Disaster research predominantly focuses on citizens, not on migrants. This tilted spotlight needs to be readjusted, since many advanced countries around the world have become immigration countries, and safeguarding the lives of migrants at times of disaster has become an important and immediate policy issue. Hence, this research concentrates on disaster management to protect the lives of migrants in a disaster-prone and de facto immigration country. The particular country and event in question are Japan and the northern Osaka earthquake of June 2018. More than 100 migrants who lived near the earthquake's epicentre rushed to an evacuation shelter managed by the local municipal government of Minoh City, Osaka Prefecture. While non-governmental organisations attract more attention, this paper centres on a local government and demonstrates the key role that it can play in both bridging and building networks across different communities, and thus in safeguarding the lives of migrants at times of disaster.

要旨

災害研究は主に国民を取り上げているが、海外からの移住者には焦点を当てていない。世界中の多くの先進国が移民国家となっており、災害時に移民の命を守ることが緊急の重要な政策課題となっているため、この偏った焦点を変える必要がある。したがって、この研究は、災害が多発し、事実上の移民国家である日本において海外からの移住者の命を守るための災害管理に焦点を当てるものである。特に、2018年の大阪北部地震を取り上げる。震源地近くに住んでいた100人を超える海外からの移住者が、地元自治体の箕面市が運営する避難所に殺到した。非政府組織(NGO)への注目が高まる中、本論文では地方自治体に着目し、さまざまなコミュニティ間のネットワークの橋渡しや構築、ひいては災害時に海外からの移住者の命を守る上で地方自治体がどのように重要な役割を果たすことができるかを示す。

摘要

灾难研究主要关注公民，而不是移民。这种倾斜的焦点需要改变，因为世界上许多发达国家都已成为移民国家，在灾难时保障移民的生命已成为一个重要且紧迫的政策问题。因此，本研究将重点关注灾害管理，以保障灾害频发和事实上的移民国家日本移民的生命。我们关注的具体案例是 2018 年大阪北部地震。居住在震中附近的一百多名移民紧急赶往箕面市当地市政府管理的避难所。尽管非政府组织受到更多关注，但本文将重点关注地方政府，并展示其如何在连接和建立不同社区之间的网络方面发挥关键作用，从而在灾难时期保障移民的生命。

1 INTRODUCTION

At 07:58 on the morning of 18 June 2018, an epicentral earthquake with a moment magnitude of 5.6 struck northern Osaka Prefecture in Japan. Several train lines were stopped, and schools and universities announced their closure for the day. In addition, several aftershocks followed the major event. While much infrastructural damage was reported, less was conveyed about afflicted people, owing to the small number of casualties (four people). Not surprisingly, furthermore, there was only a smattering of news on immigrants' experiences of the disaster. The key concern of the news reports was international tourists in Osaka at the time of the earthquake rather than those migrants who had been living in the prefecture for some time, as if nothing serious had happened to them.

However, this media silence regarding immigrants' experiences of the disaster does not represent the whole picture of what happened in northern Osaka Prefecture. On the contrary, the municipal government of Minoh City, whose residents include many international students, academics, and their families, dealt with the emergency after its evacuation centre—Toyokawa Minami Primary School—was inundated with more than 100 international migrants (Iwaki, 2018a). This was the largest number of disaster evacuees since Minoh City's government organisation responsible for promoting international exchange, the Minoh Association For Global Awareness (MAFGA),¹ was founded in 1992. Despite the number of migrant evacuees, the evacuation site was run smoothly. Everyone returned home safely a week after the earthquake, so there was nothing for the media to report in a dramatic tone and in a bid to create a headline. The question, however, remains: how and why was such a successful disaster response possible in Minoh City?

To answer this question, this paper examines the key role of a local municipal government in safeguarding the lives of migrants in a disaster-affected area, through MAFGA. Understanding a system of disaster management demands unpacking a complex and non-linear socio-politico-cultural system (Leveson, 2004); that is the approach taken here to comprehend the case of Minoh City. In doing so, the research helps to reveal the significance of local government actors in Japan's disaster management system.

