徳島県内在住外国人に対する支援の現状と課題 : 生活実態個別聴き取り調査をもとに

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  • トクシマ ケンナイ ザイジュウ ガイコクジン ニ タイスル シエン ノ ゲンジョウ ト カダイ : セイカツ ジッタイ コベツ キキトリ チョウサ オ モト ニ
  • How to Support Foreign Residents in Tokushima : A Study through the Individual Survey of Foreign Residents on their Daily Lives

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With the growing increase in foreigners in Tokushima Prefecture in Japan, they have recently drawn attention and begun to be treated as “residents”, whereby leading to a variety of supporting activities such as the provision of Japanese language education, livelihood support, and diffusing knowledge of disaster prevention, which are organised by prefectural and local international associations, non-profit organisations, non-governmental organisations, individual volunteers, and so forth. This paper intends to elucidate the current limitations and future challenges in supporting foreign residents in Tokushima, based on individual interviews with eight foreign residents of different backgrounds that were mainly conducted in 2016 and partly followed up in 2019. The results indicate the following. Firstly, although the needs of foreign residents involve diverse topics, the provision of current services provided by Japanese organisations have not fulfilled their various requirements, resulting in the phenomenon in which foreigners tend to solve their own problems by making use of their own networks. Secondly, since socially vulnerable groups of foreign residents, such as those who are from single-parent families or the elderly, tend to be full of woes and multiple types of uncertainty, the more they are in a tenuous position, the more they reinforce a sense of distrust towards public services. Thirdly, with the advancing years, issues surrounding foreign residents have started to be amplified, involving problems of their family members, in addition to their own. Fourthly, there is a tendency for Japanese workers dealing with issues of foreign residents in public services to be incapable of appropriately picking up on the meaning of questioning by foreign residents. Bearing these in mind, it is suggested that the content of current supporting activities provided by public services, as well as those provided by various voluntary bodies at different levels within Tokushima Prefecture, be altered with deliberate consideration so that it is able to more properly meet the needs of foreign residents. Furthermore, it is indicative that Japanese residents should be more cultivated by improving their awareness of multiculturalism in order to grasp the reality of foreign residents in present Japanese society more correctly while paying scrupulous attention to their mental pressures.

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