Homelessness final essay PDF

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final essay on homelessness, gender, net cafe refugees...

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How has the rise in social inequality lead to increased youth homelessness in Japan today? There has been an increasing rise in social inequality over recent decades in Japan; from a general sense of inequality among society in the 1980s to the relationship between education, social class and job outcomes, discussion throughout this essay will centre on how these factor have contributed to youth homelessness. Homelessness in Japan is a main topic that shall be explored; background on the history of homelessness will add reason to the rise in youth homelessness today. Particular insight into youth who are referred to as ‘net café refugees’ intends to portray how the youth’s economic prospects and future have been put in jeopardy due to the increase of irregular work. Specific ethnographic study into day labourers in Kotobuki provides a contrasting example to the young homeless and sheds light on other variations of homelessness.

Within Japan, there is a sense of inequality within several different areas that include income, gender and assets, among others. Many individuals feel that they are poor despite the fact that the country is rich and there is speculation that a small number of the higher class are augmenting their wealth (Sugimoto, 2003). Before 1970s, it seemed as though Japanese society was becoming more egalitarian however as the high-growth economy began to end, social inequality rose once more. As this high-growth economy 1

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ended, banks had large amounts of excess money and thus funded real estate and land ownership. This resulted in housing prices increasing, therefore those who owned housing or land held assets of great value whereas those without land were not able to purchase any (Sugimoto, 2003). In this situation, the rich became richer and the poor became poorer, which in turn demonstrates one reason as to why youth homelessness increased; the youth coming out of education were unable to secure high paying jobs and could not afford housing. Inter-class barriers also remained due to issues with inheritance; property owners now had an inheritable asset (Sugimoto, 2003) meaning that the rich were able to maintain their wealth while those without housing had nothing to give to their youth; “Japan is becoming an unequal society where children’s occupational and income attainment is determined by parents’ income and family environment” (Ishida, 2009, p.33).

Slater (2009) discusses the idea of a new working class in the post war period and produces ethnographic material on Tomo, a first year student at Musashino Metropolitan High School, a working class high school. Tomo is confused at how he attends a working class school, as he is a bright child yet “he is in school but demoralized” (Slater, 2009, p.137). This demoralization may come from the idea that Tomo does not know where he belongs and struggles with his sense of identity and where his life is going, much in accordance with many of the homeless youth population. 2

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Students from Musashino High School get jobs that have little security, for example Slater (2009) goes on to explain that Tomo left school to have a job as a part-time worker “with no prospects of any more stable employment in the future” (p.139). Slater (2009) also portrays the life of Tomo’s parents, who along with many other parents of children who attend Musashino, do not work in lifetime employment, white-collar jobs. This adds to the idea of inheritance, as if the parents did not have economically stable occupations then the likelihood of their children achieving lifetime employment jobs is slim.

Additionally, students from rich families were able to pay to go to ‘cram school’, a school where students were sent for extra schoolwork during middle school in order to maximize the possibility of acceptance into an elite high school (Slater, 2009). This led to students like Tomo, who could not afford cram school, to be at a disadvantage as they had little practise in preparation for sitting these important exams. As the reallocation of high schools occurred, students often blamed teachers and their previous school for their perceived abandonment and then went on to self-criticise about how they should have worked harder in middle school (Slater, 2009). This entire process is a clear indicator of why there is an abundance of homeless youth in contemporary Japan; young people’s moral has been dampened and they have been made to feel belittled and stupid which would have adverse effects on their 3

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outlook on life and their motivation to work hard and get a well-paid job.

From the discussion thus far, one could argue that the likelihood of young people ending up in precarious labour is affected by their social class. The linkage between educational pathways and job outcomes positively correlates; through the education system, students are categorized into what could essentially be described as those who are clever and those who are not. Those who are clever attend elite high schools and thus have much better opportunities and job prospects than those who attend working class high schools and the evidence for this can be seen above through the fieldwork conducted by Slater. This creates the potential for more youth homelessness as many young people turn to irregular work and are forced into homelessness as they have no motivation or skill to get better jobs.

