About me

Yunchen Tian (or just Tian for short) is currently a 2024-26 JF-Nichibunken Fellow at the National Institute for the Humanities International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in historic Kyoto, Japan. They hold a PhD in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University. Their research focuses on the governance and discursive construction of labor migration policies in Japan.

Their dissertation project, titled Making Migrants Locally? Contention and Cooperation in the Multi-Level Governance of Migration in Japan, looks at the puzzling endurance of a guest-worker-style labor migration regime in Japan even as its counterparts in Western Europe and Asia have phased out similar policies. Using a multi-level research design looking beyond the framework of state-based explanations, they find that labor-strapped regional economies in Japan benefit greatly when municipal and prefectural governments proactively engage in local internationalization initiatives.

Tian’s work has been supported by grants from American Councils and the Japan Foundation. Their work has been published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Social Science Japan Journal, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, and Citizenship Studies. They were recently award the 2023 ISS/OUP Prize in Modern Japanese Studies for their article “Workers, Neighbours, or Something Else? Local Policies and Policy Narratives of Technical Intern Training Program Participants”. Outside of academic journals, they have been published in Foreign Affairs and have spoken on immigration issues in Japan with both foreign and Japanese media sources.

Tian is a member of the International Studies Association, the American Political Science Association, the Japanese Association for Migration Policy Studies and the Japanese Association of Migration Studies.

Outside of academic work, they enjoy photography, nature, local history, and travel. They generally dislike self-references in the third person.