Disaster has generally been considered as ‘an event in time and place’ by social science research since the 1960s (Remes and Horowitz, 2021, p. 19). However, this attitude creates a binary distinction between disaster/emergency time and non-disaster/normal time, which does not reflect the reality of disaster, or of disaster management. Disaster is nestled into local social, cultural, economic, and political contexts over time, and traverses spaces (Remes and Horowitz, 2021, p. 2). Response capacity is also built into these local settings over time. Hence, a simple synchronic analysis of an event in terms of time and space can only explain inadequately a story that unfolds over an extended period (Blackman, Nakanishi, and Benson, 2017; Remes and Horowitz, 2021). This paper aims to provide an analysis of how disaster capacity was built by MAFGA using a long-term perspective.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section one contains an overview of three related bodies of literature: disaster studies (DS); international migration studies (IMS); and climate studies (CS). In the process, it points out a shared blind spot of these fields. Next, it explains the merits of a multi-level governance (MLG) framework for analysing the role of local government in disaster management, and briefly notes a connection between social capital and the role of government. Section two situates local (municipal) government organisations within a broader depiction of Japan's disaster management system. It explains why and how such organisations play a vital role in that system. Section three details which section in the local government structure is (surprisingly) responsible for disaster management of international migrants. Sections four and five shift the focus to the case of MAFGA, assessing how the Association prepares for a disaster and builds its capacity for disaster response over time by connecting a wide range of actors, as well as analysing how it was able to play a crucial role in the northern Osaka earthquake. The paper ends with the conclusion that the protagonists of disaster management are neither glamorous international organisations nor the central government, but local organisations on the ground, building disaster capacity through menial and diurnal work. It is their seemingly small, everyday practices in a local context that save the lives of migrants in a disaster-affected area.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Migrants who migrated before the disaster: a blind spot of the literature

International migrants may be impacted more excessively by a disaster than citizens owing to their vulnerability (Perilla, Norris, and Lavizzo, 2002; Wisner, 2004). Migrants' vulnerability at times of disaster was mentioned as early as 1999 (Morrow, 1999; Donner and Rodríguez, 2008). A number of works examine disaster vulnerability and the capacities of international migrants in the event of a disaster (Morrow, 1999; Montz, Allen, and Monitz, 2011; Maldonado et al., 2016; Thorup-Binger and Charania, 2019; Roncancio, Cutter, and Nardocci, 2020), as well as the need to consider disaster risk reduction for migrants (Guadagno, Fuhrer, and Twigg, 2017). Studies focus on, for example, the connection between migrants' socioeconomic position and their recovery from disaster (Myers, Slack, and Singelmann, 2008; McAuliffe and Triandafyllidou, 2021), their communication and language difficulties, and their employment of diasporic transnational ties in coping with a disaster (Zhang, Le Dé, and Charania, 2021). Nevertheless, Hoffman (2009, p. 1506) points out that research that concentrates on international migrants and disasters is still not prominent. In recent work on the impacts of natural hazards among international migrants living in Chile, Bernales et al. (2019, p. 116) similarly report a scarcity of comparative analysis. Yet, like other scholars, they do not explain why this topic has not gained much attention.

The answer to this question lies in two research fields closely related to DS. The first of these is IMS, and the second is CS—specifically, the large body of CS research on environmental migration and climate migration. Both IMS and CS focus overwhelmingly on migration caused by environmental factors, degradation or destruction of the environment, or natural hazards, such as a natural disaster (Kälin and Weerasinghe, 2017; Sironi, Bauloz, and Emmanuel, 2019; IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, 2023). Therefore, international migrants who were already living in a disaster zone before an event occurred tend to be overlooked by both of these fields of study, because their mobility/migration was not caused by that disaster. The premise that mobility/migration is engendered by environmental factors creates a shared blind spot, excluding from research interests those international migrants who already resided in a disaster-affected area.

However, this blind spot needs to be investigated for three reasons. First, advanced countries have become immigration countries in tandem with globalisation, and people with richly diverse backgrounds coexist in the same society. Furthermore, Japan has accepted migrants in various forms (in particular, labour and education migrants) and is already an immigration country (Hollifield and Sharpe, 2017; Roberts, 2018; Korekawa, 2019; Sigona, Kato, and Kuznetsova, 2021). Among OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, Japan has the fifth highest number of incoming migrants (OECD, 2020, p. 253; see also Sigona, Kato, and Kuznetsova, 2021, p. 1).

Second, the need to include in disaster management those migrants living in an affected area before a disaster occurs has been formally recognised. The International Organization for Migration and Council of Europe argue this stance in their booklet titled Migrants in Disaster Risk Reduction: Practices for Inclusion (Guadagno, Fuhrer, and Twigg, 2017). Guadagno (2016) also asserts that disaster risk management should include migrants who are already living in a disaster-affected area, and that this is necessary to reflect the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (UNISDR, 2015).

Third, with or without the Sendai Framework, migrant lives were already lost in the Great Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake of 1995: in total, 174 migrants from nine countries were killed (Doi, 2013, p. 22). Avoiding a repeat is a pressing task in Japanese society, with its increasing number of foreign residents. It is a legitimate policy aim to identify effective disaster management that can prevent the deaths of migrants. Investigating Minoh City's disaster management helps to fill this research gap.

Crucially, this study of Minoh City also provides an example of localising disaster governance and management. As maintained by critical disaster studies, a disaster is nestled in local political, economic, social, cultural, racial, and linguistic specificities (Remes and Horowitz, 2021); thus, disaster management needs to be sensitive to such local factors. A research approach that assesses these local specificities is required to reveal the effective functioning of local approaches to disaster management.

