Shaping Japan’s Policies on Regular Labour migration from ASEAN Nations towards strengthening Japan-ASEAN Cooperation

Japan and ASEAN have long been staunch allies in the region and Japan has been showing its unwavering support since the formation of ASEAN. In its 20th ASEAN-Japan summit in 2017, the chairman of the summit stated that ASEAN-Japan partnership is vital for maintaining regional peace, stability, and prosperity. During the summit, the leaders of Japan and ASEAN have clearly highlighted the importance of Japan-ASEAN cooperation for mutual development and regional development as a whole. Although the development of a country depends on multi-faceted inducers, from the demographical point of view, for economic development, Japan would highly depend on accepting regular labour population into its territory whereas, the development of ASEAN is dispensing their excessive labour population out of their territory. This paper, therefore, accentuates that labour migration from ASEAN to Japan would be paramount for mutual development and cooperation. Japan is one of the economically strongest countries on the Asian continent. Its economy was powerful from the 80s till 90s. After the economic bubble-bursts, Japan is still trying to get back to its pre-ninety stage, besides a plethora of challenges in the region. Demographically, there are many factors such as declining working-age population and rising elderly population resulted in the lower tax-based regime with increasing government expenditure for social security for the elderly population that contribute to the economic decline. From a macroeconomic perspective, lower productivity of goods and services, lower GDP growth rate, lower export rates in the past two decades have made the country‘s policymakers to consider absorbing more foreign labour population. However, current immigration, social integration, and social security policies of Japan are needed to be upgraded to absorb more foreign labours with a range of skills. From the context of ASEAN, Japan has a strong economic partnership and has several bilateral agreements, which includes migration provision. When considering the demography of ASEAN nations, it has a high potential for a working-age population of all skill levels, with the relatively high unemployment rate. It would, therefore, be mutual benefits for both ASEAN nations and Japan, if Japan could consider absorbing more labour population from ASEAN, particularly from Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam. Japan could also consider strengthening its economic partnership with other countries in ASEAN as well. It should not only upgrade its immigration policies for higher, medium, and lower-skilled migrant