Trends of Nepalese Migrants in Japan

In recent years, Nepalese in Japan have been rapidly increasing. This study intends to clarify the trend of the Nepalese migrants and its socio-economic factors referring to preceding studies and various statistical data.Historically migrants from Nepal mainly outflowed to India. Foreign Employment Act introduced in 1985 led to an opening Nepalese labors to the world. The number of Nepalese migrants was limited in hundreds of thousands levels, while the ratio to India decreased at the time of 2001 census. The political situation becomes stable owing to the peace agreement of the civil war of Nepal in 2006 and conversion of Kingdom into Federation Democratic Republic in 2008.Then the Governemnt of Nepal enacted new Foreign Employment Act in 2007 and introduced Foreign Employment policy in 2012. These migration policies have improved the circumstances of Nepalese migrants. As globalization proceeds, the number of Nepalese migrants estimated to be more than 2 million people in 2014/15 year. The remittance from abroad estimated at 27.7% of Nepalese GDP which accounted for an extremely large proportion in Nepalese economy.Destinations of Nepalese migrants are India, Middle Eastern oil-producing countries as well as ASEAN countries. In late years the migrants to Malaysia have increased rapidly. Although Nepalese in Japan is only 0.2% of the whole Nepalese abroad, Japan became the largest destination for studying abroad. We examined the characteristics of Nepalese migrants in Japan comparing with the migrants from South Asian nations. As a result, Nepalese migrants in Japan have increased rapidly, the number is the largest among those from Southern Asian countries and twice as Indians in Japan. The main ‘status of residence’ of Nepalese is “study”(37.0%, 2015), and that of, “ Engineer/Humanities/ International Services” is only 3.7%. Status of “Skilled Labor”, mostly cooks in Indian restaurants, shows a significant ratio in both Nepalese and Indians. Nepalese are slightly younger than Indians. Both of them mostly lives in Tokyo, but the most distinctive feature of Nepalese is large population in Fukuoka and Okinawa prefectures. This study found that this feature has a strong connection with Japanese language schools in both prefectures. In addition to these results, this study points out two important research tasks from now on; 1) Investigating the situation of Nepalese students in Japanese language schools and of their part-time jobs as well as their future after graduating from the schools, 2) Investigating ‘Little Nepal’, which will be a new ethnic community, in Suginami-district, Tokyo associated with newly established Nepalese School