Hironori Onuki

Hironori Onuki received his PhD from the Department of Political Science at York University in 2012. His principal fields are International Political Economy (IPE), International Relations (IR) and Comparative Politics. His research is concerned with the international political economy of work, citizenship and human in/security in the so-called “age of migration,” with a special reference to Japan and Asia.

His PhD dissertation investigated the global politics of migration, specifically focusing on the context of Japan as the major migratory destination of Asian and other migrant workers. Drawing on materials gathered through his field research in Japan and the Philippines, it illustrated the everyday struggles of labour immigrants in Japanese society within the transformation of both the form of state/civil society complex and social relations of production and reproduction.

Currently, he is developing the research project that explores the regulatory trends of immigration labour flows in developed countries over the past three decades and particularly in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. This project seeks to historically scrutinize and theoretically explain how the states of labour-receiving societies have reformed their immigration policies to accommodate the shifting conditions of their labour markets and how such changes in the regulatory regimes has influenced the everyday spaces of migrant workers.

His published articles include “Migration Workers as Political Subjects: Globalization-as-Practices, Everyday Spaces, and Global Labour Migrations” (Refuge, 2007) and “Care, Social (Re)production and Global Labour Migration: Japan’s ‘Special Gift’ toward ‘Innately Gifted’ Filipino Workers” (New Political Economy, 2009). He has also contributed a chapter to a collection edited by Rianne Mahon and Fiona Robinson, entitled Feminist Ethics and Social Policy: Towards a New Global Political Economy of Care (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011). In addition, he has another article featured in the York Centre for Asian Research’s Working Paper Series and two chapters in edited books (written in Japanese).