mobility are related. With this analysis, the book makes two main contributions to the scholarship on mobilities and international migration, as well as to socio-​cultural change and diversification in the receiving societies of Singapore and Japan (Vertovec, 2007, 2011). First, it is an account of the persisting significance of class in a migration phenomenon that is variably labelled as lifestyle migration, economic migration or youth migration, which lacks a critical class analysis. The book proposes that migration to Singapore or Tokyo is an alternative route to middle-​classness and a professional identity in times of changing ways of work, apparent taken-​for-​g rantedness of geographical mobility and global rising precariousness. Second, the book argues that Singapore and Tokyo have changed tremendously in their reception of highly educated migrants in recent years, which has led to diversifying patterns of social and professional embedding in both countries. Despite Tokyo’s increasing efforts to retain those who succeed in putting down roots in Japan, migrants in both countries are locked in a position of self-​ascribed second-​class citizenship, which has become more pronounced during times of border closures as a reaction to the COVID-​19 pandemic. Therefore, while offering an in-​depth analysis of migrant incorporation in contemporary Singapore and Tokyo, this book extends its scope beyond these two Asian countries and considers the implications of early career migration on life course at a time of both global mobility and exclusionary systems of migration. As outlined in Claire’s case, the EU Generation’s geographical mobility spans at least two continents and several countries, their organisational mobility across a variety of positions and industries. These two dimensions

2

This book uses the standard definition among states, public media and laypeople of the West as Europe, the United States and Canada and Australia/​New Zealand. That said, the thesis of this book is a critique of the often applied artificial use of East and West as binaries and seeks to challenge this perspective through its inquiry. 3

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

of mobility, paired with the notion of social immobility, run like a golden thread through their lives. While Claire is part of the minority of interlocutors who returned to her home country after close to a decade in Asia, her story is representative of the complexity of young Europeans’ life paths in formerly ‘non-​immigrant’ Japan and ‘multicultural’ Singapore. It unravels the obstacles for professional and social embedding, and with it, the perception of a possibility to stay in both countries. Claire’s account also speaks as much about the uncertainties that young middle-​class adults face when confronted with decisions regarding career and employment in a world of flexible labour and increasingly short-​term contracts, as it does about young Europeans’ mobility aspirations and the sometimes-​unforeseen opportunities that geographical mobility offers for forming or changing one’s occupational trajectory.

Mobility, immobility and aspirations in the life course People have always been on the move. However, movement was depicted as a hardship for those in need, supposedly forced or involuntary, especially in the times of post-​World War II prosperity and the progress of many recently industrialised countries. Decades later, in the early 21st century, Hannam et al (2006) coined the term ‘mobility turn’. This concept captures a shift in scholarly orientation towards the acknowledgement of mobility and movement as an intrinsic part of life and as a necessary piece for understanding its counterpart, immobility and vice versa. However, since the turn of the century, enhanced mobility has replaced immobility as an aspirational state and a symbol of success. Mobility represents progress, innovation and a dynamic, forward-​looking mindset, whereas immobility connotes decline or stagnation (Faist, 2013). For migrants, geographical mobility often serves as a tool or a strategy, that is, as a means to an end. Sometimes, it is even an orientation towards life, and thus, an end in itself (Carling and Schewel, 2018). I argue that this holds true for a distinctive group of highly educated EU citizens, who are part of what is often called the millennial generation, who have embarked on life in Singapore and Tokyo. As such, this book inquires into the meanings of work, career and a middle-​class lifestyle of those citizens who have come of age in the enlarging EU of the early 2000s. Given their shared identification of having grown up in the integrating and crisis-​ridden EU, as I will demonstrate later, and acknowledging my adaptation of the term ‘generation’ to a specific group within the millennial generation, I call these migrants the EU Generation and follow them on their ‘worklife pathways’ (Krings et al, 2013b, pp 21–​2) to and across Asia. The worklife pathways concept helps by theorising the vague terms of ‘lifestyle’ and ‘career’, which are not given, static or uncontested. The concept holds that migration motivations, the 4

Introduction

ongoing process of being a migrant and subsequent migration decisions are not merely driven by aspects of work. While undeniably playing a significant role, economic motives are but one aspect and are complemented by and entangled with non-​economic motives. Furthermore, economic motives refer to more than salary and title, and include intrinsic meanings of work, such as creativity, self-​development and flexibility, among others (Krings et al, 2013a). Migratory pathways are as full of aspirations and hopes as they are of stagnation and setbacks. People perceive themselves as mobile, either because of their actual movement –​by moving up a social or professional hierarchy through the acquisition of higher salaries, titles, or status and recognition –​or because they see themselves reaching certain goals or milestones faster than others (Hage, 2009). As such, mobility is relational and always depends on the counterpart with whom people compare themselves. It is temporal, too, given that the aspirations and goals of the EU Generation in the borderless EU territory (Jensen, 2015) are different both from the cosmopolitanism of US corporate expatriates3 and Ivy League college-​educated elites, and from the similarly cosmopolitan-​minded senior European generation of the early-​ integrating EU, who, in Favell’s (2008b, pp 196–​7) words, were ‘pioneers of a better, more cosmopolitan Europe’, instead of exiting the very same, in some migrants’ eyes, sinking ship. What is specific to them, then, is that their upbringing in the EU’s free mobility space and their transition to the labour market in a post-​Lehman shock EU in crisis directs their mobility aspirations to destinations outside the EU and outside the West, that is, the major migration destinations for middle-​class career-​related migration to date. Aspirations in migration research were first theorised by Jørgen Carling (2002), who focused on South–​North migration. Turning the question of mobility on its head, Carling asked why some people were involuntarily mobile. He developed the aspirations/​ability model in order to separate the two steps involved in migration: the aspiration to move and the ability to do so. Moreover, Carling provided different scenarios for those who want to be mobile and thus shed light on the question of immobility. In mobility and migration studies, immobility is often juxtaposed with the positively related idea of mobility, that is, moving forward (or upward), in either a geographical or socio-​economic sense. Immobility thus seems to capture 3

International human resource management literature defines expatriates as employees on a home-​country contract who are sent on an overseas corporate assignment for a previously determined period of time. Expatriates are often associated with an elite or privileged status given their high salaries and benefits (Andresen et al, 2013). In migration studies, the term has been criticised for its racialised notion, among others, as Western or White migrants tend to be called expatriates, while others are addressed as migrants (Cranston, 2017). 5

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

moments of stagnation, or, in Hage’s words (2005, p 471) the feeling of being ‘stuck’ –​the idea of not moving fast enough or as fast as others. Again, such perceived immobility can be multidimensional and constitutes the core of the way I conceptualise (im)mobility in relation to aspirations in this book: as a subjective idea of one’s life, of perceiving oneself reaching a certain goal, and the way to it as a route that is both geographical –​migration –​ and professional/​socio-​economic. Professional and socio-​economic (im) mobility encompasses (not) finding employment, (not) developing a career and (not) forming networks in a given place, all of which might help nurture class-​specific assets, such as practices of consumption and leisure, the acquisition of property or membership in a community or society. That said, immobility is not necessarily always negative. As the typology of the EU Generation in Chapter 1 shows, immobility (staying in Europe) is a choice for some of these aspiring young adults. Furthermore, once settled in a new country, geographical immobility might be necessary to grow roots, and both geographical mobility and immobility can be decisive for career development (Meyer, 2018). At the same time, it is important to note that the EU Generation are those among the cosmopolitan-​oriented young Europeans who have not only the aspirations but also the ability to leave, thus representing a small selective group within the intra-​European mobility-​experienced young adults of the 2010s. As such, while people’s described perceptions of their own mobility, most commonly understood as personal development or success, are subjective, they have real outcomes, because people act according to the expected outcomes of their decisions and practices. This is similar to the way hope and aspirations impact future mobility and unfolding trajectories (Mische, 2009). Importantly, this agency can manifest itself as the decision to stay put or not to change a job, just as it can entail migration or job transfer (Baas and Yeoh, 2019). With this theoretical foundation in mind, the following chapters portray the early adulthood of a particular generational cohort who seem to have it all: high education, strong passports and a middle-​class habitus marked by a certain degree of cultural, social and economic capital for disposal in their home country labour markets and societies. Yet a small but not negligible number of young adults turn away from the EU and build a new life in Asia’s global cities. They decide to do so instead of entering the EU labour market at a time of multifarious crises in the EU and a general trend towards flexible labour. Furthermore, their hunger for and belief in the assets of mobility and the appeal of the rising economic and soft power of Asia spur their desire to find employment in Singapore, Tokyo and other Asian hubs, and promise an enriching early adulthood distinctly different from that of their peers at home. The study of young, independent European migrants in Asian global cities draws attention to economic and social changes across the globe, to recent 6

Introduction

developments tied to the globalisation of labour markets and, with it, to the emergence of new anchors and social networks by which people construct their life paths and careers. In such contexts, young European citizens weigh their options (Jensen, 2015; Meyer, 2018). They consider not only the next big city or their home country’s capital city as an opportunity for building a middle-​class lifestyle that satisfies their cosmopolitan and transnational aspirations, nor do they limit themselves to the EU territory. The fact that there is an outflow of young Europeans beyond the EU hints at a redefinition of taken-​for-​granted life paths and an alternative vision of professional career models –​or simply the confidence that pursuing the latter is possible outside of the EU. Young adults who embark on an overseas early career and young adulthood in Asia are intrigued by the idea of life trajectories different from those of older generations and their peers in Europe. I now introduce the case of the EU Generation in order to unearth the entanglements of multiple dimensions of mobility and middle-​class aspirations among those who were raised by relatively affluent households and underwent higher education in the EU in the 2000s. The commonalities of the group in focus point to the importance of life stage and life course. Thus, not only are mobility and immobility relational and contextual, they are situational and temporal (Coulter and Scott, 2015). This becomes clear with regards to the EU Generation and the time they enter the labour market and transition from their teenage years to early adulthood. The challenges they face, the problems they encounter and the aspirations they have cannot be separated from this particular life stage, nor from the political, economic and social developments of the 2010s, as discussed in depth in Chapter 1. This book follows European migrants through this crucial time in life, where career, romance and family considerations compete with desired independence and leisure ambitions, and when care for ageing parents becomes an issue for the first time. The life course perspective thus allows us to understand mobility trajectories both within migrants’ agency and the (constraining and enabling) structures within which they (do not) move at this distinct stage in life. As such, while focusing on early adulthood, this book explores the implications of migratory decisions for individuals’ evolving lives and, potentially, their social embedding in Singaporean and Japanese society, as well as the reception of early career migrants in Singapore’s and Tokyo’s labour markets and migration regimes.

The EU Generation: a generation seeking multiple mobilities Karl Mannheim (1923) argued for the significance of events in a generation’s formative years. In the digital age, shared experiences, including ‘mediated experience’ (Edmunds and Turner, 2005, p 566), shape the transition to 7

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

adulthood and result in specific traits that allow us to distinguish generational cohorts from one another. Elsewhere, I situate the Europeans of this study as part of a generation often referred to as millennials,4 the first generation who grew up with the internet and, later, smartphones (Hof, 2019b). The shared experience of the millennial generation during adolescence and early adulthood comprises some of the most far-​reaching global incidents of the recent decades. Traumatic events, such as 9/​11, the global recession post-​Lehman Shock and the multifarious institutional crises of the EU (Chapter 1), prompted Edmunds and Turner (2005) to define them as a global generation. The authors contend that millennials’ global connections are multifaceted and complex and, thanks to globally accessible information technology, less Western and, especially, less US dominated than at the time when US television and radio spread from the North American continent and was consumed by large parts of the world. Many millennials across the EU struggled to start a career in post-​Lehman Shock labour markets (Eichhorst et al, 2013; De Genova and Tazzioli, 2016) and thus pursued further education (Eisner, 2005) and postponed the markers of ‘full’ adulthood, such as moving out of their parents’ houses, marriage and children (Eisenstadt and Turner, 2015, p 869). As the latter part of this book will show, there is another shared experience or trauma that ties this generation together: the COVID-​19 pandemic. Certainly, millennials are not the only generation that has experienced the spread of the pandemic. Yet they were in the middle of life when the consequences, including lockdowns, layoffs and far-​reaching restrictions to physical mobility, hit. At that time, the migrants of this book lived in Asia, with many having recently founded families, and they were unable to see their aging parents, their childhood friends and, for some, their romantic partners, due to border closures. These events are crucial in shaping a global generational consciousness (Edmunds and Turner, 2005) and affect how young EU citizens view their unfolding migratory trajectories in Asia. As explained more in detail elsewhere (Hof, 2019b), millennials in the EU have something in common that most of their peers around the globe could only dream of. Having been brought up in countries with high standards of living and good educational systems, their options are not limited to the nation-​state but are framed by the spatially, culturally and economically diverse territory of the EU (Favell, 2008a; Ralph, 2015; Recchi, 2015; Kuhn, 2016). More than that, European millennials have witnessed the successive enlargement of the EU, especially the most recent entries by ten

