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Relational Femininities: Exploring the Discourse of Flexibility of Japanese Women’s Gendered Selves

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Marriage Migrants of Japanese Women in Australia

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Abstract

As an individual migrant who has a local partner on whom they are initially dependent, this chapter argues that Japanese women of marriage migrants seldom see their personal interests reflected in residential choices. Japanese population is growing more in the outer suburbs than in the central region in Greater Sydney, which also reflects the fact that this population consists of Japanese women marriage migrants in relatively young couples, who prefer outer suburbs to inner areas for financial and family reasons..

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Precisely, Australian permanent visa holders, without Australian citizenship, are also eligible to support the visa applicant.

  2. 2.

    Nobuaki Fujioka (2017) reveals that young Japanese often regard working holiday as a strategy to flee from their harsh (and insecure) working environment in Japan, rather than searching for a self. Assuredly, there is a gender imbalance in the population of Japanese Working Holiday Makers (more women than men).

  3. 3.

    For the latest demographic trends of WHM in Australia, see the report by the Australian Department of Immigration (Department of Immigration and Border Protection 2017).

  4. 4.

    See Appendix about detailed information of all respondents.

  5. 5.

    The reason she entered into Australia with a temporary visa (e.g. Working Holiday Maker visa) in the beginning was she thought to have enough time to decide to stay in Australia permanently with her partner.

  6. 6.

    Her Australian partner was her English language teacher in Japan.

  7. 7.

    Office Lady stands for a female office worker in Japanese English.

  8. 8.

    This term means Caucasians.

  9. 9.

    Naturally, her critique of the simple dichotomy of White/others in racism draws attention to the difference between the Whites and the others (people of colour) in racial power structures. She also scrutinises the ways in which internal differences with others (arising from ethnic, class and gender differences) are often neglected, regardless of the superior/lesser situation of the individual.

  10. 10.

    Moreover, Ochiai insists that the myth of “traditional” Asian family is a common normative discourse throughout Asian societies, which was ideologically constructed in the process of the making of modern Asian nation state since the nineteenth century (Ochiai and Hosoya 2014). Accordingly, it might be a question of Asian modernity, not Asian tradition.

  11. 11.

    This situation would be harder if their mothers are also migrant women of different cultural backgrounds.

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  1. The University of Kitakyushu, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Japan

    Takeshi Hamano

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Hamano, T. (2019). Relational Femininities: Exploring the Discourse of Flexibility of Japanese Women’s Gendered Selves. In: Marriage Migrants of Japanese Women in Australia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7848-5_5

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