Rethinking Temporary Foreign Workers ’ Rights: Living Conditions of

This paper examines how the restrictions on temporary foreign workers ’ rights affect the working lives of technical interns in the Japanese Technical Internship Program (TIP), and how the program transforms the rural workforce into an industrial workforce. It is true that foreign workers have fewer rights that are more limited in scope than those of Japanese citizens and denizens or permanent foreign resident. On the other hand, the modern societies in which we live have a history of protecting the idea that every man should enjoy the same fundamental rights. All democratic states are proponents of the principle of “equal treatment of indigenous and foreign workers. ” Western countries, which have a long history of taking in immigrants, have revisited this idea of equal treatment on numerous occasions in the past. However, the very fact the same principle continues to be reiterated proves the difficulty of its realization in the modern world. In the Japanese sociological sphere to which I belong, scholars have recently begun to turn their attention to ethnic studies. Recognizing the social importance of the problems faced by foreign workers, we are ethically driven to study these problems. Even in Japan, whose population has remained relatively homogeneous, the issue of foreig