Labor Market Vulnerability Drives Japanese Women’s Opposition To Immigration

Why Women Might Oppose Immigration

Jieun Park asks why women—contrary to some expectations—often express stronger opposition to immigration than men. Park proposes that this gender gap is shaped by labor market vulnerability: as immigrants enter occupations traditionally held by women, non-immigrant women who occupy more vulnerable job positions may see immigrants as economic competitors rather than partners.

How the Study Tests the Idea

Park tests this argument with two original, nationally representative surveys in Japan that include embedded experiments. Respondents were exposed to information emphasizing the economic necessity of immigrant labor, allowing the study to observe how this framing changes attitudes across gender and occupational groups.

Key Findings

• Information stressing immigrants' economic necessity increases favorability toward immigrants among Japanese men, but not among women.
• Among Japanese women, especially those in non-professional jobs, exposure to the same information makes attitudes toward immigrant women more hostile—consistent with a perceived labor-market threat.
• These patterns point to an interaction between gender and labor-market position: responses to instrumental economic messaging about immigration depend on whether respondents feel economically vulnerable.

What This Means for Policy and Scholarship

Park's results link the political economy of immigration to gendered labor-market structures, showing that the same factual message can produce opposite attitudinal effects across gender and class lines. The findings imply that migration policymaking and public communications should account for gendered occupational exposure and uneven economic vulnerability to avoid unintended backlash.

Contribution

By combining nationally representative survey experiments with a gendered labor-market lens, Park advances understanding of immigration attitudes and gender politics in a high-income, unequal labor market—offering a model for studying similar dynamics in other countries with persistent gender stratification in employment.