4

The millennial generation is vaguely defined as born between 1980 and the mid-​1990s (Chirimbu et al, 2011) or as having turned adult in the 2000s (Strauss and Howe, 1991; Ng et al, 2012). 8

Introduction

East European countries in 2004, and another two in 2007. In the 2010s, even ordinary citizens frequently crossed national borders (Kuhn, 2016). Work-​related changes of residence and commuting, especially from the new member countries to the more established Western countries, was common (Ralph, 2015; Recchi, 2015). Also, the more highly educated youth of the early 2000s –​those who entered the labour market around the 2010s –​increasingly included greater Europe, rather than only their home country, in work-​and life-​related considerations of the future (Picht, 2004). That said, the EU consists of 28 member states5 with great differences in culture, language and even living standards and labour markets –​between each other but also internally. Such internal and regional diversity all the more underlines that a methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002) would be misplaced in this study. Thus, rather than taking a container model and focusing on one country, assuming that the mobility flows depicted in this book are mainly directed by state borders and national politics, the grounded research that forms the basis of this book points to the situated and relational collective experience of the EU Generation, whose coming of age in the late 2000s sparked their geographical mobility to Asia. Therefore, I conceptualise these young adults as a distinctive group within the millennial generation, one that has adopted a European, if not global, standpoint on issues of career, the labour market and mobility (Jensen, 2015). Used to intra-​European freedom of mobility, their emigration from Europe followed their internal EU mobility experiences during their adolescence. While these young Europeans seldom renounce identification with their home country, they direct employment strategies and plans for the future along a European and, gradually, a global scale. Furthermore, these young adults use geographic mobility as a tool to access professional jobs and build careers that offer middle-​class lifestyles abroad and, as such, upward –​or at least not downward –​social mobility. They represent a cohort that, given their middle-​class background in developed countries, has, until recently, barely been considered as having incentives to permanently leave their home countries (as opposed to timely definite overseas assignments, such as in the case of expatriates) (Chapter 1). Broadly speaking, these European migrants belong to what can be defined as the middle class (and, for some, upper middle class) in their home countries. As explained in depth and enriched by a Bourdieusian conceptualisation of 5

The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020, but most regulations concerning trade and human mobility were maintained for the transition period until 31 December 2020. I refer to the 28 countries that were member states of the EU between 2007 and 2020 when speaking of the EU in this book because the research was conducted between 2014 and early 2021, and most respondents transitioned from school to the labour market after 2007, which is when the two most recent members, Bulgaria and Romania, joined the EU. 9

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

class in Chapter 1, the term ‘middle class’ is difficult to define, since living standards vary across EU member states. While scholars oppose the idea of one unified European middle class (Medrano, 2011), Stearns and McBride (2008) contend that European middle classes have lost their distinctiveness in the 21st century, as they have common grounds, in terms of several basic characteristics. These concern values such as investment in higher education, a professional orientation, a certain spending behaviour and a well-​travelled lifestyle, which serve as a way of distinction and middle-​class reproduction. I use the term with regard to these very basic commonalities I find among the participants of this research, with all but a few having at least one university-​educated parent. They have been raised in households that could afford higher education, regular holidays and which often encouraged some sort of intellectual or cultural extracurricular education, such as language exchanges. Few of my interlocutors referred to themselves as middle class. However, they frequently spoke of themselves as ‘citizens of the world’, ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘(European) millennials’ –​self-​identifications that, as the book will show, can be understood as these young adults’ self-​concept as part of a transnational middle class, which they adopt as highly educated mobility-​experienced citizens of the free European movement space. Class and aspirations are intertwined and shape expectations of migration and trajectories (Lentz, 2015; Oso, 2020). Thus, despite particularities of the home country labour markets or the migration channels through which the Europeans moved to Singapore or Tokyo, similarities within the group prevail. This is especially true if we look at their rationales, hopes and practices towards establishing a life and career in the destination cities. As the typology of EU migrants to Asia in Chapter 1 demonstrates, the EU Generation provides a conceptual frame for this research. These young Europeans’ mobility and lifestyle aspirations are grounded in their classed experience of growing up and entering the labour market in the EU of the 2010s. The dispositions they hold towards mobility and career and their strife for distinction travel with them to Singapore and Tokyo. Furthermore, the different power geographies of sending and receiving countries, as well as the migrants’ habitus –​shaped by previous mobility experiences and the subsequently acquired confidence of manoeuvring new contexts (Oso, 2020) –​inform how the EU Generation perceive their migration to Asia and their chance of ‘making it’ into the labour markets of their destination countries.

Singapore and Tokyo: migration destinations defying North and South, East and West The two global cities, Singapore and Tokyo, in which the participants of this research (temporarily) reside, lie outside of what is commonly seen as 10

Introduction

the West. At the same time, the cities are the leading business hubs in the Asia-​Pacific region, and their larger national entities, Singapore and Japan, have been counted among the Global North, due to their prosperity and economic performance. This makes them stand out somewhat from Asia as a region that is commonly classified as the Global South, even more, given Singapore’s colonial legacy, which has often been taken as an indicator of a developing country –​or at least of one that is yet to claim membership to the Global North. Such binary labels are certainly problematic and constitute one of the taken-​for-​g ranted perspectives this book attempts to challenge. The dichotomies of East and West, as well as Global North and Global South, and young European adults’ early career migration and mid-​to-​long-​term stays in the two cities point to a lacuna of understanding what cities like Singapore and Tokyo promise to highly educated, but professionally inexperienced, migrants –​among them the EU Generation. Orientalist thought has influenced the image that European millennials have of Singapore and Tokyo (Said, 1987), yet, in contrast to the majority of Westerners –​tourists and corporate expatriates with a limited, usually clearly defined time in Asia –​the EU Generation migrate for full-​time employment on local contracts and often without a definite end to their stay (Chapter 1). Singapore and Tokyo stand out among Asia’s global cities in their seemingly contrasting migration regimes, yet their allures are common, as explained later, when compared to other Asian hubs. Singapore and Tokyo represent almost two opposite poles in terms of the composition of society and immigration history. Singapore is a young immigrant country that recognises four major ethnic groups and presents itself as multicultural, multiracial, multilingual and multi-​religious (Chapter 2). Immigration is intertwined with the city-​state’s history, and, given its lack of natural resources, labour migration is one of the main pillars of the national economy (Velayutham, 2007). Tokyo is the capital of Japan, a country that has, for a long time, denied immigration and has claimed cultural and ethnic homogeneity (Roberts, 2018). Japan’s history of limited engagement (Hellyer, 2009) (Chapter 3), its pride of being the first developed country in Asia and the only Eastern –​or Asian –​power until recently, fostered a strong national consciousness but also difficulties in dealing with anything foreign or ‘Other’ (Iida, 1997; Ching, 2007). What makes cities like Singapore and Tokyo stand out is what Europeans consider to be an intriguing contradiction. In Eurocentric eyes, the cities’ features of the supposedly traditional ‘Other’ co-​exist with a (often referred to as ‘Western’) capitalist system; a sophisticated labour market; a strong economy and cutting-​edge institutions, technology, infrastructure, architecture, subcultures and arts projects that, from a European perspective, look futuristic or peculiar (Barthes, 1983; Chang, 2000; Iwabuchi, 2002). 11

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

While one needs to question the cause of such othering, the continuance of the orientalising discourse, even among young, highly educated Europeans, requires us to analyse how such preconceptions affect their lives in Asia (Chapter 1). From an economic point of view, cities like Singapore and Tokyo appeal, due to their strong economies. Drawing from official statistics on competitiveness, regional significance and living standards, Tokyo, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore, are frequently mentioned as the leading Asian cities (Sassen, 1991; Poreisz and Rámháp, 2014, p 6). While Tokyo and Hong Kong are referred to as the traditional economic centres of Asia, Singapore has more recently gained attention as an emerging financial and global hub (Poreisz and Rámháp, 2014, p 13). Another aspect to consider is Singapore and Tokyo’s widely praised quality of life. Both cities have significantly less pollution and more green space than most other financial hubs, especially rising Chinese cities, as well as Hong Kong (Hu et al, 2013; Poreisz and Rámháp, 2014). While several mainland Chinese cities and Hong Kong are economic centres of the region, the governing of the Chinese Communist Party has increasingly made them a politically unstable and, in terms of immigration procedures, an insecure destination for potential migrants (Jung, 2020). Singapore and Tokyo are always listed among the top in rankings on ‘Global City Competitiveness’ (IMD, 2018). Typical indicators for their competitiveness are economic strength, human capital, institutional effectiveness, financial maturity, global appeal, physical capital, social and cultural character and environment (Florida, 2012; Hu et al, 2013). In sum, these aspects render the two cities suitable and accessible locations to study the migration of highly educated Europeans to Asia –​not only despite but also because of the internal differences of these Asian global cities and their marking opposite poles –​under the overarching frame of a regionally defined migratory phenomenon. In the light of this and recent amendments in Singapore and Tokyo’s migration regimes, the two cities offer intriguing research sites for examining the changing meanings of work, career and life design for those who have the agency to exercise international migration and who are, nevertheless, constrained by migration regimes and labour market particularities (Hof, 2020c). As is often the case in migration studies and concerning the very specific group of migrants as the focus of this book in particular, there are no comprehensive statistics on the size of the population, that is, of young highly educated Europeans in Asian global cities. That said, there are in-​ depth qualitative studies that estimate the number of Westerners, or in some cases, of Europeans, in their respective field sites, such as Farrer’s (2019, p 5) book speaking of ‘roughly 90,000 Western expatriates’ in Shanghai in 2010 or Jannesari and Sullivan’s (2021) large-​scale survey of self-​initiated expatriates in the People’s Republic of China (hereafter, PRC or China), 12

Introduction

where Europeans make up between one fourth and one third of the total foreign population. Tokyo is an exception, with its detailed statistics on the foreign resident population, which confirm the rising number of young European residents in Japan, and in Tokyo in particular (Chapter 4). The opposite is true for Singapore, which does not disclose information on the number and country of origin of its foreign work visa holders and resident population, except for Chinese, Malaysian and Indian nationals, who constitute the largest groups of foreigners in the country. That said, Singapore and Japan are among the few Asian countries that have a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union (EU) in place. Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2021) claims that more than 14,000 European companies –​an increase of 3,000 since 2016 –​operate in Singapore. The volume in trade and services and rising investments of European firms in Singapore as the gate to the larger Southeast Asian market, therefore, points to an increase of positions in Europe-​affiliated firms, partly filled by foreigners and, increasingly, by self-​initiated migrants, rather than assigned corporate expatriates. Likewise, the EU–​Japan Centre (2021) proudly states that the EU–​Japan Economic Partnership Agreement is ‘the biggest trade agreement ever negotiated by the EU’, which points to the large number of European employees in Japan-​based firms. A surge in newspaper reports and small-​scale qualitative studies on European migrant groups in select Asian cities in the 2010s offers another indication of migration flows of young highly educated Europeans to a growing range of Asian destinations. Kuala Lumpur (Marlow, 2013), Dubai (Alloul, 2020), Jakarta (Fechter, 2016), Bangkok (Howard, 2009) and Beijing (Knowles, 2015) are other cities that have received unprecedented, albeit numerically small, inflows of highly educated European labour migrants, some of whom are in their early careers.6 Despite the scarce resources and varyingly defined terms of inclusion for the populations covered in the previously presented estimations and publications assembled, the population of young Europeans across Asian global cities is on the rise and, as a total number, likely consists of several tens of thousands of young adults.7 As such, the calculations capture what has been observed as fragments of recent migration flows that are part of a larger migration phenomenon, one that, as I will demonstrate, is distinctive of the 2010s and of its young adult generation. I now turn to the data on which I build my arguments and briefly explain the research design and my access to the field.