2.2 An intersection between a ‘local turn’ and social capital

2.2.1 Insights from a ‘local turn’

MLG, as a method of analysis of governance systems, was developed in the context of European governance, to analyse the complex interplay of policy decisions and policymaking between the European Union and its Member States (Auslender, 2022); it has gradually been deployed in other countries as well (Daniell and Kay, 2017). The merit of MLG analysis is that it allows for understanding of complex policymaking and policy implementation at and between levels. Broadly, two types of governance are identified: Type 1, which is more top-down, consists of vertical inter-governmental governance, whereas Type 2 is horizontal interaction or cooperation between governmental organisations and various private, civil, and social actors at multiple levels (Scholten et al., 2018, p. 2014). Combining Type 1 and Type 2 analysis permits a diagonal analysis. In short, the merit of this concept is to permit ‘an understanding between and at levels’ (Maldonado, Maitland, and Tapia, 2010, p. 11).

By deploying MLG in a European setting, scholars have researched the significance of local actors: their initiative; their creative and skilful manoeuvring; and their input into policy for migration governance. This is true particularly after the discovery of a ‘local turn’ in the face of the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015 (Hackett, 2017; Caponio and Jones-Correa, 2018; Wihtol de Wenden, 2021; Caponio and Ponzo, 2022). Regarding literature on Japan, Milly's (2014) pioneering work on the country's immigration policy used MLG to situate local municipal government in a broader national migration structure, and to describe the significance of local actors. Likewise, this paper utilises MLG to situate a local municipal government within a nationwide disaster management system (see section two). It uses a Type 2 analysis to focus on the role of MAFGA in building disaster management capacity. The Association connected government organisations at different levels (local municipal and prefectural level), as well as linking government with non-government sectors through drills and disaster workshops. A local government's activities are often understood simply within a local government framework. However, MLG allows us to grasp how such activities may involve multiple government organisations at different levels and create multi-level connections.

Apropos of work on disaster management for migrants in Japan, little systematic research has been done to date, and there is very little in terms of the role of a municipality in safeguarding the lives of migrants in the country. Three important works in Japanese concerning disaster management and governance should be mentioned here: Suzuki and Kaneko's (2013) book provides an overall picture of the Japanese disaster management system; Kohara and Inatsugu's (2015) contribution paints a broad picture of governance in post-disaster reconstruction; and Oguma and Akasaka's (2015) contribution examines reconstruction after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and the implications of a broad policy approach to ‘build back better’ for local residents in affected areas. However, the present study fills in the gap in research on disaster management for migrants in Japan and on the role of a municipality in safeguarding their lives. It utilises MLG to analyse the role of local actors in protecting the lives of international migrants living in an area affected by disasters triggered by natural hazards.

2.2.2 Social capital and government

In relation to the key theme of this special issue of Disasters, disaster management and social capital, I consider briefly the role of government organisations in building social capital. Robert Putnam and James Coleman emphasise consensus based on interconnected networks of trust among citizens, families, voluntary organisations, religious organisations, civic associations, and the like to create social capital (Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti, 1994; Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 2001). However, Eric Klinenberg (2018), in Palaces for the People, argues that there is a need to shift our premise about social capital. In the twenty-first century and given a highly atomised society, it is unrealistic to emphasise interconnected networks of existing trust among citizens, families, and voluntary organisations. We cannot assume that such interconnected networks of trust are the basis for forming social capital. Instead, Klineberg (2018) contends that our approach needs to centre on how we can build social capital even with little existing trust among members of a community. Pursuing this line of argument, Yōji Inaba (2021) incorporates government organisations in the building of social capital in an atomised postmodern society (see Figure 1). Inaba's take on incorporating government organisations makes realistic sense in twenty-first century Japanese society, where the collapse of local communities owing to a lack of community ties has become a common phenomenon. Utilising local government, the most stable and available organisation in a local context, is a feasible approach to creating bonding and bridging social capital without assuming existing trust.

Details are in the caption following the image — **FIGURE 1**
Open in figure viewer PowerPoint

The structure of social relational capital in the local prefectural region and the response of government.
**Source:** author, compiled using information from Inaba (2021, p. 27).

This paper concentrates, therefore, on the roles played by a local (municipal) government. It shows how it connected different parts of society (migrants and citizens) and different governmental and non-governmental organisations, in order to build disaster management capacity.

3 A DIAGONAL ROLE FOR LOCAL (MUNICIPAL) GOVERNMENT IN JAPAN'S DISASTER MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE

Japan's governance system for disaster management was established after the Second World War. In response to the Ise Bay typhoon of 1959, the government began to organise a disaster management system; it enacted the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act in 1961 as its basis. This Act is ‘the most fundamental legislation covering the disaster management and related legal framework’ (Suzuki and Kaneko, 2013).