In terms of homelessness in Japan, the majority of the homeless population consists of people who can’t support themselves financially but are not included on the welfare system (Gill, 2001a). In West Shinjuku, an area in Tokyo, there was a clean-up movement put in place by the government in early 1994 in order to erase homelessness in the area, however the homeless population formed a resistance in the form of encampments. This encampment was 4

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made up of cardboard shacks but as it grew and attracted more of the homeless population, people took to sleeping in the covered passages at night (Hasegawa, 2006). The station, situated near the encampment, was attractive to the homeless as it was near food outlets and day labouring opportunities were readily available due to labour recruiters gathering close to the station. However the encampment was beginning to pose a threat to business owners and the local government and was also situated in “one of the most visible functional spaces in the city” (Hasegawa, 2006, p.95) therefore the government eventually evicted this homeless population to beyond the district. The movement of homeless people in Tokyo still continues, yet in 2002 the homeless were “no longer stigmatized as threats” (Hasegawa, 2006, p.138) meaning that they had gained a certain amount of recognition and the problem was taken into governmental consideration. In order to get an estimate of the number of homeless people in the country, a national survey was carried out in 1999 and revealed that there were 20,451 homeless people in Japan at the time (Gill, 2001a). However it must be noted that this figure is the lowest possible figure of the homeless population as the survey considered mainly the 5 big cities in Japan and did not regard those in suburban or rural areas. Between 1999 and 2003, the rise in homelessness was so evident that there has been a large amount of media coverage surrounding the problem. Attacks on homeless people have also risen and are being reported in the media (Gill, 2005) which could 5

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be seen positively as it is bringing the problem of homelessness to the forefront of social issues. However, the reports on these attacks have fuelled negative associations that the general public has of homeless people (Gill, 2005), resulting in the homeless community becoming even further ostracised from society than before.

In consideration of irregular labour, large companies increased their use of labour of this kind after the burst of the bubble economy in 1991; numerous organisations promoted part-time labour as “part of a larger national strategy to climb out of recession” (Slater, 2009, p.161). This form of work benefitted the businesses as it meant they did not have to commit to employing a copious amount of workers therefore allowing them to reduce their spending during a time of economic downturn. The increase of irregular work was also due to several other cumulative actions, such as the government introducing policy to encourage more women to work part-time jobs (Ishiguro, 2003). There are several different types of irregular labour available in Japan including part-time workers, ‘freeter’ meaning those who are still in temporary work despite completing their education, and NEET which stands for somebody who is ‘not in education, employment or training’ (Goodman, Imoto and Toivonen, 2012).

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For the youth in Japan today, it is unfortunately “the case of the ‘lost generation’, an entire generation of youth who came of working age during the “glacial job freeze” in the 1990s” (Allison, 2012, p.353). The youth that find themselves in the lowest strata of the class structure have come to be particularly vulnerable economically (Brinton, 2009) as there is little to no job prosperity for them. This could suggest that the social class of an individual is becoming more important in deciding how successful they are at finding a high end, well-paying job. In addition, the amount of youths without jobs from poor households has increased (Genda, 2007) and they are often stuck living at home or find themselves homeless. A new form of homelessness that has emerged is the youth that reside in internet cafes; “the term ‘net café refugees’ has come to stand for the precariousness – of home, job and life itself – for an increasing number of young Japanese” (Allison, 2012, p.353). A Japanese reporter aired a documentary about the homeless youth living in net cafes; often referred to at the ‘drifting poor’ or the ‘floating population’ as they are mainly irregular or flexible workers with little money and no job security, which makes a permanent residence difficult to afford (Allison, 2013). The documentary also illustrates how these people have no job security and no sense of future among them; they are “unable to secure the regular employment that still marks status and security” (Allison, 2012, p.353). This sense of loneliness and displacement echoes the feelings of ‘perceived abandonment’ that Tomo had towards his 7

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teachers at the beginning of this paper. This demonstrates that the rise in social inequality plays a crucial role in determining the paths that youths choose to follow, firstly in terms of education and now work and homelessness. Youth homelessness is a growing problem, as the education system pushes the lower class even further down and the high class further up; for net café refugees, their residence can only be short term, however the question remains as to whether the youth will ever manage to overcome this dark period or if they will stay in this downward spiral for the foreseeable future.