6 7

See also edited volume by Fechter and Walsh (2012). For a more detailed overview, see Hof (2019a). 13

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

Research design and data My methodological and theoretical approach to this study is informed by grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Grounded theory here refers to the way in which I approached the field and organised data collection alongside analysis. As a White European woman and a student who has visited several major Asian cities, including Singapore, and who lived in Japan off and on from 2011 onwards, I noticed the presence of a highly mobile group of young Europeans in Asian cities that had barely been documented. The fact that these migrants were young and worked on local contracts in the Asian migrant receiving societies led me to assume that they might have very different motivations to migrate and probably different (professional) migratory experiences than their well-​researched senior counterparts, the Western (and among them, European) business expatriates and diplomats in Asia (Beaverstock, 2002, 2005; Peltokorpi and Froese, 2009; Komisarof, 2012). This assumption guided my early fieldwork and raised a broad range of questions. Besides the potential significance of ‘traditional variable[s]‌ such as age, sex, class, race’ (Strauss, 1987, p 32), for European emigration, the grounded approach encouraged me to stay open to other less obvious variables and, in particular, to the intersections of the named characteristics. Over time, this method bore fruit, as the continued data collection, follow-​ ups and multi-​sited ethnographic observations enabled me to generate a thesis around the phenomenon of a generation’s mobility at the time of both an enlarging EU of increased opportunities and crisis, as well as of crucial changes in Asian labour migration policies. The research on which this book is based thus emerged from my time at graduate school in Tokyo, starting in 2013, which culminated in a dissertation. An early post-​doc period allowed me to follow up with my interlocutors and extended the total time in the field to seven years (2014–​ 21), during which I collected data off and on, onsite and later online, with migrants in Singapore and Tokyo. Living in Tokyo until early 2020 facilitated my frequent return to the field, whereas data in Singapore was collected during two main field trips in 2015 and 2017, and on another short stay, as well as through continued online follow-​ups thereafter. My main method of data collection was qualitative, semi-​structured interviews with a core group of 70 interlocutors. These data were supplemented by many hours of ethnographic observations and participant observations at official networking events in Singapore; at job-​hunting fairs, alumni events and sports circle activities in Tokyo; and at informal gatherings and leisure activities of participants in both cities. Furthermore, two focus groups with migrants of different national and ethnic backgrounds provided me with a more critical understanding of some of the particularities of European, mostly White, migrants’ experiences. 14

Introduction

In contrast to the statistical value of data gained by quantitative methods, this qualitative mixed-​methods design enabled me to obtain information of more ‘depth’ and ‘density’ (Weiss, 1994, p 3). I adopted a life history approach in order to allow for rich accounts and gain a detailed insight on interlocutors’ backgrounds, their experiences and their changing life plans. A major strength of this book is its longitudinal perspective. I followed up with all but two of the 70 interlocutors, many of them several times. Whenever possible, these follow-​up interviews were face to face and often lasted longer than the first interview. In other cases, Skype interviews and open-​ended questions via email helped me to follow up. This amounted to a total of more than 200 hours of recorded interview data, complemented by detailed accounts of written communication and a vast array of field notes. To date, I have stayed in contact with the majority of my interlocutors via email and social media; many of them have expressed interest in the findings of my work. The 70 core interlocutors are evenly distributed over both field sites (Singapore 35, Japan 35). In both cities, men slightly outweighed women, with, altogether, 37 men and 33 women and a male/​female ratio of 19/​16 in Singapore and 18/​17 in Tokyo. Instead of drawing strict age boundaries, my grounded approach hinted at the significance of the life stage and generation. With an age range from 22 to 38, migrants’ ages at the time of the first interview consequently varied, but the majority were between 25 and 35 years old when I first met them. Participants come from a total of 18 EU (and in one case, European but non-​EU) countries. Their nationalities include Romanian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Baltic,8 Greek, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, French, German, British, Irish and three North European countries.9 While the large majority of the participants could be classified as ‘White’, I was able to interview six migrants of mixed (and thus visibly different) ethnic backgrounds. With regard to occupations, I excluded academics from the study, given that the nature of their work requires some international mobility, which means that they navigate a distinct, enclosed labour market that has been well studied (Bauder et al, 2017; Kim, 2017). Appendix A explains my positionality and its impact on access to the field and data analysis. Appendix B provides an overview of my interlocutors’ demographic profiles, including their university majors, occupational industries and length of time in the destination countries. In order to get a better understanding of the networks and online socialising platforms that early career migrants use in both cities, I applied

8 9

Not further specified in order to protect the interlocutors’ anonymity. See earlier. 15

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

strategies from online ethnography. Social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Internations helped me to establish initial contact with potential interlocutors and were especially valuable for follow-​u ps. Moreover, this digital method gave me richer insight into the migrants’ lives than would have been possible through more conventional methods. Pictures, posts and reactions to comments on their online profiles or blogs –​while read critically as constructed representations of the self (Charmaz, 2014) –​revealed not only life events, but also emotions and performative practices, that contributed to my more nuanced understanding of interlocutors’ migration experiences. Next to the original data, I analysed government publications, statistics and reports by related interest groups, such as expatriate organisations and EU members states’ chambers of commerce, in order to gain a holistic view of my field of inquiry. Following my interlocutors’ trajectories over a time of up to seven years and across two field sites allowed me to contextualise and position the phenomenon not as migration per se –​thus as linear or one-​off event –​but as a mobility phenomenon with multiple and diverse outcomes. The asset of choosing two migration destinations and taking into account the movement to, from and between these and other destinations enabled me to understand the migratory trajectories as a more complex and less straightforward, or singular, form of movement. This multi-​sited ethnographic approach enabled me to map movement patterns, including certain directions of movement, among them intra-​Asian inter-​city mobilities, and allowed me to identify common patterns and links between the destination cities. Furthermore, the comparative perspective I adopt in the concluding discussion of the substance chapters highlights the significance of place, and, through this, the problems Japan, as an ‘immigrant country’ in the making, as well as Singapore, as an increasingly closed migrant destination, faced when incorporating middle-​class migrants into their labour markets and societies. As such, the chapters can be read separately to inform about aspects of the migratory process, such as the motivations and aspirations for moving, the access to and mobility within the labour market, and the social networks and bonding strategies that may lead to physical immobility or repeated movement. However, read in their entirety, each chapter embeds its findings in the larger consideration of mobility in the life course. Furthermore, the evolving story offers an account of Singapore and Tokyo as changing migration regimes and the implications, thereof, for the diversifying migrant population of each city. The combined chapters thus serve as the pieces of a puzzle, or each of them as one step towards constructing the complete picture of the EU Generation’s attempt to construct a meaningful early career and larger life narrative by migrating to Singapore and Tokyo. 16

Introduction

Outline of this book Part I of this book, Spatial Mobility to Asia: Moving Ahead by Moving out, examines the EU Generation’s physical movement, that is, its migration to Asia. This part is divided into three chapters that unravel the migration motivations of Europeans and shift the lens to the receiving contexts of Singapore and Tokyo. Chapter 1 uses statistics and qualitative data from interlocutors’ youth in Europe to delineate how European university students of the EU Generation grew up in what they perceive to be a thrilling, yet competitive, educational environment –​one that values overseas experiences and suggests these to be a prerequisite for a fulfilling and successful professional career. The chapter then discusses the related literature on intra-​ European mobility, educational migration and the labour market, before it introduces its theoretical approach to class in migration, which links a Bourdieusian capital analysis with middle-​class aspirations. The remaining chapter categorises the EU Generation’s varied migration motivations into four major types. The typology demonstrates how different forms of capital are converted or validated in the migration of each type and underlines that across all types, mobility becomes a form of capital in itself, one that helps explain how the EU Generation secure employment in Asian global cities. Chapter 2 depicts the contexts of labour migration to contemporary Singapore. As a consequence of the developmental state’s social engineering, epitomised by the principles of multiracialism and multiculturalism, as well as extensive foreign labour import, contemporary Singapore is characterised by postcolonial diversities and a bifurcated migration regime (Yeoh, 2006). Singapore’s immigration policies and migrants’ opportunities in the city-​state have changed since the late 2000s, and these changing conditions constitute the background against which young Europeans hope to develop a career and potentially grow footholds in the country. Chapter 3 shifts the lens to Tokyo, a vibrant metropolis and business hub in the Asia-​Pacific region and the capital city of Japan, an island nation and country that, despite an influx of migrants over the past three decades, continues to be perceived as largely homogeneous, both from within and outside of Japan. The chapter discusses how Japan has rapidly opened up to migration in recent years (Liu-​Farrer, 2020), leading to an immense diversification of Tokyo’s resident population, including its foreign residents. Part II, Organisational and Career Mobility: Seizing Security, Success and Self-​Realisation, turns to a second dimension of mobility that shapes migrants’ lives: employment situations and professional development, which manifest in organisational and career mobility in Singapore and Tokyo. Chapter 4 on Singapore shows how young European migrants strive to live up to the image of innovation-​driven and high-​potential foreign talents, as painted by the Singaporean state. Lacking substantial work experience but 17

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

aiming for the highly skilled work visa, the migrants attempt to professionalise themselves in the neoliberal labour market through repeated job transfers that facilitate career mobility. The majority of migrants pursue mobile careers, in which organisational mobility, career mobility and geographical mobility go hand in hand. Chapter 5 on Tokyo outlines the Japanese employment system, in which foreign university graduates have increasingly secured career track positions in Japan’s primary labour market, yet pressure to conform to their firms’ homogenising company culture causes most of them to opt out. Overall, migrants’ employment patterns in Tokyo resemble those of migrants in Singapore, due to their frequent turnover. The analysis demonstrates considerable fluidity and overlap between the much-​discussed sharp divide drawn between jobs in Japan’s primary labour market, that is, regular jobs, and those in the secondary labour market, including contract positions. The findings call for attention to the diversifying Japanese labour market, which offers a greater variety of career paths to highly educated early career migrants, rather than linear career progression or stagnation. Chapter 6 unearths how the entanglements of gender, race, age and generation, as well as class identities, shape the EU Generation’s work experience in the destination cities. This chapter conceptualises migrants’ employment and career development by their ‘Other’ identity as a way to unearth how work and (im)mobility affect each other. Integrating gender into the analysis reveals differences in the two cities. The comparison also highlights how this generational cohort values work as an undeniable factor of identity-​making. As middle-​class migrants, they are often unwilling and insecure about forfeiting their career for a family. This raises questions about the value of work in neoliberal labour markets, as well as about the taken-​for-​grantedness of having a family at a certain life stage. Augmented by ongoing geographical mobility, frequent organisational mobility and the anxiety of becoming socially immobile, many migrants project family plans onto a vague point in the future. Part III, (Im)Mobility Through Differentiated Embedding: The Ties That Bind, complements the analysis of migrants’ geographical, organisational and career mobility by examining the non-​work-​related aspects of migrants’ lives abroad. It connects the EU Generation’s place-​making and socialising practices to intimacy and, thereby, unearths complex processes of differentiated embedding, which result in either repeated physical mobility or staying. Chapter 7 engages questions of the migrants’ interaction with the heterogeneous and constantly diversifying resident population of their host cities. Emerging feelings of familiarity and security allow migrants, to varying degrees, to develop a sense of belonging. Such differentiated embedding, rather than a full-​fledged belonging or outright marginalisation, best describes the complexities of migrants’ prolonged staying in Singapore and Tokyo. 18

Introduction

Chapter 8 foregrounds how intimacy and romantic relationships, or the lack thereof, and (im)mobility are intertwined, and presents another factor shaping migratory ‘worklife pathways’ (Krings et al, 2013a, b). This chapter reveals how perspectives and rationales change over time and teases out how intimate relationships provide the stability and security to anchor migrants in the long-​term. Mobility has become an underlying thread of the life trajectories of these middle-​class migrants. While the migrants might feel at home, they seldom rule out the possibility to leave again. Mobility and roots, and thus the possibility to have a home abroad without settling down, do not contradict. The Conclusion highlights the complex decision-​making processes and structural constraints involved in migrants’ geographical, organisational/​ career and social mobility. It emphasises the significance that the three entangled dimensions of mobility assume for the EU Generation’s pursuit of middle-​class life paths in Asian global cities. The longitudinal research foregrounds how the particular generation and life stage upon the EU Generation’s emigration from Europe have turned geographically distant Asian cities into attractive destinations for career progression and distinction in a time of flexible labour and shorter employment contracts. Previously accumulated mobility capital and the notion of insecurity lying ahead in any globalised labour market render continuous mobility or residence abroad the most reasonable path to choose for the time being and thus pave the way for an entire life stage, or longer, in Asia. The discussion identifies remaining and newly emerging obstacles to the incorporation of independently moving middle-​class migrants, such as the EU Generation, in both cities. In doing so, the conclusion reaffirms the rationale for considering Singapore and Tokyo, and potentially other non-​Western global cities, as a viable option and a potentially long-​term residence for the EU Generation and middle-​class labour migrants in general. This argument draws attention to the policy dimension of EU early career migration to Asia. It calls for Singapore and Japan’s increased engagement in immigration issues from ‘new’ source countries, as it does for the EU’s awareness of emigration to ‘new’ destinations.