In the period from 1961–94, the disaster management system made the local public authority the primary body responsible at every stage of the disaster lifecycle (preparedness, response, recovery, and reconstruction). Municipal local governments were regarded as particularly vital since they were the first to respond when a disaster struck. Human disaster preparedness was the territory of the local public authorities. By contrast, matters of physical disaster preparedness and recovery, such as building infrastructure (including banks and bridges), was the central government's responsibility (Oguma and Akasaka, 2015).² This division of labour between governments at different levels resulted in little communication.

However, this vertically structured, siloed approach to disaster management was forced to change after the Great Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake in 1995. At that time, the existing system proved ineffective in safeguarding the lives of people. Subsequent revisions to the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act made municipal governments even more important in connecting disaster management actors. First, all of the 47 prefectures and the Self-Defense Forces were to liaise with each other about emergencies. Units of the Self-Defense Forces could be dispatched for rescue and relief operations even in the absence of such a request from the prefectural governor (Suzuki and Kaneko, 2013). This opened up a route for the mayor of a city to make a request for the dispatch of forces not only to the prefectural governor, but also directly to the Self-Defense Forces itself (Kazama, 1998, p. 15).

Second, the revised Act called upon municipalities to provide each other with mutual support. Third, the capacity for first-response arrangements within the municipality was strengthened. Fourth, the revised Act required municipal governments to take initiatives to promote voluntary disaster reduction activities. As a result (the fifth point), local public authorities were now requested to work with non-governmental, private, and social organisations on disaster preparedness and prevention.

Another large shift in disaster management took place after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Policymakers and policy discourses increasingly came to recognise the value of preparedness for strengthening the disaster resilience of local communities. Wider cooperation between local government, local communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), non-profit organisations, and business sectors in a local area was now deemed crucial, to reduce and minimise disaster risk (UNISDR, 2015). Against this backdrop, the significance of a municipal government as a linchpin was obvious. Not only could it implement legally stipulated procedures, but also it could initiate and build human disaster preparedness on a daily basis, by connecting various governments and non-government sectors horizontally and vertically. Municipal governments are thus powerfully placed to play a key role in local disaster management.

4 DISASTER MANAGEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS AT A LOCAL LEVEL: ‘NON-DISASTER’ SECTION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN DISASTER MANAGEMENT

In local public authorities, both at the prefectural and municipal level, the government has a section in charge of disaster management, such as the Office of Crisis Management (Nagata et al., 2012). However, intriguingly, it emerged from interviews that staff working in the Office do not deal with matters concerning disaster management of international migrants, and that they perceive them to be outside of the scope of their duties.³

Which section in the prefectural and municipal government oversees disaster management for international residents and acts as the first responder when a disaster strikes? Answer: it is the one in charge of the promotion of international exchange. In Japanese municipalities, that section of municipal government deals with almost every aspect of international migrants' daily affairs, from promoting cultural exchanges with Japanese residents to supporting non-Japanese children's educational needs and the needs of divorced non-Japanese spouses. Perhaps surprisingly, the seemingly far-removed issue of disaster management for international migrant residents has also landed on the desks of this section.

Under this division of labour, MAFGA has played a critical part in managing disaster response. In Osaka Prefecture, there are two types of section responsible for promoting international exchanges. One is a statutory organisation, funded by the municipal government and which works closely with the government; however, it enjoys independence in deciding on activities and issues. The other is an internal department within the city government. This case study features the first type, a public interest incorporated foundation, MAFGA.

MAFGA is located in the north of Osaka, the second largest prefecture in Japan. The total population was 8,802,755 as of 2023.⁴ Northern Osaka is composed of seven cities (Ibaraki, Ikeda, Minoh, Takatsuki, Toyonnaka, Settsu, and Suita) and three towns (Hono, Nose, and Shimamoto). It is an affluent area within the prefecture and is considered a desirable residential location. Owing to the abundance of private and national universities in northern Osaka, this area also is home to overseas researchers, academics, and many international students (migrants).

MAFGA was founded in 1992 and has established itself over the past three decades. It has developed a variety of programmes and initiatives for migrant residents in Minoh City: Japanese and foreign language classes; multilingual consultations on daily life matters; learning sessions for pre-tertiary children with foreign roots; a cafe to create job opportunities for migrants; support for migrants' job-seeking endeavours in Japan; and the publication of its monthly journal, Meron (Melon in English)—not to mention organising drills to prepare for disasters. As mentioned above, in the Japanese governance structure, a body such as MAFGA has to cover almost everything concerning migrant residents, including disaster management

5 DISASTER PREPAREDNESS IN NORTHERN OSAKA

5.1 Network of International Exchange Associations Osaka

The story of MAFGA's successful disaster management and safeguarding of the lives of international migrant residents in Minoh City commenced long before 2018. The starting point was the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, which devastated Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture. The city is home to one of the national universities, Tohoku University, which hosts many international academics, students, and their families. Disaster management for those education migrants could not be a secondary priority at the time of the 2011 earthquake given the sheer number of them in Sendai. At the beginning of the earthquake disaster, evacuation shelters in Sendai were inundated with around 1,500 migrants in total, six times more than had been estimated (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, p. 16).

