The Impact of Internal Urban-to-Rural Migration and its Limits: A Case Study on Japan and South Korea (76881)

Session Information:

Friday, 24 May 2024 15:30
Session: Poster Session 1
Room: Orion Hall (5F)
Presentation Type: Poster Presentation

All presentation times are UTC + 9 (Asia/Tokyo)

This study reviews how the governments of Japan and South Korea have secured their workforce in depopulated agricultural sector. As well as the Western developed economies, both Japan and South Korea have experienced internal demographic shift from rural areas to urban ones and the shift has caused the shortage of workforce to serve for agricultural production. To secure the workforce in rural areas and sustain food production, as many previous studies have pointed out, the Western developed economies such as Spain and the United Kingdom have introduced foreign workers to serve for agriculture. In Japan and South Korea, however, small-sized and family-based agricultural structure has prevented to introduce the foreign workers. Instead, the governments of the two countries have promoted internal migration from urban areas to rural ones for two decades. This study analyses whether the two countries' promotion on urban-to-rural internal migration has secured the workforce in the small-sized rice farming both quantitatively and qualitatively employing the methods of statistic data analysis and interview on local government officers in rural municipalities. The result of the analysis indicates that, though the internal migration in the two countries has secured the rural workforce in Japan and South Korea partly, it has not sufficient to cover the shortage of farming workforce. Therefore, the number of foreign employees in the two countries' farming areas has been increased since the 2010s. Finally, the study prospects that the increasing foreign farming workers will act as a pressure to promote structural change in the two countries.

Authors:
Akio Nawakura, National Federation of Depopulated Municipalities in Japan, Japan


About the Presenter(s)
Dr Akio Nawakura is at National Federation of Depopulated Municipalities in Japan in Japan

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Posted by Clive Staples Lewis

Last updated: 2023-02-23 23:45:00