19

PART I

Spatial Mobility to Asia: Moving Ahead by Moving Out

‘What does it mean to be a European citizen?’ The first among four bullet points of the EU declaration on citizen rights reads, ‘the right to freely move around the EU and settle anywhere within its territory’ (European Commission, 2013, p 4). This grants EU citizens (hereafter Europeans) the right to stay and work in any member country and nullifies the purposes of working visas. Despite having these privileges, the young adults who are the focus of this book are not moving within the EU, but to, and often within, Asia. They regard their European citizen rights as a precious treasure, but their mobility tells a different story; wherein the crux lies a notion that an awareness of the freedom to leave makes it hard to stay. Sandra, an Irish-​ American woman whom I met in Singapore in 2015, and have stayed in contact with since, is a living example. “Europe is my home and I don’t think that will change. Europe as a place to be –​I am not sure”, she uttered after a brief silence. We were sitting in armchairs at the visitor’s lounge of her 28th floor office, gazing over Singapore’s cloudy skyline, removed from the hustle and bustle of the city that sprawled below us. At only 28, Sandra had already worked in four countries. With her grey business attire and thoughtful expression, the Irish-​ American looked older than her age. Is it the accumulation of different life experiences? Is the young woman next to me at home in this place? What brought her here? Questions filled my mind easily in that space. As if she could read my mind, Sandra explained why Singapore, as Europe and all other places she had temporarily lived so far, was not the place where she would settle. Rather, she felt an inner state of agitation that pushed her to move on and keep searching for something that she did not know what it was and which she had not yet found. Where, then, lies the future of people like Sandra? How did their migration stories begin? 21

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Part I of this book traces the roots of these young Europeans’ trajectories to Asia and outlines the make-​up of their destination cities –​Singapore and Tokyo –​as the migrants (expect to) find them upon arrival. The key to understanding these young adults’ migratory trajectories lies in their distinctive common characteristics. They share European roots and their childhood in an enlarging EU –​the two core aspects that affect their later mobility decisions. Their individual stories carry themes of holding Europe close to their hearts with the Asian hubs as a place for temporal dwelling. This is the EU Generation.

22

1

The EU Generation and Their Migration Motivations I met Beatrice for coffee in one of Tokyo’s most recently opened shiny department stores. On that cold December day in 2014, Christmas jingles wafted over the crowds of salarīmen1 and salarīwomen hurrying past the coffee shop and towards Tokyo Station, one of the capital’s biggest transportation hubs. The tempting aromas of Christmas cakes, glazed nuts and exotic spices blended with those of our two hot cinnamon lattes. In the Tokyo of the 2010s, Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day were festivities of consumption instead of tradition, introduced by the West and turned into opportunities for economic gain by flower shops, chocolate factories and gourmet restaurants. Not surprisingly then, the music and aromas reminded Beatrice of Europe and put her into a melancholic mood. Talking about Europe, Italian food and the beautiful architecture of her university, Beatrice considered the beginnings of her mobility out of Italy: “When I started university in Italy, I was in a kind of student house. It had lots of activities and promoted Erasmus to students. So, I always saw the older students who went abroad. Somehow, I thought it was something nice to do, not something impossible or strange.” Her older brother went abroad through Erasmus as well, and that was probably another factor that influenced her. Beatrice, who studied mathematics in a medium-​sized North Italian city, eventually went to Berlin as an Erasmus undergraduate student. She recalled how she enjoyed living abroad and studying the German language but also acknowledged the more practical benefit that “staying abroad could be useful for my future career” (Hof, 2020c). Beatrice continued about how, once she was in a foreign country, she found out about plenty of opportunities for studying abroad in the EU, including

1

Japanese term for white-​collar worker, associated particularly with male Japanese employees who show utmost commitment to their employer. 23

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a wide range of scholarship programmes. Fond of France and its melodic language, she eventually entered graduate school in Paris and studied financial mathematics. With growing confidence in the French language, Beatrice completed a six-​month internship in a French bank as part of the master’s programme. Not only did this opportunity offer Beatrice her first hands-​on work experience in her field of specialisation, but it also introduced her to her future employer with whom she would later move to Tokyo.

Intra-​European mobility and educational migration Despite the proliferation of the forms and varieties of movement around the globe, even voluntary migration, and thus choice, does not preclude constraints, anxieties, or personal dilemmas. Often, ‘free movers’ (Favell, 2008b, p 247) have been considered privileged. However, such oversimplification obscures social changes and downplays precarious employment, emotional insecurities and unfulfilled expectations, which a growing number of the educated middle class are facing. Ignoring those who choose to move is thus to ignore fundamental changes in the way people work, plan a family, build cross-​border romantic relationships and what they expect from developing a career and from leisure activities. It obstructs deeper understanding of how people construct new life paths in the 21st century (Favell, 2008a). The majority of the young Europeans featured in this book, including Beatrice, first experienced extended geographical mobility in their university years. As laid out in Hof (2019b), the establishment of European-​wide university exchange programmes, such as that at Erasmus, not only made studying abroad respectable (Wilson, 2011; Cichelli, 2013; Feyen and Krzaklewska, 2013; Van Mol, 2013), but they also positioned the overseas experience, associated with foreign language proficiency, as a highly valued skill set on one’s curriculum vitae (Morgan McKinley, 2013; Aramburu, 2015; Ralph, 2015). However, the supposed higher employability of graduates with overseas experience and the monetary returns of such ‘international investment’ have repeatedly been questioned. Cairns et al (2018, p 19) criticise the vagueness of such often-​cited ‘employability’, which lacks any solid definition. The European Commission’s (2020, p 7) statement that ‘Erasmus+​enables young people to thrive in the modern labour market and in an increasingly diverse society’ is similarly vague. Statistics to prove the benefits of overseas higher educational programmes are scarce (Saarikallio-​Torp and Wiers-​Jenssen, 2010; Petzold, 2017; Waibel et al, 2017). Scholarship, however, reveals how students who contemplate this option have internalised the positive rhetoric surrounding it (Feyen and Krzaklewska, 2013). Beatrice, thus, is no exception. Like her, many regard overseas experiences, knowledge of foreign languages and intercultural skills 24

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advantageous, if not crucial, for their careers. While Beatrice’s story is one of excitement and choice, her efforts to achieve business-​level competence in French and her focus on other EU labour markets outside of Italy point to the difficulty in finding decent entry level jobs in Italy at the time. Cairns et al (2017) contend that, in light of constricting labour markets and the economic crisis in the European context of the late 2000s and early 2010s, mobility is increasingly reflexive. People’s mobility decisions, including pre-​employment mobility aimed at obtaining competence and experience, are outcomes of their considerations regarding later full-​time employment. As later chapters demonstrate, this holds true for young European migrants across occupations and industries (see also Appendix B). While those with majors in the natural sciences experience easier school-​to-​ labour market transitions than graduates from the humanities and the social sciences, they are not immune to the rhetoric of mobility as a must, nor are natural science majors of less affluent Europeans countries shielded from constraining labour market conditions, as Beatrice’s case as a mathematics graduate from Italy shows. What debates on international student mobility in Europe lack –​and a core contribution of this book –​is a broader perspective on youth mobility, both institutionalised and self-​initiated, as opposed to the predominant focus on Erasmus. Brown et al (2014, p 25) bring attention to other forms of student mobility, such as ‘whole degree mobility’, which often happens outside of Europe, and youth mobility that may lead to longer or ongoing mobility (Frändberg, 2014). Intra-​European (partly) economically driven mobility is no longer unusual. Overlooked by several studies is the idea that the aforementioned Erasmus statement (European Commission, 2020) on the positive implications of overseas experiences for labour market outcomes and living in diverse societies might materialise outside of Europe (Suter and Åkesson, 2020). Indeed, the EU Generation’s variegated forms of pre-​employment mobility led to ongoing and more long-​term mobility that resulted in moves to Asia with eventual employment in Singapore and Tokyo, Beatrice being a representative example. As reflected in Beatrice’s account on the mobility-​laden environment in her shared house, the lack of overseas experience came close to personal deficiency among interlocutors’ highly educated European middle-​class peers. Referring to statistics, we know that ‘Erasmus is not a “program for everyone” ’ (Feyen and Krzaklewska, 2013, p 10). Only about 5 per cent of Europe’s university students participated in Erasmus in 2012, the time around which the interlocutors of this book moved around Europe internally before migrating to Asia. However, young students who were surrounded by ‘leavers’ quickly came to regard extended mobility as the norm. In particular, returnees’ stories stirred up the desire for migration or extended travel among the stayers (Hof, 2019b; Czerska-​Shaw and Krzaklewska, 2021). 25

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Roughly a third of my interlocutors participated in an Erasmus exchange programme. Many others embarked on an internship in another European country or enrolled in graduate school abroad. Cases include several students who went to London, Edinburgh, Paris, Barcelona or Brussels, that is, either English-​speaking destinations or global cities. Studying abroad increases the probability of working abroad in one’s early career. Two thirds of former Erasmus students who work in a foreign country after graduation do so in a European country, whereas a small but significant one third of former Erasmus students who find employment abroad leave Europe (Parey and Waldinger, 2011). As this book reveals, the EU Generation do not necessarily participate in Erasmus but exercise other forms of overseas mobility. Adding the numbers of both groups, we find an increasingly diverse array of young people leaving the continent after pre-​employment geographical mobility.

Transition to the labour market in the post-​Lehman shock European free-​movement space Student and youth migration is closely linked to the surge in economically motivated migration of the educated middle class in the EU, often termed East–​West or South–​North migration. The gradual enlargement of the EU in the 2000s and early 2010s enabled rising numbers of Europeans from economically weaker member states to reside and assume work in Europe’s power houses in Northern or Western European countries, the UK being a primary one. This phenomenon increased significantly with the economic crisis following the Lehman shock, and the demographics of those on the move became increasingly younger and more educated (Black et al, 2008; Lafleur and Stanek, 2017). Scholarship has studied this form of intra-​European economic migration and its link to youth migration, labour market outcomes and precariousness in depth (Cairns et al, 2017; Oso, 2020). The constrained situation on European labour markets after the Lehman shock of 2008 led to a sharp rise in youth unemployment and underemployment across the EU. I argued elsewhere that, next to the immediate effects of the economic precarity of young adults, the social and political crises of EU institutions in the 2010s triggered young adults’ ambivalence regarding opportunities for career development in contemporary Europe (Hof, 2020c). De Genova and Tazzioli speak of a ‘crisis talk’, where the ‘multifarious crises’ (2016, p 3) can and should no longer be separated, in order to conceptualise their implications on Europeans and non-​Europeans. In the authors’ words, what is: so ubiquitously known simply as ‘the crisis’ (the economic crisis), as well as the related ‘crisis’ of ‘Europe’ itself (the political, juridical, and institutional crisis of the European Union, and particularly such 26

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‘European’ institutions as the Schengen zone of passport-​free travel that has reconfigured the borders of ‘Europe’ by sustaining an ‘internal space of [relatively, albeit differentially] free mobility) [represents a] critical angle of vision on ‘the crisis’ in and of ‘Europe’ [and] must be further situated within the context of our global historical moment. (Emphasis in original) The authors speak of the refugee crisis of 2015 and the involvement of European powers in ‘civil wars’ and ‘neo-​colonial occupations’, but I would add a counter perspective as well: the fact that European power has generally been on the decline (Mahbubani, 2017; Fischer, 2018; Shetler-​Jones, 2018) and that Asia’s rise has positioned the latter as a potentially more attractive region for some job-​seeking European young adults. Consequently, young Europeans post-​Lehman shock have moved to Asia and other continents in the hope of finding jobs and escaping un(der)employment. The direction of such movements often followed colonial trails, such as with Spaniards migrating to South America (Hayes and Pérez-​Gañán, 2017; Miorelli and Manóvil, 2018) or Portuguese to Mozambique (Matos, 2009). That said, notions of distinction, lifestyle migration and the (aspired) reproduction of class in the destination context also manifested in less straightforward movements, such as that of Spaniards to Portuguese-​speaking Brazil (Heil, 2020), the ‘return’ of French of North-​African backgrounds to Arab-​speaking Dubai (Alloul, 2020) or that of Europeans to Japanese-​only-​speaking Japan (Hof, 2019b). What these movements have in common is that the destination cities, regardless of the level of development of the destination countries, are business centres and dynamic, often global, cities that offer jobs and distinction. During my fieldwork, I encountered economic precarity mostly with those whose countries were hit the hardest by the economic crisis, such as Italians and Portuguese. Figure 1.1, based on statistics by Eurostat (2021), illustrates the dramatic rise in the unemployment rates of young academics in several European countries between 2005 and 2019, with particularly high rates between 2008 and 2015. While limited, due to the definition of youth as age 15 to 24, the figure clearly conveys how prevalent precariousness is even for the highly educated in several European countries. In the extreme cases of countries like Portugal, Lithuania and Spain, the situation seems to have pushed very large numbers of educated youth to leave the country, and, as portrayed by academic studies, only low numbers of skilled emigrants to return (Kahanec, 2012; Lafleur and Stanek, 2017; Cairns et al, 2018). Even before the onset of the debt crisis in 2009, European university graduates in many countries had increasingly struggled to secure full-​time positions and survived on precarious, short-​term internship arrangements or temporary employment contracts over months or even years. Scholarship argues that, with poor salaries and unstable employment conditions, European 27

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Figure 1.1: Unemployment rate among young people in the EU and selected member states, 2005–​19 60.0 European Union – 27 50.0 countries (from 2020) Germany (until 1990 40.0 former territory of the FRG) Spain 30.0 France

Portugal United Kingdom

20.0 10.0 0.0

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Lithuania

Note: Unemployment in per cent; young people aged 15–24 years. Source: Statistics from Eurostat (2021), figure created by author.

youth in different countries across the continent tend to stay longer with their parents and view their job prospects very critically. This situation applied not only to those of economically weaker countries, as outlined previously, but included, for instance, young adults in Germany (Economist, 2007; Grühn and Hecht, 2007; Zerahn, 2007; Lafleur and Stanek, 2017; Cairns et al, 2018). De Genova and Tazzioli (2016) even suggest that a general sense of insecurity towards the future of the EU’s economic precarity developed in the 2010s. Among those highly educated middle-​class young adults with the resources to become mobile, migration to Asian business hubs offers, to some, an attractive alternative to the perceived struggles of competing against their peers in the EU.

