Mobile Japanese Migrants to the Pacific West and East: Self-Searching, Work, and Identification

This book explores ＂self-searching migrants,＂ a new group of indefinitely globally mobile people whose purpose of overseas stay is the search of true self and the work they really want to do, using Japanese trans-Pacific sojourners as the case study.

Utilizing testimonies collected from interviews with Japanese migrants in their twenties to forties who had entered the job market between the early 1990s and 2010 and left for the English-speaking countries of Canada, Australia, and Singapore, the book argues that their practices are both ubiquitous and unique, the products of global and local contexts of a specific time. As semiskilled migrants from an extra-Western, postindustrial country, their struggles show a different picture of the West-centric world power system from those experienced by migrant workers from the Global South.

Including extensive qualitative research and interview material collected over a 20-year period, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, cultural anthropology, and migration.

Etsuko Kato is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the International Christian University, Tokyo. Her research interests include nationalism, gender, and mobilities. Her publications include The Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan and its Japanese edition, and two books on self-searching migrants (in Japanese).