Kamagasaki is the old place name for a part of Nishinari-ku area of Osaka, Japan. Airin-chiku became the region's official name in May, 1966. It is known as Japan's largest slum, and has the largest day-laborer concentration in the entire country. 30,000 people are estimated to live in every 2,000 meter radius within this region. An accurate count of occupants has never been produced, even in the national census, due to the large population of day laborers who lack permanent addresses. Day laborers gather there because of cheap accommodation offered in the numerous hotels of the area, and in cheap apartments. Others who don't make enough money to pay for accommodation, live in temporary huts, sleep on the streets or find temporary refuge in shelters after queuing every night around Airin Labor Welfare Center to get coupons for the available beds. At 5 am every morning, they gather again at the Labor Welfare Center waiting to get picked up by labor contractors or to be offered temporary jobs by the Center. The ones who don't get lucky enough to get a job and are homeless, stay during the day inside the building. The number of day-laborers and homeless people is already increasing during the recent economic crisis and the NGOs operating in the area estimate that the number of people looking for refuge there will increase after March 2009, when more temporary workers' contracts will not be renewed and more people will be left without jobs.