Class in migration Since the majority of former Erasmus students who find employment abroad stay within Europe, the EU Generation’s strong urge to move intercontinentally presents a puzzle. Beatrice’s story points to a process of moving farther away and for a longer period of time in a step-​by-​step manner. The French firm where she completed the internship eventually posted an open position in Tokyo, a city that Beatrice, proficient in Italian, French, German and English, had never considered. The short brunette with soft expressions often struck me as a hesitant, almost insecure, individual, especially when compared to other more self-​confident, sometimes even 28

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proud, interlocutors. Beatrice herself admitted that “after getting the OK for the job in Japan, I was a bit scared. [I was like] ‘let’s try’, but I was not too convinced”. Yet, as with other interlocutors, contingency cut in and redirected Beatrice’s path towards a country she never had on her map for potential residence. Ultimately, Beatrice was swayed by the experiences of two friends who had studied in Japan, her visit as a tourist to the nation, and her interest in manga as a teenager. The EU Generation embrace the freedom of mobility and are keen on expanding the scope and scale of movement they know from their youth and time as students. This points to a worldview, certain dispositions and, importantly, resources, that other young adults of their generation lack and that indicate a need to consider class when studying this migratory phenomenon. In the scholarship on new forms of movement or ‘atypical migration’ (Favell, 2014, p xiii) –​educated or middle-​class labour migration researched since the late twentieth century –​lifestyle migration has become increasingly important. Benson and O’Reilly (2009, p 608) define lifestyle migration as ‘the decision to migrate based on their belief that there is a more fulfilling way of life available to them elsewhere’. At the core of this phenomenon lies the assumption that one can build a satisfactory life overseas by pursuing a ‘counter-​hegemonic practice and lifestyle’ (2009, pp 609–​10). Generally speaking, lifestyle migrants are part of the middle class in their developed home countries and are often highly educated. However, they exchange structured everyday life and, sometimes, stable employment for the freedom of living abroad, which may involve rather unstable or even precarious circumstances. The capacity to realise migration, even without a stable source of income, stems from these migrants’ relatively high positioning in the global economic hierarchy. For instance, Oliver and O’Reilly (2010) demonstrate how British migrants in Spain can afford to work in low-​wage or part-​time jobs or sustain themselves with their own small-​scale businesses, thanks to lower living costs (Oliver and O’Reilly, 2010). Van Hear (2014, p 101) draws attention to the neglect of class in migration studies for the sake of other ‘forms of social difference … such as ethnicity, gender, generation, and lately religion’. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu (1986, 1986) and his conceptualisation of class as the endowment of different forms of capital, Van Hear (2014) underlines how class not only shapes the outcomes of migration, but also the process of migration itself. People migrate to different destinations and under different circumstances, including the capital they dispose of and what they are (not) able to convert to other forms of capital or value in the receiving context (Bourdieu, 1986). Bourdieu’s capital approach has enabled migration scholars to offer a more differentiated analysis of class in the migration process and (labour market) 29

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integration in the destination countries. Central to a Bourdieusian analysis are the four forms of capital of which people possess to varying degrees and whose conversion potential, or lack thereof, affects their social mobility upon migration. The four forms are economic capital (savings, money), cultural capital (both embodied and institutional, including educational degrees, language proficiency and a certain sophistication or taste, cultivated by familiarisation with the high arts), social capital (networks that [do not] help improve one’s social position in a given field) and symbolic capital (misrecognised as capital but granting some sort of competence or legitimacy) (Bourdieu, 1986). Migration scholarship especially highlights the conversion of social capital or cultural capital into economic capital or the functioning of the former as symbolic capital in the destination country (Erel, 2010; Oliver and O’Reilly, 2010; Nowicka, 2013). For instance, highly educated Western migrants in Asia and White people in predominantly non-​White destinations increasingly lack economic capital, yet they often are able to validate and convert other forms of capital and thereby improve their positions in the receiving contexts (Tzeng, 2010; Lan, 2011). Such findings demand a differentiated examination of aspiring migrants’ resources at hand and an assessment of the potential to convert and validate these into forms of capital for use in the respective destination, that is, the labour market of the host society. Two additional concepts, important in Bourdieu’s work, have proven to be particularly useful in the class analysis of migration. One is that of the field. People compete for positions (for instance, jobs, reputation or, more generally, power) in a given field that operates according to its own rules. Resources only function as capital if they are of value or can be validated in that given field. This can also happen by converting one form of capital into another form that is of use in a new destination (Bourdieu, 2002). In the context of this discussion, capital conversion can happen upon migration and arrival in a new field that has its own rules and power structures. Finally, people’s habitus needs to be taken into consideration in order to understand their practices. For Bourdieu, habitus constitutes the dispositions to action people develop by being socialised in a certain value system or with a certain class background. Having internalised the expectations and rules of a given field, people act accordingly and do so unconsciously (Bourdieu, 2002). Disruptive changes of their surroundings, such as access to a different field upon migration, challenge people’s habitus and their adjustment to the new situation (Oliver and O’Reilly, 2010; Nowicka, 2015). Taken together, these aspects of the Bourdieusian approach have offered a more nuanced understanding of the difficulties people face when trying to enter a different labour market or to establish a career after migration; they have been used in human resource management (HRM) and labour migration scholarship (Erel, 2010; Kim, 2018; Joy et al, 2020). 30

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The migration aspirations of the EU Generation: manifestations of privilege and precarity One more analytical step needs to be incorporated into the analysis in order to better understand the migration of the EU Generation to Asia. This is the recognition of migration aspirations as a prerequisite for migration and also for an analytical clarification of both mobility and immobility. Migration, as Jørgen Carling (2002) argues, can be broken down into the two elements of aspirations and ability; only if both are fulfilled, will migration follow, whereas, often, people aspire to migrate but are unable to do so, or vice versa. Recent theorisations increasingly acknowledge adventure and individualisation as aspirational pull factors. Collins (2018) argues for recognising migrants’ subjectivities without foregoing the influence of expectations and social norms on these subjectivities, the latter of which are continuously (re)constructed (Carling and Schewel, 2018). These arguments underline the idea that the EU Generation do not act as ‘calculating autonomous [selves]’, but that they are ‘situated in social fields that cross borders and play a role in enabling and shaping migration processes and outcomes’ (Carlings and Collins, 2018, pp 912–​13). The following pages demonstrate that the EU Generation are socialised in a particular context, in which mobility represents a norm, and experiences abroad are recognised as beneficial for self-​development and the career. A biographical perspective thus lends itself to close examination of these young adults’ aspirations as outcomes of growing up as part of the mobility-​experienced EU middle classes of the late 2000s and early 2010s (Scheibelhofer, 2018). Classed aspirations and capabilities become apparent when examining migratory lifestyle, as discussed by the emerging scholarly field of privileged migration (Croucher, 2009; Benson, 2013). Different categories of privilege are at work, as identified among the assumed competence and authority of expatriates, mobile professionals and skilled migrants (Mullohand and Ryan, 2014; Farrer, 2018; Camenisch and Suter, 2019; Spiegel et al, 2019); privilege granted based on one’s ethnicity or race, theorised, in particular, by critical whiteness studies (Lundström, 2014; Kunz, 2020b); privilege conferred due to historical power hierarchies, as identified by postcolonial studies (Armbruster, 2010; Leonard, 2010); and the supposed freedom and ease of movement of digital nomads (D’Andrea, 2006; Mancinelli, 2020; Chevtaeva and Denizci-​Guillet, 2021). Research on privileged migration is a product of the 2010s, of rising precariousness among the established middle classes (Heil, 2020; Hof, 2020c) or of the aspiring or new highly educated middle class, for instance, those of migrant backgrounds (Alloul, 2020; Mandin, 2020). Privileged migration also examines legal insecurities among the global elite (Gaspar and Ampudia de Haro, 2020; Surak, 2021) and the ways in which migrants navigate the 31

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geopolitical and economic rise of China and the binary (self-​and re-​) construction of the West as its opposite (Farrer, 2019; Suter, 2019). It is also a reaction to manifestations of the anxiety of the loss of taken-​for-​granted privileges among those identifying as part of the West (Cranston, 2017), as well as of the reinforcement of historical and colonial privileges in an ever competitive and resource-​poor world (Croucher, 2009; Fechter and Walsh, 2010, 2012; Kunz, 2016, 2020a; Korpela, 2020). With a changing global political economy after the Lehman shock, the previously mentioned European crisis and the general trend away from long-​term stable employment and towards shorter-​term flexible labour in many economically developed countries, the directions of more explicitly economically driven movements of middle-​class Westerners have diversified, and new destinations appear on the map. Hayes and Pérez-​Gañán (2017, p 117) call this phenomenon ‘geoarbitrage’. Using the example of Spaniards and North American migrants in Ecuador, they reveal both the colonial traits of this migration phenomenon and the ways in which class and aspirations affect the mobilities at stake. These relatively privileged migrants’ dispositions –​expectations of being treated differently, if not being granted certain privileges or additional rights –​are shaped by a global field, with inherent hierarchies and structures that grant mobility rights to those holding distinct positions or symbolic capital (Farrer, 2011; Hayes and Pérez-​Gañán, 2017). In the aftermath of the 2008 Lehman shock, heightened precarity in the Global North spurred migration of an increasing number of its citizens to destinations in the Global South. While the direction of migration undoubtedly matters –​North–​South migration offering migrants from advanced economies more privileges in the South than the North–​North migration phenomenon in focus here –​these hierarchies are legacies of global capitalism and colonialism, as discussed in relation to the EU Generation’s destination cities Singapore and Tokyo in Chapters 2 and 3. The orientalisation of Asia as ‘exotic’ (Said, 1987), dating back to European colonialism, missionaries and travel writing, has been discussed within the context of the neo-​colonial re-​fashioning of voluntary leaving home as ‘sophisticated’ travel (Clifford, 1997, p 65). Western media, the travel industry and, ultimately, Western tourists continue to reproduce the stereotypical images of Asia as a world full of exotic objects and mysterious beliefs (Hall, 1997; Hendry, 2000; Richards and Wilson, 2003; Hof, 2018). While contemporary orientalist projection appears in an overwhelmingly positive light, it also reinforces the binary construction of East versus West and is thus a major source for the EU Generation’s fascination with Asia. Furthermore, critical scholarship highlights Western migrants’ expressions of self-​entitlement in Asia and the privileges they continue to receive, often regardless of their level of education, occupation or title, based on their citizenship or race (Lan, 2011; Collins, 2016; Moosavi, 2020). 32