These lived experiences of disaster management in Sendai were also pertinent to northern Osaka, where three of the world's top universities are located (Osaka University, Ritsumeikan University, and Kwansei Gakuin University).⁵ In addition, Daihatsu, a motorcar company, in northern Osaka, employed many engineers from Indonesia. Yet, despite this increasingly globalised demography, all matters concerning migrants are still the responsibility of the section in charge of promoting international exchanges, including safeguarding them in the event of a disaster. In particular, international migrants with multiple vulnerabilities (linguistic, social, and cultural) could easily become vulnerable people in a disaster. Hence, some local municipal government bodies in northern Osaka, including MAFGA, felt an acute need to build their capacity to respond to disasters before they occurred, to protect the lives of migrants.⁶ Another pressing factor was the ever-present prospect of a mega earthquake of moment magnitude 8.0 or 9.0, owing to the Nankai Trough, a submarine trench off Japan's Pacific coast. This possibility also prompted local government bodies in Osaka to take precautions before any disasters materialised.

Osaka thus established in 2002 (well before the Great East Japan Earthquake) a horizontal and vertical network among government bodies like MAFGA to support international migrants in northern Osaka, named the Networking Project for Promoting International Exchange from Osaka. Its primary aim was to connect the Osaka prefectural government, local municipal governments, and NGOs to facilitate the promotion of international exchange. It also sought to support migrants as part of the local community, not just as foreigners, and to grapple with the real issues and challenges that they face in their daily lives in Japan. In 2013, the Project changed its name to the Network of International Exchange Associations Osaka, and it made disaster management one of its key objectives (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, p. 1).

Prior to this large-scale attempt to foster connections, each public interest body had attempted to build disaster capacity by means of a single organisation. However, the Network of International Exchange Associations Osaka, composed of five public interest-incorporated foundations, including MAFGA, established a new level of integration. It provided a comprehensive disaster management training package, involving different government organisations, both at the Osaka prefectural level and the local municipal level, as well as Sendai municipal organisations. MAFGA, led by its Director, Asuka Iwaki, was a significant leading actor in the Network's attempts at disaster management. Iwaki understood the fear and anxiety of a migrant confronting the threat of a disaster triggered by a natural hazard because of her own experience of studying abroad in Turkey. She had been at the Osaka Foreign Language University (now Osaka University), specialising in the Turkish language, when a large earthquake had occurred. She had felt frightened and vulnerable owing to the lack of information on and communications about the disaster, despite her language competence in Turkish and her prior experience in Japan of dealing with disasters.⁷ Given with her own experience, she was able to see the merit in building disaster capacity at a community level; consequently, she took disaster management for migrants very seriously.

The renewed Network organised three workshops over three days and two disaster drills for two days in 2013, as well as one reflection session for a day in 2014. The Network invited the staff of a public interest body in Sendai (Miyagi Prefecture), namely, the Sendai Tourism, Convention and International Association (SenTIA), to serve as instructors at the workshops and drills. During the Great East Japan Earthquake, Osaka public interest bodies had provided assistance to SenTIA, and now, in return, SenTIA shared its disaster management experience with the Network in Osaka (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, p. 12).

5.2 Disaster workshops, drills, and reflection sessions in 2013 and 2014

The three workshops were held on 23 August, 30 August, and 20 September 2013, whereas the drills were held on 1 and 23 November 2013 and the session of reflection on both the workshops and drills on 24 January 2014. The workshop consisted of both a lecture and intensive discussions on three themes: simple and accessible Japanese language to disseminate information swiftly and accurately among migrants in the event of a disaster; the provision of disaster information in multiple languages in the event of a disaster; and how to manage an evacuation shelter and to utilise migrants as resources during a disaster without endangering them. These themes were designed to deal with three vulnerabilities of migrants at times of disaster: a lack of language competency; a lack of disaster information owing to a lack of language competency; and a sociocultural divide between Japanese people and migrants.

Two facets of language competency were identified. One was a lack of competency in high-level Japanese, while the other was a total lack of competency in Japanese. The first session focused on a lack of competency in high-level Japanese, and hence the importance of providing information in accessible Japanese. The instructor was Professor Kazuyuki Sato from Hirosaki University. In the intensive discussion session following his lecture, the participants discussed challenges to identifying and prioritising swiftly the most significant information to give to migrants (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, pp. 14–15).

The second session focused on the case of a total lack of competency in Japanese among migrants. The lecture was given by Nobuko Sudo, Assistant Chief of the Planning Division in SenTIA. SenTIA had set up a centre for multilingual disaster information support between 11 March and 30 April 2011. The way in which the Sendai Disaster Multilingual Support Center provided that support during the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 was as follows. First, a large volume of disaster information was sent to the Centre by fax by the Office of Crisis Management. As soon as the Centre received it, it selected the information pertinent to and necessary for migrants and rendered it in simple and accessible Japanese. That information was then translated into other languages. The Centre also engaged in telephone consultations with migrants. Not every language could be chosen as a medium for the translated disaster information; some migrants who were therefore left with scarce information found it psychologically very challenging to deal with the disaster. For the municipal government, the crucial step towards preparedness was to secure translators of a wide range of languages relevant to the demographic diversity of a local area in ordinary times. Following the lecture by Sudo, in the discussion session, the participants took part in a simulation on how to select and prioritise information pertinent to and necessary for migrants (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, pp. 18–19).

