AUTHOR=Imai Jun 

TITLE=“Industrial citizenship” and social inequality in Japan: the dynamics of contract and status in shaping inequalities

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sociology

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2025

YEAR=2025

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2025.1647338

DOI=10.3389/fsoc.2025.1647338

ISSN=2297-7775

ABSTRACT=This paper reinterprets social inequality in Japan through the concept of industrial citizenship—a framework that understands inequality not as the result of structurally and economically determined class positions, but as the historical product of contestations over citizenship. These struggles, embedded in labor relations, intertwine the logics of contract and status, shaping context-specific employment relations, including rights and obligations for different categories of workers. Rather than assuming the universality of class, this approach highlights how institutionalized struggles over inclusion and recognition produce divergent hierarchies. In postwar Japan, industrial citizenship developed into company citizenship, where regular employment status was confined within the organizational boundaries of individual firms. This model generated inequality structured not by class, but by company size, gender, and employment status. As employer prerogatives were consolidated, norms of inclusion—based on company membership and flexible abilities—became institutionalized and deeply embedded. Even after neoliberal reforms that ostensibly emphasized contractual arrangements, the underlying logic of company citizenship persisted. Legal changes clarified the boundaries between employment statuses, while new employment tracks further stratified regular employees—both outcomes rooted in the logic of company citizenship. Crucially, these arrangements were sustained not only by managerial authority but also by worker consent shaped by company citizenship norms, making inequality appear fair and thus institutionally stable. By foregrounding industrial citizenship, this paper offers an alternative to class-centered frameworks. It emphasizes how historically contingent configurations of status and contract shape the (reproduction of) inequality, providing a comparative tool for analyzing stratification in capitalist democracies beyond liberal assumptions.