EU GENERATION AND THEIR MIGRATION MOTIVATIONS

That said, while not ignoring previously discussed claims, I use a grounded approach to the positioning and potential privilege or precarity of the European migrants. In doing so, the book joins a recent surge in sociological inquiry that challenges the dichotomy of precarious migrants and privileged expatriates (Benson and O’Reilly, 2016; Farrer, 2018). As Benson and O’Reilly (2016, p 21) note, ‘Relative privilege may coexist with precarity and vulnerability in ways that absolute understandings of wealth, privilege and affluence might render invisible.’ While the EU, like the US and Australia, attracts highly educated migrants from around the world, it also struggles to offer its own university graduates attractive employment conditions (Brown et al, 2011; Cairns et al, 2017). The life history approach to the EU Generation elucidates their relative precarity when compared to their parents’ smoother transition to the labour market and safeguards through social security nets (in the more affluent EU member states) or their seizure of opportunities in the EU’s higher-​income countries (in the case of newer, mostly ex-​Soviet Eastern European, member countries). That said, the EU Generation do have at least some sort of financial safeguard or symbolic capital, given their EU passports, upbringing in middle-​class households and university education (Benson and O’Reilly, 2016). The young Europeans sense that the cosmopolitan lifestyle they have come to aspire through frequent travel and the comfortable living standard their parents were able to establish will be difficult for them to realise if they follow their parents’ and friends’ footsteps and build a life in the EU. At the same time, far-​away countries have become more easily accessible, and European university degrees and languages are still highly valued, including in (South)East Asian countries. This directs the discussion to the concept of skill, which matters in the way in which privilege is transmitted and recognised across different contexts. Skills have been acknowledged to be socially constructed, both in the context of a society and its labour market, such as in the migration process. Liu-​Farrer et al (2020, p 11) note: While the notion of skill is imbued with the notion that it is the objective product of merit, [one can] underline the arbitrariness as well as inflexibility of what determines its hierarchical scaling and interpretation. As such, ‘skill’ can be as meaningless as ‘race’ (or ethnicity, cultural background, etc.) in terms of a migrant’s actual abilities and contribution to the host nation. After 2008, when the West no longer necessarily provided opportunities and securities, this situation led to geographic arbitrage in which peoples’ skills, or what are recognised as skills, are relocated across space. Such skills are not equally distributed across social fields, but are acquired by proximity to dense networks of capital and expertise or qualifications that are counted as 33

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

skills (Hayes, 2021). While the EU Generation have tertiary degrees, often in applicable fields (see Table 1.1), acquired in the EU, their application in the labour markets of Asian-​Pacific business hubs of Singapore and Tokyo lends itself to a critical analysis of the meaning of skills in relation to political geography, privilege and class. In the 2010s, Asian global cities increasingly constituted spaces of power, in which aspiring middle classes, including early career migrants from Western countries, sought upwards socio-​economic mobility (Tseng, 2011; Knowles, 2015; Zhang et al, 2017; Hof, 2020c). Taking together class and migration aspirations thus allows for a more subtle theorising of young EU citizens’ emigration to Asian global cities. The upbringing and schooling of the EU Generation demonstrate their belonging to the middle classes, and, in a few cases, upper middle classes of their home countries; their dispositions have been formed by such socialisation. The basic common characteristics of the group in question, as highly educated and mobility experienced, with credentials of (aspiring) professionals built and recognised in the EU free movement space, encompasses both hard criteria of membership to the middle classes, such as higher education, professional occupation, economic capital and consumption patterns (especially in terms of travel, culture and arts), as well as the emergence of a transnational middle-​class identity. While the EU Generation are certainly not a ‘fully distinguishable European social group’, I contend that next to their national affiliation and identification, the young European migrants are a ‘transnational group of European citizens whose behaviour and consciousness denote solidarities that transcend national and sub-​national affiliations’ (Medrano, 2011, p 31). Thus, the specific group of the EU Generation within European national middle classes is a modified version of a generation, one that does not encompass the entire millennial generation but one specific group of young highly educated mobility-​experienced middle-​class EU citizens within.2 Sandra, the Irish-​American I introduced in the beginning of Part I of this book, is a representative example of this, as is Beatrice, both who feel and speak as Europeans and consider Europeans of their age who live outside of Europe to be their reference group. They form part of a group of self-​ selected European millennials currently living in Asia, who appreciate their socialisation in and the values of the EU, the very same values and dispositions that are responsible for their aspirations for and realisation of emigration.

2

Diez Medrano (2011) argues that it is too early to speak of European classes in the context of the integrating EU. However, his proposition to study attitudes and behaviour, as they might reveal ‘the emergence of European class fractions within national stratification systems’ (2011, p 41), has informed the way European middle classes are conceptualised here. 34

EU GENERATION AND THEIR MIGRATION MOTIVATIONS

The EU Generation’s motivations: a typology The EU Generation’s migration motivations are heterogeneous and do not neatly fit the reasons, motives and push and pull factors of classic migration research (Castles and Miller, 1993). In order to capture these Europeans’ motivations for migration and situate them within and against scholarship on EU migration, student and youth migration, lifestyle migration and privileged mobilities, I constructed four ideal types of movers from my interview data. Weberian types are conceptualisations, akin to theory that explains why, in this case, some cases (or types) are different from others (other types). Weiss (1994, p 176) defines the function of types as ‘[the] purpose … to help us grasp our empirical cases by providing us with coherent models of what would exist if essential elements of the cases were in pure, idealised form. We can then understand actual cases by comparing them with the conceptual template provided by the type.’ Adopting this understanding of types, the four motivational types I constructed are by no means comprehensive, and, in reality, the presented migration motivations often overlap. It is therefore not possible to sort the 70 interlocutors neatly into the four types. It is noteworthy, though, that the type of precarious movers is a minority among the group –​only seven out of the 70 interlocutors –​with the remaining interlocutors spread relatively evenly over the other three types. The function of the types, then, is to carve out these migrants’ main characteristics and, at the same time, to discern variations within the group (Weiss, 1994). The typology reveals how people with different forms of capital are able to validate or convert their capital differently upon migration to the two Asian destinations. Table 1.1 lists the major demographic and socio-​economic characteristics of each type, grouped by university major, pre-​employment overseas stint, age range upon first migration, work experience when moving, relationship status when moving and destination city. I explain these characteristics through the example of one case per type in the sections that follow. Based on Table 1.1, I identified the major differences and overlaps between the four motivational types. I mapped these in Figure 1.2, which serves as a conceptual map that delineates proximate motivations per type. Through the three-​level structure and the hierarchical relationship between primary/​general motivation and secondary/​specific motivation, I emphasised that there are two broader and more general motivations that come as primary motivations (‘career advancement’ on the side of ‘economic factors’ and ‘cultural fondness’ on the side of ‘non-​economic factors’). These materialise in three more specific motivations: ‘fleeing un(der)employment/​unattractive job conditions’, ‘creative, dynamic, international workplaces’ and ‘cultural experience/​lifestyle considerations’), all of which are interdependent. 35

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Table 1.1: Types of movers and their main features University major

Pre-​employment overseas stint

Age range upon first migration

Work experience when moving

Relationship status when moving

Lifestyle seekers

Humanities/​social sciences

Intra-​European, extended travel in Asia

Late 20s–​mid 30s

Some years

Long-​term partner Both, more or married often SG1

Cultural enthusiasts

Japanese studies

Students/​interns in Tokyo

20–​mid 20s

None

Single

Tokyo

Global professionals

Various, including natural Multiple, intra-​and sciences inter-​EU

Mid–​late 20s

None or limited

Single, or move independent from partner

Both, more often SG

Precarious movers

Humanities/​social sciences, architecture

Mid–​late 20s

None or limited

Single or married

SG

1

SG for Singapore

Source: Adapted and revised from Hof (2019a)

None, or like global professionals

Destination city

The EU Migrant Generation in Asia

36

Type

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Figure 1.2: Explanatory three-​level typology of motivations for moving Non-economic factors

- - - - - - - - - - - ->

Context EU Living abroad

Primary/general motivation

Level 1

Career advancement

Primary/general motivation Cultural fondness

37 Level 2

Secondary/specific motivation

Secondary/specific motivation

Fleeing un(der)employment/ unattractive job conditions

Creative, dynamic, international workplaces

Secondary/specific motivation Cultural experience, climate

Level 3 Type 1 Precarious movers

Type 2 Global professionals

Source: Figure and ideas by the author, adapted and revised from Hof (2019a).

Type 3 Lifestyle seekers

Type 4 Cultural enthusiasts

EU GENERATION AND THEIR MIGRATION MOTIVATIONS

3 months at one location, for example internships, study abroad and full-​time work experience (not travelling).

1

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Table B.2: Tokyo Name0

Citizenship

Sex

University major

Previous/​subsequent migration1

Age upon migration to Tokyo2

1

Alex

Czech

M

Japanese studies/​ Japan (exchange student) 25–​29 sociology

Manufacturing 2

Dublin

2

Alexiou

Greek

M

Business

Japan (MA student)

25–​29

Financial services

9

Tokyo

3

Anita

Romanian

F

Asian management

Japan (BA student)

20–​24

Manufacturing 7

Tokyo

4

Ann

Dutch

F

Internat. relations UK, Malaysia

25–​29

Retail

2

Singapore

5

Beatrice

Italian

F

Mathematics

Germany, France

25–​29

Financial services

2

Paris

6

Cecile

North European5

F

Mechanical engineering

France, Malaysia, Denmark

30–​34

Consulting

3

Northern EU.5 (HC)

7

Claire

French

F

Japanese studies

Japan (exchange student), 25–​29 Singapore

Health

2

France (HC)

8

Dirk

German

M

Japanese studies

Japan (exchange student) 25–​29

Travel

4

Tokyo

9

Emilio

Italian

M

Japanese studies

Japan (exchange student) 25–​29

Fashion

5

Tokyo

10

Federica

Italian

F

Human resource management

Germany, Japan (intern)

Manufacturing 4.5

25–​29

Industry (first job in Tokyo)

Years in Tokyo3

Place of residence in 20214

Brussels

The EU Migrant Generation in Asia

208

 

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Table B.2: Tokyo (continued) Citizenship

Sex

University major

Previous/​subsequent migration1

Age upon migration to Tokyo2

Industry (first job in Tokyo)

Years in Tokyo3

Place of residence in 20214

11

Jeremy

French

M

Artificial intelligence

Japan (MA student)

25–​29

Technology

10

Tokyo

12

Jonatan

Spanish

M

Web design

China

25–​29

IT

10

Fukuoka

13

Karina

Greek

F

Architecture

Japan (MA student), Thailand

30–​34

Architecture

0.5

London

14

Kerstin

German

F

Japanese studies/​ UK, Japan (MA student), 25–​29 int. relations Middle East

Manufacturing 8

Tokyo6

15

Leila

German

F

Communications/​ Japan (exchange student, 25–​29 Japanese studies intern)

Business advocacy

11

Tokyo

16

Lena

German

F

Japanese studies

Technology

5

Berlin (HC)

17

Madeleine

French

F

English & Jap. Japan (exchange student) 20–​24 studies/​translation

Language

7

Tokyo

18

Marc

British

M

Japanese studies

Japan (exchange student) 20–​24

Public service

8

Tokyo

19

Nicole

German

F

Japanese studies

n.a.

25–​29

Manufacturing 5

Germany (HC)

20

Nils

German

M

Asian studies

Germany, South America5

25–​29

Market research

3

Austria

21

Olaf

Baltic5

M

Logistics

Japan (MA student)

25–​29

Logistics

6

Tokyo

Japan (exchange student, 20–​24 intern)

(continued)

Appendix B

209

Name0

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Table B.2: Tokyo (continued) Citizenship

Sex

University major

Previous/​subsequent migration1

Age upon migration to Tokyo2

22

Olga

Baltic5

F

Japanese studies

Japan (exchange student) 20–​24

23

Pauline

North European

F

Religious studies/​ Japan (MA student) internat. relations

24

Rico

Portuguese

M

25

Rita

Romanian

26

Sophie

27

Industry (first job in Tokyo)

Years in Tokyo3

Place of residence in 20214

Manufacturing 6

Tokyo

30–​34

Fashion

7

Tokyo

Computer science Japan (intern)

25–​29

Research

9

Tokyo

F

Japanese studies/​ Japan (BA and MA) int. relations

25–​29

Manufacturing 5

Sydney

German

F

Japanese studies

Japan (exchange student, 25–​29 intern)

Public service

6

Tokyo6

Stefan

French

M

Software development

Japan (PhD)

Technology

7

Tokyo

28

Thomas

French

M

Japanese management

Japan (exchange student, 20–​24 intern)

Energy

8

Tokyo

29

Tim

Dutch

M

Asian studies

Germany

25–​29

Culture (self-​employ.)

