Japan has significantly expanded its migration framework over the past decade. The introduction of the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) system was the most pivotal shift, formally enabling broader labour migration with a pathway to citizenship. Despite these developments, the Japanese government continues to deny the existence of immigration policy. Drawing on institutionalist perspectives, this paper argues that the disconnect between Japan's expanding migration policies and its no-immigration narrative represents a case of decoupling, a strategy through which organisations manage tensions between cultural expectations and operational demands by dissociating formal policy from its implementation. This paper reconceptualizes decoupling as a discursive strategy through which the migration state contains the implications of its policies to navigate a tension between material national interests and national self-image. Japan's demographic crisis and the centrality of ethnic homogeneity to national identity make it a compelling case for examining this dilemma. Based on thematic content analysis of National Diet minutes from 2015 to 2024, this study identifies four discursive strategies employed to dissociate migration from nationhood: obfuscation, externalisation, compartmentalisation, and provisionality. The decoupling of migration from nationhood, it argues, serves as a political device to delegitimize migrants’ claims to belonging and institutionalise their exclusion.
Ryoko Yamamoto (Mon,) studied this question.