MINDAS 南アジア地域研究 国立民族学博物館拠点

◆2019 MINDAS International seminar & "Migrants and Mobility" group workshop

  • Date:Sunday, October 13, 2019 13:00 - 17:00
  • Venue:The 7th Conference Room, 2nd Floor, National Museum of Ethnology
  • Language:English
  • e-mail:mindas★minpaku.ac.jp
    ※Please replace '★' with @

Summary

This is to announce that the 1st MINDAS International seminar and the 2nd workshop of "Migrants and Mobility" group will be jointly held on October 13th (Sun).

Program

  • 13:00 - 13:10
    Opening Remarks
    Makito Minami (Professor, National Museum of Ethnology)
  • 13:10 - 13:30
    Introduction
    Introduction of South Asian Films on "Japanese Wife"
    Kazuyo Minamide (Kobe College, Japan)
  • 13:30 - 14:45
    Film & Presentation
    Film-screening Beyond the Borders (dir. Zakir Hossain Raju, 1995, 50 min)
  • 14:45 - 15:00
    break
  • 15:00 - 15:40
    "Framing the Identities of Japanese-South Asian Families: From Documenting International Marriage to Studying the Mixed Generation"
    Zakir Hossain Raju (Independent University Bangladesh)
  • 15:40 - 16:20
    "Growing up with mixed roots: Children of Japanese mothers and Pakistani fathers"
    Masako Kudo (Kyoto Women's University)
    Abstract
  • 16:20 - 17:00
    Discussion
  • 17:00
    Closing

Abstract

Growing up with mixed roots:
Children of Japanese mothers and Pakistani fathers

Masako KUDO

By drawing on results of a longitudinal research of cross-border marriages conducted over two generations, this study demonstrates how children of Japanese-Pakistani marriages navigate transnational spaces and craft new forms of personhood through their journeys. The discussion begins with a brief description of Japanese-Pakistani marriages that emerged in the late 1980s, including husbands’ occupational shifts in early stages of marriage from factory work to transnational entrepreneurship and wives’ conversion to Islam upon marriage. The children’s migration trajectories are then explored, particularly addressing transnationally split families in which Japanese mothers and their children relocated to Pakistan or other countries while Pakistani fathers remained in Japan to continue their businesses. Next, I discuss how the transnational families evolved as their life cycle progressed. Finally, I draw attention to the children’s processes of self-making. After discussing general experiences of marginalization within Japan, the narrative of a female respondent is presented to illustrate how self-making occurs. In conclusion, the following four points are highlighted: first, how parents’ desires to educate their children as Muslims affect the evolution of family dynamics; second, how parents’ transnational educational strategies have caused complex patterns of intergenerational social mobility in which gender, class, emotions, and other factors intersect; third, how children’s experiences of transnational upbringings are gendered and affected by shifting power balances within and beyond the home; and fourth, how children of Japanese-Pakistani marriages continue to negotiate their religious identities as their life progresses.

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