8

Tokyo

30

Tobi

German

M

Sociology/​ economics

Australia

25–​29

Manufacturing 4.5

Brussels

31

Tom

German

M

Engineering/​Int. management

Japan (intern), Hong Kong (intern)

25–​29

Event management

8

Tokyo

32

Torben

North European5

M

Architecture and design

Japan (language student), 25–​29 Norway

Architecture

9

Tokyo6

25–​29

The EU Migrant Generation in Asia

210

Name0

newgenrtpdf

Table B.2: Tokyo (continued) Name0

Citizenship

Sex

University major

Previous/​subsequent migration1

Age upon migration to Tokyo2

Industry (first job in Tokyo)

Years in Tokyo3

Place of residence in 20214

33

Vincenzo

Italian

M

Software development

Japan (PhD)

30–​34

Research

7

Tokyo

34

Yasmin

French

F

Film studies

Japan (exchange student) 25–​29

Language

7

North Africa5

35

Yiannis

Greek

M

Physics

Spain

Culture

5.5

Singapore

25–​29

  All names given are pseudonyms.

1

  As adult. Only includes stays of >3 months at one location, for example internships, study abroad and full-​time work experience (not travelling).

2

  Time of (work-​related) migration to Tokyo. Study time in Japan excluded, in few cases other Japanese city than Tokyo.

3

  Total time (of employment) in Tokyo (Japan) so far or before having left.

4

  Current city of residence, in case of minor cities/​rural areas current country of residence. (HC) means Home Country of the respective interlocutor.

5

  No further specification in order to protect interlocutors’ anonymity.

6

 Temporarily returned to either their home country or worked in a third country before having returned to Tokyo where they live at present. Spouse (Japanese or foreign) in Japan.

Appendix B

211

0

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241

Index References to figures appear in italic type; those in bold refer to tables. References to endnotes show both the page number and the note number (71n2). 3D (dirty, dangerous and difficult) jobs  57, 75 A activity-​based visas  78 age  15, 18, 121, 141, 151, 182, 183, 184 of movers upon migration to Singapore  204–​7 of movers upon migration to Tokyo  208–​11 alien registration cards (Japan)  73 anchoring  167, 183 ang moh (White person)  122–​5 Arthur, M.B.  84 Arudou, D.  71 Asia, stereotypical images of  32 Asian Economic Crisis 1997  54, 58 aspirations  /​ability model  5 class and  10, 32 of the EU Generation  31–​4 of global professionals  43–​4 mobility, immobility and  4–​7 and mobility capital  49, 81 B bachelor circuits  180–​3 Baltic countries  economic and financial crises  47 out-​migration from  191 Bangkok, Thailand  13, 182 Barr, M.D.  56–​7 Beijing, China  13, 198 belonging  approaches to difference and  159–​65 issues of  145 to Japanese society  161 through romantic relationships  167–​85 sense of  18, 147 Benson, M.C.  29, 33 boundaryless careers  84, 92, 110 of middle-​class migrants  92–​7

and migration regimes  100–​2 Bourdieu, Pierre  29 theory of capital  122 Brexit  178 British East Indian Company  52 British Straits Settlements  52 bubble economy  74, 103n1 bumiputera (sons of the soil)  56 business development (BD)  95 C Cairns, D.  24, 25 capital  cultural  30, 48, 95, 99, 107, 122, 128, 129 of European youth  48 White  122, 128, 129 economic  30 mobility  48–​50, 81, 92, 191, 193 social  30, 39–​40 symbolic  30, 32, 33, 41, 45 capitalism, Sennett’s culture of  86 careers  84 career development in the Singaporean labour market  130 career mobility of middle-​class migrants  92–​7 career progression  due to being White  125 for early-​career migrants  189 career trajectories in Singapore  100 Carling, Jørgen  5, 31 CBD (Central Business District), Singapore  45, 51, 58, 87, 148 childcare  131, 132 children, balancing employment and child rearing  182, 183, 188 China  187 Chinese Communist Party  12 Chinese firms, and racialism of whiteness and non-​Chinese speakers  125

242

Index

class  3, 10, 121 in migration  28–​30 CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Other) model  55–​6 CMP (construction, marine shipyard and process)  59 condominiums, in Singapore  149 construction sector, gender balance in  131 contracts, in Singapore and Japan  40n3 corporations creating people, Drucker’s idea of  129 cosmopolitan whiteness  71n3 cosmopolitanism  5, 48, 76, 140 COVID-​19 pandemic  3, 8, 72n5, 175n2, 186, 187, 197 and the 2020 Olympic Games  72n5 effects on Singapore’s immigration policy  59 cultural enthusiasts  36, 41–​3, 49, 78, 81, 107, 114 and becoming seishain in Japanese firms  108 employment for  109 D De Genova, N.  26 differentiated embedding  18, 147–​8, 154, 164, 166, 167, 173, 176, 177, 185 (im)mobility through differentiated 18, 145–​6 digital nomads  31 discrimination, positive (reverse)  141 dis-​embedding  148, 151, 154, 159, 161, 177 of intimate relationships  157 in the Japanese labour market  103–​20 in networks  191 see also embedding Drucker, Peter  83, 129 dual-​career couples, successful career progression of women within  133 Dubai, United Arab Emirates  13, 187 E early-​career migration  life stage and generation for  190–​4 Tokyo and Singapore as destinations for  187–​90 earthquakes, in Japan  46, 80n11 East Asian migrants  119 Economic Development Board, Singapore  54 economies, of Singapore and Tokyo  12 education, tertiary education in the EU  191 embeddedness  147 in Japanese society  183 embedding  147–​8, 151, 165 differentiated  18, 147–​8, 154, 164, 166, 167, 173, 176, 177, 185 (im)mobility through  18, 145–​6 in the Japanese labour market  103–​20 in Japanese society  176, 183, 188

multiple  154 in networks  151–​5, 163, 191 professional  3, 4 relational  148 through mobility networks  151–​5 social  3, 4, 7 in Tokyo  155–​9 see also dis-​embedding emplacement  185 immobility and  147–​66 employment  lifetime employment  188 precariousness of, following the Lehman shock  45 employment conditions  27, 33, 43, 101 in Japan  79, 104–​5, 199 in Singapore  89 Employment Pass (EP)  59, 63–​5, 85, 175 Engineers/​Specialist in Humanities/​ International Services visa  77, 78n10, 79 English  fluency  127 language proficiency  126 Enterprise Singapore  54 entrepreneurs, in Singapore  97–​9 EP (Employment Pass)  59, 63–​5, 85, 175 Erasmus  23, 24, 25, 26 Ethnic Integration Policy, Singapore  56 ethnicity  31, 55 EU  see European Union (EU) EU Generation  aspirations and goals  5 definition of  3 interactions with segments of populations in Singapore and Tokyo  147 legal migration channels to Japan  77–​81 migration aspirations  31–​4 migration motivations  23–​50 motivational types  35–​47 with partners from a third country  184 worklife pathways  4 EU–​Japan Centre  13 EU–​Japan Economic Partnership Agreement  13 European Commission, statement on Erasmus  24 European middle classes  33–​4 European migrants  in highly specialised professions in Tokyo  119 with a host-​country partner or spouse  183 with Japanese language proficiency, bond with Japanese people  166 with Japanese spouses  176 researching of  198–​201 tokenism of  134–​41, 189 European millennials  155 European Union, tertiary education in the  191

243

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

European Union (EU)  declaration on citizen rights  21 enlargement  8–​9 Free Trade Agreement with  13 European Union Generation  see EU Generation European-​Asian relationships  184 Eurostat  27 exchange programmes, between European and Japanese universities  78 expatriates  definition of  5n3 self-​identification with  90 self-​initiated  89 in Singapore  87–​92, 149 F Facebook  16, 150 Fair Consideration Framework  96, 101 family plans  18, 131, 139, 144, 176 and settlement  182 Favell, A.  5 FDI (foreign direct investment)  54, 68, 74 female migrants  balancing child rearing and work in Singapore  188 migration issues among  200 obstacles to professionally integrate in Singapore and Tokyo  196 satisfaction with life in Japan  176 foreign companies  in Japan  42, 106, 111, 113–​18 in Singapore  125 in Tokyo  118–​19 Foreign Domestic Worker (FDW) visa  131n5 foreign talents  86 foreignness  and gender  139, 141 in Singapore  148 ‘founding races’  56, 57, 62 France, unemployment rate among young people in  28 Free Trade Agreement, with the European Union  13 freedom, and deracination  180–​3 French migrants, in Asia  153–​4 French Volontariat International en Entreprise (VIE) programme  153, 170 friendship networks  and business networks  154 in Japan  162–​3 and place-​making activities  167 in Singapore  152 in Tokyo  166 G gaijin (foreigner)  71, 128, 163 Garner, S.  122

gender  121 gendered (im)mobilities in the workplace  129–​41 issues  123 and migration outcomes  183 norms and a gendered division of labour in Japan  181 role in trajectories of migrants  189 role models in Japan  183 Gender Equality Bureau, Japan  134 generations  4 geoarbitrage (geographic arbitrage)  32, 33 geographical immobility  6 geographical mobility  3, 4, 6, 84, 186, 194 German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Tokyo  199–​200 Germany  178 global cities  6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 34, 41 diversification in Tokyo  66–​82 labour markets of Asian  39, 49 state-​led development of Singapore  52–​5 Global City Competitiveness  12 Global Financial Crisis 2008  58 global generation  8 global human resources  76, 105 Global North  11, 32 global professionals  36, 43–​5, 49, 81, 111, 114, 131 Global South  11, 32 global talent  76 government-​subsidised housing (HDB), in Singapore  149 grounded theory  14 Grzymala-​Kazlowska, A.  167 gurōbaru jinzai (global human resources)  76, 105, 107, 109 gyaku sabetsu (reverse discrimination)  141 H Hage, G.  6 Halfacree, K.H.  148 Hannam, K.  4 Hawker centre (food court), Singapore  51, 52 Hayes, M.  32 HDB (Housing and Development Board), Singapore  56, 149 Heartlands, Singapore  58, 148–​51 hierarchies, in Japanese companies  136 Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals visa  156 holidays, annual  40n3 Hong Kong  12, 187, 198 horizontal mobility  94 hospitality sector  64 housing, access to in Singapore  148–​9 Housing and Development Board (HDB), Singapore  56, 149 human mobility decisions  197

244

Index

I identity  collective  154 intersectional  134 issues  174 Japanese  69, 70, 76, 176 middle-​class  34 mobile professional  151 national  56 ‘Other’  18, 121, 129, 142 place-​identity  149 professional  47, 96, 100 racial supremacist  122 Singaporean  62 imagined mobility  178 IMD (Institute of Management Development)  63 immigrants  self-​identification with expatriates  90 in Singapore  90 Immigration Control Act (1951) (Japan)  74 Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (1990) (Japan)  74 immobility  4, 5–​6, 84, 165, 197 through differentiated embedding  18, 145–​6 and emplacement  147–​66 geographical  6 professional and socio-​economic  6 in romantic relationships with host country partners  19, 172–​7 work and  18 see also mobility India, view of White people in  123–​4 in-​law networks  173, 177 insecurity  174 Institute of Management Development (IMD)  63 integration  147, 165 in Japanese society  174 international friendships, and business networks  154 international students  193 in Japan  41n4, 42, 78, 158 mobility in Europe  25 InterNations  16, 150 internships  26 intersectionality theory  121 intimate relationships  167, 192 intra-​European economic migration  26 intra-​European mobility, and educational migration  24–​6 IT companies  111, 112 J Jakarta, Indonesia  13 Japan  advantages of living as a foreigner in  126 after-​work socialising in  137–​40

alien registration cards  73 approaches to difference and belonging  159–​65 decisions to leave  159 earthquakes in  46, 46n7, 80n11 embeddedness in Japanese society  183 EU Generation as labour migrants to  77–​81 flexibility of traditional companies in  137 foreign labour policy  74 foreign population in  72 freedom offered by  157 Gender Equality Bureau  134 gender roles in internal labour market in  134–​41 Highly Skilled Foreign Professional visa  77, 200 ideology pre-​World War II  70 Immigration Control Act (1951)  74 Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (1990)  74 immigration policies  77 immigration to  72–​6 international students in  41n4 labour market  103, 119, 188 legal status of migrants in  176 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)  80 mobilities across the segmented labour market in  118–​20 National Health Insurance Law  74 National Pension Law  74 period of industrialisation  67 popularity throughout the world of  41n5 population trends in  75 post-​war economic growth  103 recruitment system  103 rotation system  114n4 seishain status  107, 119 small and medium-​sized enterprises (SMEs) in innovative industries  110–​13 students in language schools and universities  75 token women and token men in Japanese labour market  134–​41 as unattractive for foreign professionals  115 white-​collar workplaces  105 work conditions in  199 workload in  135 workplace practices  135 Zainichi Koreans in  77n9 see also Tokyo Japanese anime  42 Japanese colonial empire  69 Japanese language proficiency  42, 106, 109, 112, 113, 114, 118, 166, 173 Japanese Language Proficiency Test  117n6 Japanese manga  42 Japanese partners or spouses  173

