Opening Up or Closing Down the Door to Marriage Migration – Comparing European and Japanese Cases

For the past 15 years, growing concerns regarding the misuse of intimate relationship for immigration benefits have led European countries to define marriage migration as a national security issue. Citizens wishing to unite with their non-EU spouse or partner are now required to provide evidence of the genuine character of their relationship, their good integration into the country, and to follow strict economic requirements. Japanese immigration legislation has also shown such evolution, but not to the extent observed in Europe. Why is that so? The aim of this paper is to compare how Japanese and European states have sought to control marriage migration and to what purpose. It tries to determine which kind of families are deemed “deserving” to enjoy family life within the country and those which are not. This paper draws upon second-hand data for the European case study, and first-hand qualitative data for the Japanese one. The latter was collected in 2016 through participatory observation in two immigration lawyer offices, semi-structured interviews with married couples and marriage agencies, judgments, and administrative materials. To give but a few examples, our findings show that both Japan and European countries have taken their distance from highly gendered family-reunification policies, upon which only male citizens used to be entitled to family life. The introduction of technologies to assess the truthfulness of marriage is another common feature in both cases. However, Japanese and European administrations do not share the same understanding of what constitutes a “real” marriage. I will show that in Japan, as long as the married couple fulfill the productive and reproductive duties expected from families, few attention is given to the motives that were behind the foreign spouse’s decision to migrate, unlike in Europe.