In contrast to the growing population of youth homelessness, there are also many links between irregular labour and homelessness in Japan, particularly with day labourers. An ethnographic example of this comes from Kotobuki, the day labouring district in Yokohama, often referred to as a yoseba meaning an urban labour market where men gather to find work. Gill (2001b) visited Kotobuki several times a week when conducting his fieldwork and found many connections between being homeless and participating in the day labour market. Most of the labourers looked over the age of 40 and some workers live in the doya; small rooms that can be occupied for a fee, however these are almost always fully occupied. More doya rooms are being built, however the men in this district are aware that they live a life of uncertainty and accept that they may be considered homeless for their entire lives (Gill, 2001b). Despite this there are “Many men who have lived in the same doya room for 8

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years, acquired numerous possessions, enjoy stable relationships with some of their neighbours, and would strongly object to being called “homeless”’ (Gill, 2001b, p.128). If a room becomes available, some can only afford to stay a night or two and others have built their own shacks, but many have no other choice but to sleep on the streets; “there were usually two to three hundred people sleeping rough within a half-mile radius of Kotobuki” (Gill, 2001b, p.129). Day labourers slept in cardboard boxes and some homeless people refused to use temporary shelters due to the fact that they had often found their favourite pitch and feared it would be taken if they were to move temporarily into a shelter. More often than not, they had a community on the street that they didn’t want to leave behind (Gill, 2001b). Although these men are subject to irregular work and homelessness, there appears a large sense of community amongst them; they are aware that they are excluded from mainstream society yet in this case, they don’t seem to mind, as they have found their own community to be a part of.

In conclusion, there has been a history of social inequality in Japan which has left the rich to become richer and the poor to become poorer. Issues of inheritance of money and land ensured that interclass barriers remained, which also had an effect on youth education. Rich families could help their children get into good educational establishments while lower class families couldn’t afford extra schooling, resulting in the children attending working class 9

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high school and losing their moral. This in turn would fuel youth homelessness as the youth had poor education therefore entered into irregular work with little money which has high potential to lead into homelessness. An overview of homelessness and on irregular labour in Japan adds background to the major problem of the large population of homeless youth living as ‘net café refugees’. Coming from ‘the lost generation’, working class youths have become economically weak as there is little in job prosperity for them therefore they work irregularly and experience displacement and loneliness from society. Finally, an ethnographic example of day labourers provides a contrasting view to homelessness in Japan, illustrating that although there has been a distinct rise in youth homelessness, there are also other types of homeless people living in the country, and just as much focus should be on these men living in doya’s or on the street as there is on net café refugees.

Word Count: 2373

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References Allison, A. (2012) ‘Ordinary Refugees: Social Precarity and Soul in 21st Century Japan’, Anthropological Quarterly, 85(2), pp.345-370. Allison, A. (2013) Precarious Japan. London: Duke University Press. Brinton, M. (2009) ‘Social class and economic life chances in postindustrial Japan: the “lost generation”. In: Hiroshi, I. and Slater, D. (eds.) (2009) Social Class in Contemporary Japan. Abingdon: Routledge. Genda, Y. (2007) ‘Jobless Youths and the NEET Problem in Japan’, Social Science Japan Journal, 10, pp.23-40. Gill, T. (2001) ‘Homelessness: A Slowly Dawning Recognition’, Social Science Japan, 21, pp.17-20. Gill, T. (2001) Men of Uncertainty. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gill, T. (2005) ‘Whose problem? Japan’s Homeless as an Issue of Local and Central Governance’. In: Hook, G. (ed.) (2005) The Political Economy of Governance in Japan. London: Routledge, pp.192-210. Goodman, R., Imoto, Y. and Toivonen, T. (2012) (eds.) A Sociology of Japanese Youth: From returnees to NEETs. London and New York: Routledge. Hasegawa, M. (2006) We are not garbage! The Homeless Movement in Tokyo 1994 – 2002. London: Routledge. Ishida, H. ‘Does class matter in Japan? Demographics of class structure and class mobility from a comparative perspective’. In: Ishida, H. and Slater, D. (eds.) (2009) Social Class in Contemporary Japan. Abingdon: Routledge. Ishiguro, K. (2008) ‘Japanese Employment in Transformation: The Growing Number of Non-Regular Workers’, Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, 22/12/2008, [Online] Available at: http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2008/Ishiguro.html (Accessed at: 8th December 2017) Slater, D. ‘The “new working class” of urban Japan: socialization and contradiction from middle school to the labor market’. In: Ishida, H. and Slater, D. (eds.) (2009) Social Class in Contemporary Japan. Abingdon: Routledge. 11

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Sugimoto, Y. (2003) An Introduction to Japanese society. 2nd ed. Cambridge:CUP.

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