The third session was on how to manage an evacuation shelter and to utilise migrants as resources without making them vulnerable. The instructor was Hitoshi Imano, the head of the neighbourhood association in Katahira Ward in Sendai. He shared his experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake, during which the number of migrant evacuees in Sendai had been (as mentioned) much larger than estimated. Imano had witnessed a tension between Japanese and migrant evacuees and noted that only five of the 37 shelters had functioned well. The Japanese staff running the shelters had lacked experience of working with migrants and did not know how to approach them to request their assistance. Likewise, migrant evacuees did not know how to behave in the shelter, owing to their varied language backgrounds or to their lack of experience in dealing with disasters triggered by natural hazards and working with Japanese people. Hence, they became highly vulnerable during the disaster (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, pp. 16–17).

Another significant lesson to be learned from the experience of Sendai, Imano explained, was the importance of being conversant with a diversity of migrants living in the local area. For instance, the needs of Indonesian Muslims and their families are different from those of other migrant evacuees, since Muslims need a space for prayer, halal food, and so forth. In the discussion session that followed the lecture, workshop participants pointed out that a division was typically perceived between Japanese as the supporters and migrants as the supported. It was agreed that such a binary distinction must be overcome to turn migrants into active resources that can work together with Japanese people (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, p. 17).

After the workshops, on 1 and 23 November, the Network organised disaster drills at MAFGA in Minoh City. These were designed to reflect the points learned in the lectures and during the discussion sessions. The scenario was that Osaka was hit by a magnitude 8.0 earthquake. The participants practised: (i) setting up a disaster evacuation shelter, which entailed reporting the disaster to the prefectural government, extinguishing a blaze, providing first aid, patrolling an evacuation shelter, preparing emergency food, and running a soup kitchen; and (ii) setting up a multilingual disaster information support centre. The latter researched the demography of migrants and their languages, practised how to select key information for migrants, translated the key information into simple and easy Japanese, as well as into other languages, uploaded the translated information on to MAFGA's blog in multiple languages, and requested assistance from other neighbourhood prefectures if they needed other language translators beyond their own capacity.

Through both the drills and the workshops, the Network managed to involve a wide range of communities and organisations. It created a platform to connect different organisations in local communities and in sections of the local government (including neighbourhood community associations, local welfare communities, the Office for Human Rights Policy of Minoh City, the Office of Crisis Management of Minoh City, the Minoh FM radio station, the fire department and local police office, and the Osaka Prefecture government). The first drill enabled participants to practise coordinated communication and the smooth flow of information in the event of a disaster. During the second drill, international students were also involved, reflecting the idea that migrants can be active supporters, not merely the supported. Furthermore, the participants were able to gain a sense of how Japanese and migrants in a local community can work together and cooperate to minimise disaster risk and damage (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, pp. 20–27).

After the two drills, the Network ran a reflection session on 14 January 2014 to obtain feedback on the workshops and drills and to discuss future plans. Several important points were raised by the participants. First, effective leadership is important for managing the situation successfully. Second, organising disaster drills and preparing for a future disaster are imperative for safeguarding the lives of migrants. Creating a manual to refer to is also important, but depending on it might lead to less effective responses to and management of a disaster. Armed with basic knowledge, local people need to be able to exercise their own judgement in each different disaster and every eventuality. To develop such judgement and capacity, it is essential to conduct drills frequently and build local capacity to respond to disasters.

Such everyday practise also enables local residents to overcome divisions between themselves and migrants, and to shift their perceptions of the roles of each. There is no perfect model. However, through repeated (frequent) drills and practices by local people and through collaboration between local government, local communities, and migrants, the best possible disaster management and preparedness actions can be created in the local context. In other words, these initiatives localise disaster management for migrants, in a local area with local actors.

From 2014, MAFGA conducted drills yearly. It worked together with volunteers, local communities, international students, a fire station, the police, the municipal government, and the prefectural government, and it connected a wide range of different governments and communities, to build their disaster management capacity. Its work would be put to the test in 2018 when the Osaka earthquake hit Minoh City (Osaka International House Foundation, 2014, pp. 28–29).

