Bridging migration and arrival: Foreigner-friendly real estate agencies and migrant housing access in Japan

This paper examines the practices of foreigner-friendly real estate agencies in Japan and their role in shaping foreign migrants’ access to the rental housing market and early settlement experiences. Despite Japan’s increasing reliance on foreign labor, access to rental housing remains structurally constrained for non-Japanese due to discrimination, guarantor requirements, language barriers, and limited institutional support. Drawing on qualitative interviews, with real estate agents providing services to Vietnamese migrants in Japan and with foreign migrants, as well as ethnographic observations conducted in Tokyo and social media, the paper analyzes how real estate agencies as market actors have developed business strategies tailored to foreign migrants in response to Japan’s changing immigration landscape and expanding foreign population. It shows that these agencies mediate housing access by matching migrant profiles with suitable local properties, arranging viewings, and brokering administrative, bureaucratic, and legal services, thereby shaping migrants’ post-arrival experiences. Empirical data suggest that foreigner-friendly real estate agencies are an active actor within the arrival infrastructure that facilitates migrants’ settlement in Japan. At the same time, their transnational collaboration with other migration brokers overseas positions these agencies within the migration infrastructure that influences mobility pathways and trajectories. Highlighting the parallel and entangled operation of migration and arrival infrastructures through the case study of foreigner-friendly real estate agencies, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how market-based intermediary actors within the migration industry work in the context of Japan’s transformation into an immigration country and how they shape migrants’ migratory experiences.