245

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

Japaneseness  107–​10, 174 and Others  69–​72 JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test)  117n6 job hunting  80, 104, 105 job turnover, in Singapore and Tokyo  188 K katakana  1 Krings, T.  84 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  13 L labour market(s)  company-​based internal  104 neoliberal  18, 83, 86, 97, 101, 170 primary labour market in Japan  18, 103, 107, 118 segmented  83, 103, 118–​20 in Singapore  47, 188, 189 in Tokyo  189 transition to, post-​Lehman shock  26–​8 labour migrants  EU Generation as  77–​81 in Japan  73 mid-​career  193 in Singapore  57 labour migration  193 language, as a factor for bonding  153 Lee Kuan Yew  54, 55 Lehman shock  32, 45 finding first employment after  191 global recession after  8 labour market after  5, 8, 26–​8 life course  16, 39, 165, 193 implications of early career migration on  3 mobility, immobility and aspirations in  4–​7 life cycle  170, 182 life stage  7, 15, 18, 19, 39, 65, 151, 186 and early career migration  190–​4 mobile professional networks and  165–​6 and romantic relationships  167, 173, 184 transitions of  161 lifestyle migration  29 lifestyle seekers  36, 38–​41, 49, 81, 111, 168 lifetime employment  188 Limited Liability Partnership (LLP)  93 LinkedIn  16, 150 Lithuania  27 unemployment rate among young people in  28 Liu-​Farrer, G.  33, 115n5 locker room talk  141 Long-​Term Visit Pass (LTVP)  94 lost decades, in Japan  68, 105 M Malacca, Malaysia  52 Malaysia  53 state support for Malays in  56

male gender, Europeanness and whiteness advantage  141 Mannheim, Karl  7 marginalisation  165 marriage  170 to acquire legal status in Singapore  143 with host country citizens  177 to Japanese citizens  176 mata hara (harassment of working mothers)  134, 138 Mediterranean countries, economic and financial crises  47 Meetups  150 Meiji era (1868–​1912)  67–​8 meritocracy, principle of  55 middle class  9–​10, 33–​4 migration  aspirations and ability of  31 East–​West or South–​North  26 motivations for  35–​47, 191 migratory pathways  see migratory trajectories migratory trajectories, of the EU Generation  5, 101 millennial generation (millennials)  4, 8, 34, 84 Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Singapore  59, 200 MNCs (multinational corporations)  54, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 101, 114, 125 mobile professional networks, emergence and dissolution of  165–​6 mobile professionals, in Singapore’s heartlands  148–​51 mobility  4, 5, 185 challenges and insecurities of  96 geographical  3, 4, 6, 84, 186, 194 horizontal  94 human mobility decisions  197 imagined  178 and long-​term relationships  169 physical  191 pre-​employment  25, 191 recurring mobility with a lack of intimate relationships in the host city  180–​3 romantic relationships and  168–​72 across segmented labour markets  118–​20 strategies  91 student  25 see also immobility mobility capital  48–​50, 81, 92, 191, 193 mobility networks, relational embedding through  151–​5 mobility turn  4 multiculturalism, in Singapore  56 multilingualism  11, 79, 110 multinational corporations (MNCs)  54, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 101, 114, 125 multiracialism, in Singapore  56

246

Index

N National Health Insurance Law (Japan)  74 National Pension Law (Japan)  74 Nemoto, K.  71, 79, 105, 127, 136–8, 141, 160 neoliberal labour markets  18, 86 in Singapore  83, 97, 101, 170 networks  in-​law  173, 177 mobile professional  165–​6 professional and occupational  101 Nihonjinron literature  70 nomikai (after-​work socialising and drinking)  138, 139, 140 non-​CMP (Services and Manufacturing) (Singapore)  59 non-​Japanese speakers  114, 158, 165 Non-​Residents, Singapore  57, 59, 62, 148

privileged migration  31–​2 professional identity  100 professional networks  101 Q quality of life  101, 153 in Singapore and Tokyo  12

O occupational networks  101 Oliver, C.  29 Olympic Games 2020  72 onwards migration  143, 154, 179, 183, 184, 188 O’Reilly, K.  29, 33 organisational immobility  113 organisational mobility  84, 119, 141 Other identity  121 otherness  142, 164, 165 in Japanese business contexts  126 of migrants  134 ‘Others’  70, 164

R race  18, 31, 55, 57, 69, 121, 130 Japanese  74 nation and culture  70 racialisation of society, in Singapore  55 race relations  122, 125 Raffles, Sir Stamford  52 recognition at work  192 re-​embedding practices  148, 154 refugee crisis (2015)  27 relational embedding  148 through mobility networks  151–​5 relationship project  168, 170 relationship-​mobility patterns  183–​5 remigration  119, 193 return to home countries  193, 194 romantic relationships  167–​85 as enabler and foothold of mobility  168–​72 (im)mobility with host country partners  172–​7 same country couples  168–​72 third-​country couples and search of a home  177–​80 Russell, J.G.  70

P PAP (People’s Action Party)  54, 55, 58–​9 passive whiteness  122, 129, 142 Penang, Malaysia  52, 53n1 People’s Action Party (PAP)  54, 55, 58–​9 PEP (Personalised Employment Pass)  64, 65 physical mobility  191 place  185 Portugal  27 unemployment rate among young people in  28 positive discrimination  141 PR (permanent residence)  59, 65, 81, 85, 94, 132n6, 155, 172, 175 application for  77, 78 and feelings of belonging  176 ‘practices of staying’  157 precarious movers  35, 36, 45–​7, 49, 81 precariousness  3, 26, 27, 31–​4, 49, 84 employment  45 legal  101 pre-​employment mobility  25, 191 primary labour market, Japan  18, 103, 107, 118 principle of meritocracy  55 privilege  31–​4

S S Pass  59, 64 salarīman (male Japanese employees/​ salaryman)  23, 103n2 Sassen, S.  72 segmented labour market  83, 103 mobilities across  118–​20 seishain (permanent employee of Japanese firms)  107–​10, 118, 119 self-​initiated expatriates  89 seniority principle  104 Sennett, R.  86, 100 Shanghai, China  198 shared experiences  7–​8 shūkatsu (job hunting)  80, 103–​4 Singapore  10–​11, 51–​65, 166, 187, 198 access to housing in  148–​9 balancing child rearing and paid work in  188 career development in the Singaporean labour market  130 career trajectories in  100 Central Business District (CBD)  45 classification of population  59 CMIO model  55–​6 colonial legacies in  196

247

THE EU MIGRANT GENERATION IN ASIA

competition and promotion of young and educated workforce  142 condominiums in  149 control of immigration  172 demographic profile of interlocutors 204–​7 diversity of population of  53 dual-​career couples with children  142 economic development  54–​5 Economic Development Board  54 economy of  12 Enterprise Singapore  54 entrepreneurs in  97–​9 EP holders in  85 ethnic categories of population of  53 Ethnic Integration Policy  56 European companies in  13 expatriates in  87–​92, 149 gendered division of migrant labour  57 gendered obstacles in  129–​34 heartlanders  58 history of  52 Housing and Development Board (HDB)  56, 149 immigration policies for skilled migrants 58 income tax in  98n6 legal and institutional framework for migration  63–​5 legal status of migrants in  176 Local Singaporean schools  132n6 Mass Rapid Transport (MRT)  87 migrants in  3 migration regime  175n2 Ministry of Manpower (MOM)  59, 200 mobile professionals in  148–​51 multiculturalism in  56 multiracialism in  56 nation building and social engineering  55–​7 networks in  150 Non-​Residents status  57, 59, 62, 148 number of Europeans in foreign workforce in  63 Permanent Residents status  59 place-​identity  149 population of  53, 59–​62 postcolonial diversities and migration regime in  57–​63 professionalising the self  85–​102 relational embedding through mobility networks  151–​5 social support nets  142 temporary labour migrants  57 Training Employment Pass  200 treatment by the immigration authorities  200 visa policies  99 single migrants  184

skilled migration  45 skills  33–​4, 85 Skribiš, Z.  56–​7 small and medium-​sized enterprises (SMEs)  79 employment of Chinese students graduating from Japanese universities in  115n5 social capital  30, 39–​40 social immobility  4 social lives  190 social networking sites  16 socialising  in Japan  137–​40, 162, 172–​3 in Singapore  172–​3 South European countries, out-​migration from  191 Spain  27 British migrants in  29 unemployment rate among young people in  28 spatial mobility  82 ‘specified skilled’ visa category  75 startups  97 stereotypes  of native English speakers in Japan 160 of non-​Japanese speakers  160 of white men in Asia  180 Straits Chinese  53n1 student mobility  25 support structures  192 T talents  85, 86 Tazzioli, M.  26 TCNs (third country nationals)  176, 177, 179, 180, 185 television series, animated  42 Tengku Long, Sultan of Singapore  53 Tokyo  10–​11, 66–​82, 166, 187, 198 career progression in  188 demographic profile of interlocutors  208–​11 discourses of othering in  196 as the economic and political centre of Japan  67–​9 economy of  12 employment trajectories of EU Generation in  106, 119 European community in  73 females in male-​dominated workplaces in  143 foreign population in  73 German Chamber of Commerce and Industry  199–​200 immigration to  72–​6 and the Japanese labour market  103–​20 migrants in  3

248

Index

number of young European residents in 13 population of  69 White fetish and the denial of White privilege in  126–​9 see also Japan traditional breadwinner/​trailing spouse role model  133 Training Employment Pass, Singapore  200 U unemployment  among young people in the EU, 2005–​19  28 following the Lehman shock  45 of young academics between 2005 and 2019  27 United Kingdom, unemployment rate among young people in  28 university exchange programmes  24 upward career mobility  113, 114, 125 of middle-​class migrants  92–​7 V Van Hear, N.  29 VIE (Volontariat International en Entreprise) internship  153, 170 visas  Engineers/​Specialist in Humanities/​ International Services visa  77, 78n10, 79 Foreign Domestic Worker (FDW) visa  131n5 Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals visa  77, 156, 200 ‘specified skilled’ visa category  75 work and activity-​based  78 W Weberian types  35 Weiss, R.S.  35 West, the  3 White cultural capital  128, 129 White people, in Japan, labelling and self-​ identification as  160 White privilege  124 the White fetish and denial of  126–​9

white-​collar workers  23n1, 103n2 whiteness  62, 76, 121, 189 benefits in workplaces  128 cosmopolitan whiteness  71n3 as cultural capital  122 as eliciting friendly behaviour  127 in professional contexts  122–​9 status in Japan  70–​1 women  career progression of women within dual-​ career couples  133 foreignness and gender  141 status in Japanese society  176 ‘Womenomics’  134 work  in global worklife pathways  194–​7 structure and character of  83 work conditions  see employment conditions work experience, and career opportunities in Tokyo  155 working mothers  133–​4, 189 world citizens  155, 196 X xenophobia  62 Y Yang, P.  57, 62 Ye, J.  130n4 Yeoh, B.S.A.  171 youth  27–​8 educational credentials of  86 highly educated  9 migration  3, 26, 35 mobility  25, 191 precarious labour market  95 precariousness among European  49 social and cultural capital of European  48 standard of living during  47 Tokyo youth culture  66, 73 unemployment  191 and underemployment  26 of young academics  27 Z Zainichi Koreans, in Japan  77n9

249

“This book makes a very welcome addition to our understanding of middle-class youth mobility in two global cities in Asia – Singapore and Tokyo. It combines an engaging and rich account of the career and social trajectories of young adult Europeans with an analysis of the complexity of their migrant incorporation in a period of exclusionary migration systems recently affected by COVID-19.” Eleonore Kofman, Middlesex University Helena Hof is Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich, and Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Drawing on an extensive study with young individuals who migrated to Singapore and Tokyo in the 2010s, this book sheds light on the friendships, emotions, hopes and fears involved in establishing life as Europeans in Asia. It demonstrates how migration to Asian business centres has become a way of distinction and an alternative route of middle-class reproduction for young Europeans during that period. The perceived insecurities of life in the crisis-ridden EU result in these migrants’ onward migration or prolonged stays in Asia. Capturing the changing roles of Singapore and Japan as migration destinations, this pioneering work makes the case for EU citizens’ aspired lifestyles and professional employment that is no longer only attainable in Europe or the West.

G L O B A L M I G R AT I O N A N D S O C I A L C H A N G E This series showcases ground-breaking research that looks at the nexus between migration, citizenship and social change. It advances new scholarship in migration and refugee studies and fosters cross- and interdisciplinary dialogue in this field.

Series Editor Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham

ISBN 978-1-5292-2500-6

@BrisUniPress BristolUniversityPress bristoluniversitypress.co.uk

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