Role of migration to promote Bangladesh-Japan ties highlighted

Speakers at a discussion on Monday stressed the economic and cultural dividends of migration, pointing to the experience of Bangladeshis who have lived and worked in Japan.

Migrants who return, they argued, bring back not only money but also habits, skills, and networks that can enrich their homeland.

The event was part of a research project on “Global Migration and Transnational Networks,” led by Professor Tetsuo Mizukami of Rikkyo University in Tokyo and supported by the Asian People’s Friendship Society. The team has surveyed and interviewed Bangladeshis who moved to Japan from the late 1980s onwards, many of whom spent years embedded in Japanese society before returning home.

Their stories, Professor Mizukami noted, are more than anecdotes: they are data. Returnees’ careers and civic roles offer insights into how migration shapes lives, economies, and cultures. Some Bangladeshis settled permanently in Japan; others came back. In both cases, ties forged across borders have proved resilient.

Masud Karim, a coordinator of the project, urged more attention to the daily lives of foreigners in Japan, whose struggles often go unnoticed in the country’s technocratic debates about shrinking workforces and ageing demographics. Migration, he suggested, should be seen less as a stopgap for labour shortages and more as a process of social exchange.

Professor AKM Moazzem Hussain, a government scholar in Japan in the 1960s, recalled helping to found institutions that still underpin bilateral ties, from the Japan-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce to cultural outfits such as the Bangladesh Ikebana Association. His career is proof that personal migration stories can ripple outward into institutions and policy.

Japan’s public discourse remains narrowly focused on economic utility. Yet the web of friendships, business links, and community ties spun by migrants is harder to measure—and perhaps more durable, said the speakers.

The researchers hope that documenting these relationships will deepen understanding not just of Bangladeshi-Japanese interaction, but of migration’s broader role in knitting societies together.

Rikkyo University, founded in 1874, prides itself on such scholarly pursuits. Its latest foray is a reminder that globalisation does not only travel in cargo ships or balance sheets. It also moves in the minds and lives of people.