The Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) held a online public symposium,” Towards a Safer Transnational Migration: Bringing Together Multiple Stakeholders’ Perspectives.”

JCIE has been implementing the “Building Social Infrastructure for Information Security in Transborder Migration: Toward the Realization of Fair and Robust Migration” (hereinafter referred to as the “Information Security Project”) with an international grant from the Toyota Foundation. This project expands the framework of “Information Security,” which has been implemented as a way to support communication that guarantees the “right to know” for people with visual, hearing or intellectual disabilities and who are easily excluded from information in their daily lives, to support foreigners and migrant workers to access information on the systems, working conditions, and living environment of the country of destination before they start living in the new country. Furthermore, the project aims to improve the accessibility of information in the host society after migration, and at the same time, to strengthen accountability.

The symposium looked to compare and report on the “mechanisms” surrounding people from Nepal and Myanmar, who move to Japan under the framework of foreign students, technical interns/trainees, and workers with specified skills, and people who move to Korea under the employment permit system which accepts workers from overseas in Korea. The speakers included representatives from Japanese and Korean language schools and sending organizations that provide information on employment and living conditions in Japan and Korea, as well as representatives from the migrant community, civil society, and companies that employ foreign nationals who are working to provide information and solve various problems related to migration.