6 NORTHERN OSAKA EARTHQUAKE OF 2018

When the northern Osaka earthquake struck Minoh City on 18 June 2018, MAFGA Director Asuka Iwaki said: ‘we knew exactly what had to be done, by whom, and when’.⁸ The Association's initial disaster response and disaster management were smooth. MAFGA immediately uploaded key information about the disaster on its website in simple and accessible Japanese as well as in several languages pertinent to the migrants living in Minoh City. It also communicated with the Osaka Foundation for International Exchange (OFIX), an Osaka prefectural organisation, and asked it for assistance with disseminating the information on the current disaster, as OFIX had more capacity to translate it into multiple languages. A link to OFIX was displayed on MAFGA's website so that migrants could obtain the information in their mother tongue straightaway. In response to a request from MAFGA, OFIX also set up an emergency multilingual telephone counselling centre, which operated 24 hours a day. In the meantime, MAFGA divided staff into two teams: a multilingual disaster information service team; and a team to manage the evacuation shelter (Iwaki, 2018a).

The number of migrant evacuees in the shelter increased, as their fear and anxiety grew.⁹ They were frightened by several aftershocks with a magnitude of 4.0. In addition, although Minoh City used campaign cars to inform citizens in Japanese about the disaster, migrants were unable to understand what was being said, which also made them concerned. To help allay their fears, the evacuation shelter team provided disaster information in Chinese, English, and Korean on site.

The same team patrolled the shelter and conducted a quick interview to acquire a profile of the migrant evacuees (language, nationality, age, and religion). During this patrol, the team discovered that 90 per cent of the evacuees were migrants, and some of them were Muslim. Based on that information, it arranged for halal emergency food. The team learned too that migrant evacuees wanted information about the consulates of their own countries in Osaka Prefecture. Hence, it distributed a flyer created by the multilingual disaster information team, which gave the contact details of consulate offices in Osaka and disseminated OFIX's multilingual disaster support information. This flyer was also QR-coded so that migrant evacuees could scan it to gain knowledge instantly. By doing so, the team controlled the anxiety of migrant evacuees. MAFGA also contacted the Consulate General of Indonesia to enquire if it could provide disaster information in Indonesian. It swiftly responded to that request by opening a telephone hotline for affected Indonesians in the area. Moreover, staff from the Consulate General of Indonesia visited the evacuation site and supplied various goods as material aid. MAFGA also contacted Osaka University and asked it to set up an information service on campus for its international students and academics (Iwaki, 2018a).

More and more migrant evacuees came to the shelter, exceeding 140 by the evening of the day that the disaster had struck. Managing a shelter with that number of people required their participation and cooperation. The team asked migrant evacuees to come forward if they understood Japanese. What surprised them was that 45 were able to speak Japanese. Having identified existing language groups (Chinese, English, Indonesian/Malay, Thai, and Vietnamese), the team asked those migrant evacuees to discuss who could be a leading translator of each language. They selected their leaders, who would support fellow migrants in the shelter who shared their mother tongue. Staff from the Minoh City government explained to those leaders how the evacuation shelter operated, and the rules to which they had to adhere (such as how to use bathroom and cleaning duties); through those leaders, the other migrants were also able to learn the rules. The translators helped the migrants to understand the limited resources of Minoh City and the need for their collaboration in managing and running the evacuation shelter. As a result, some of them volunteered to work with the Japanese staff in running the shelter. Thanks to such a smooth communication flow, there was no trouble, even though, as noted, the shelter accommodated more than 140 migrants by the evening of 18 June; moreover, the migrants and Japanese staff managed to gain an appreciation of working together. In this way, migrants became active and helpful volunteer supporters rather than merely being supported.

Under the leadership of MAFGA, these migrants had peace of mind during their evacuation time, and a week after the earthquake, they returned to their place of residence—there were no casualties or injuries (Iwaki, 2018a). Another very important action of MAFGA was to battle against false rumours. Numerous circulated during the earthquake, including: ‘You should evacuate to a pachinko parlour (instead of to a designated refuge) because there are plenty of chairs’; or ‘A main earthquake with a magnitude of 10 will hit on the evening of 21 June’—particularly prevalent in the Chinese-language community. Owing to the lack of basic knowledge of earthquakes, many migrant evacuees said that they were not entirely sure that such claims were false. MAFGA released an announcement in multiple languages on its website warning that migrants should be careful about false rumours (Iwaki, 2018b).

After the disaster, the Association identified the significance of local community networks in helping people to resume their everyday lives. It asked migrant evacuees about what type of support they needed following the earthquake. In some cases, as with a group of migrant trainees in a sewing factory in Osaka, the gas supply to their house was still not functioning, simply because they did not know that it could be restarted by pressing a ‘resume’ button. They lived without hot water for more than two weeks until MAFGA staff visited for an inspection. These migrant trainees did not even converse with their Japanese colleagues about their earthquake experiences, the damage they had suffered, or their continuing struggles. As mentioned, OFIX set up an emergency multilingual telephone counselling centre and provided a 24-hour consultation service in English from the day of the disaster, but this was not used as much as it had expected.

Given these factors, MAFGA conducted surveys with migrants after the earthquake as post-disaster follow-up research. This survey revealed how important the immediate and local communities are, and how difficult it was for migrants to access government information (Iwaki, 2018b). MAFGA once again became a point of connection between them and Japanese society and provided essential support to migrants to help ensure a smooth recovery process.

7 CONCLUSION

This paper demonstrates how Japanese municipal government plays a vital role in safeguarding the lives of migrants in a local area in the event of a disaster, as well as in supporting them with their post-disaster recovery. Such actors are crucial for local disaster management within a nationwide disaster management structure. MAGFA's disaster management activities could be wrongly understood as being merely local activities with only local implications. In fact, however, MAFGA was a linchpin that connected government entities at different levels and government with non-government sectors, and in so doing built disaster management capacity on a daily basis in peacetime.

Key to safeguarding the lives of migrants and supporting them during the post-disaster process is strong initiatives by local government organisations such as MAFGA. They enable migrants to live in a Japan that, although a de facto immigration country, lacks well-established immigration policies and safeguards to protect the lives of migrants. MAFGA teaches us, as highlighted earlier, that the protagonists of disaster management are neither glamorous international organisations nor the central government, but local organisations on the ground, building disaster capacity through menial and diurnal work. It is their seemingly small, everyday practices in a local context that save the lives of migrants in a disaster-affected area.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was funded by the Asia-Japan Research Institute (AJI) of Ritsumeikan University and the Murata Science and Education Foundation (grant number: H30助人08). The research was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Canberra, Australia (project number: 20180113).

ETHICS STATEMENT

This paper reports analysis of primary data. The ethics of data collection and analysis were approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Canberra, Australia.

ENDNOTES

¹ For more information, see https://mafga.or.jp/ (last accessed on 18 March 2023).
² Oguma and Akasaka (2015) point out how the division of labour between central and local governments works during the disaster recovery process in Japan. Disaster prevention or reconstruction projects provide lucrative opportunities for some governmental actors and giant construction companies.
³ Interviews with staff of crisis management departments in the Osaka prefectural government on 20 June 2019, and with municipal governments in Ibaraki, Ikeda, and Minoh, northern Osaka, on 13 and 27 June 2019.
⁴ This number is based on statistics provided by the Osaka prefectural government. See https://www.pref.osaka.lg.jp/attach/3387/00014690/jk20230101.pdf (last accessed on 18 March 2024).
⁵ These universities are part of the Japanese government's education policy to globalise Japanese universities (the Top Global University Project).
⁶ Interview with MAFGA staff, 30 May 2019.
⁷ Interview with Asuka Iwaki, 22 May 2019.
⁸ Interview with Asuka Iwaki, 22 May 2019.
⁹ Interview with MAFGA staff, 3 June 2019.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Volume48, IssueS1

Special issue: Local knowledge as the basis of disaster management and humanitarian assistance

July 2024

e12636

The significance of local government in disaster management for international migrants: the case of Minoh City, Osaka Prefecture

Figures

References

Information

Abstract

要旨

摘要

1 INTRODUCTION

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Migrants who migrated before the disaster: a blind spot of the literature

2.2 An intersection between a ‘local turn’ and social capital

2.2.1 Insights from a ‘local turn’

2.2.2 Social capital and government

3 A DIAGONAL ROLE FOR LOCAL (MUNICIPAL) GOVERNMENT IN JAPAN'S DISASTER MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE

4 DISASTER MANAGEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS AT A LOCAL LEVEL: ‘NON-DISASTER’ SECTION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN DISASTER MANAGEMENT

5 DISASTER PREPAREDNESS IN NORTHERN OSAKA

5.1 Network of International Exchange Associations Osaka

5.2 Disaster workshops, drills, and reflection sessions in 2013 and 2014

6 NORTHERN OSAKA EARTHQUAKE OF 2018

7 CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ETHICS STATEMENT

ENDNOTES

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

REFERENCES

Figures

References

Information

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The significance of local government in disaster management for international migrants: the case of Minoh City, Osaka Prefecture

Figures

References

Related

Information

Abstract

要旨

摘要

1 INTRODUCTION

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Migrants who migrated before the disaster: a blind spot of the literature

2.2 An intersection between a ‘local turn’ and social capital

2.2.1 Insights from a ‘local turn’

2.2.2 Social capital and government

3 A DIAGONAL ROLE FOR LOCAL (MUNICIPAL) GOVERNMENT IN JAPAN'S DISASTER MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE

4 DISASTER MANAGEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRANTS AT A LOCAL LEVEL: ‘NON-DISASTER’ SECTION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN DISASTER MANAGEMENT

5 DISASTER PREPAREDNESS IN NORTHERN OSAKA

5.1 Network of International Exchange Associations Osaka

5.2 Disaster workshops, drills, and reflection sessions in 2013 and 2014

6 NORTHERN OSAKA EARTHQUAKE OF 2018

7 CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ETHICS STATEMENT

ENDNOTES

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

REFERENCES

Figures

References

Related

Information