The Impact of Internal Urban-to-Rural Migration and its Limits: A Case Study on Japan and South Korea (76881)
Friday, 24 May 2024 15:30
Session: Poster Session 1
Room: Orion Hall (5F)
Presentation Type: Poster Presentation
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)
The presenter bio is not available for this presentation, yet.
See this presentation on the full schedule – Friday Schedule
Conference Comments & Feedback
Place a comment using your LinkedIn profileShare this Presentation
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress