The Global Education Effect and Japan

'This is an impressively comprehensive, multi-disiplinary, and up-to-date volume on the cultural politics in global education in Japan. While other texts on this contemporary issue tend to be factual and descriptive, this edited book takes the very assumption of difference and border-crossing behind global education policy and discourses as a starting point to investigate how various identities—“native” and “non-native” Japanese speakers, “international and foreign students,” and “Japanese” students, low and high-skilled workers—are constructed. The volume covers a wide range of issues from assertion of cultural homogeneity, essentialism, xenophobia, and the protection of “tradition,” English hegemony, the intersection of education and immigration policies, and the complex effects of new institutional arrangements designed to “globalize” education in the context of low birth rate and dire foreign labour need. Global education becomes a prism to understand urgent socio-political issues in Japan from demographic changes, economic concerns, race politics, and regimes of mobility. A must read for everyone who is interested in Japanese studies and global education.' - Jennifer Chan, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of British