• Home
  • About Nikkei Australia
  • Support Nikkei Australia
Contact form | Privacy Policy

About Nikkei Australia

Nikkei Australia promotes research, study, arts
& cultural practices and community information
exchange about the Nikkei diaspora in Australia.

facebook
twitter
youtube
  • Home
  • News
  • Nikkei Stories
  • PROJECTS
    • Cowra Voices App
    • The Cowra Japanese War Cemetery Online Database
    • Yasukichi Murakami Through a Distant Lens
    • Internment Symposium March 2014
    • Civilian Internment Arts Program 2014
    • Cowra Canowindra Community Arts Project 2013
  • LINKS
  • About Nikkei Australia
    • Nikkei Australia Members
    • Call for New Members
    • Support Nikkei Australia
  • Resources

  1. Home
  2. Resources
  3. Journals & books
  4. Japanese women marriage migrants today: Negotiating gender, identity and community in search of a new lifestyle in western Sydney

Japanese women marriage migrants today: Negotiating gender, identity and community in search of a new lifestyle in western Sydney

July 01, 2011
by Mayu Kanamori
1 Comment

by Takeshi Hamano.

This thesis explores the rise and transformation of Japanese migration to Australia since the 1980s. This thesis particularly investigates the experience of Japanese women marriage migrants: women who have immigrated to Australia through marriage to a local partner. Based on participant observation with a Japanese ethnic association in Sydney‟s west between 2007 and 2009, and on in-depth interviews with the association‟s members, this thesis examines the ways in which the women re-mould themselves in Australia by constructing gendered selves which reflect their unique migratory circumstances through cross-national marriage. Since the 1980s, Japanese international migration has transformed into „lifestyle‟ migration, that kind of migration undertaken for the sake of an alternative lifestyle and the consumption of different socio-cultural experiences in the new country. On this assumption, this thesis finds that the increase in Japanese women migrants is an amalgamation of two motivations. These women not only sought a chance to avoid or overcome conventional gender inequalities, which are still prevalent in contemporary Japanese society; they also regarded going overseas as an opportunity to fashion a desirable lifestyle on their own. Consequently, while many of them arrived in Australia with the view to staying only temporarily, they decided to continue their movement towards a new lifestyle through marriage to a local partner. This thesis examines the stories of Japanese women marriage migrants after their migration to Australia, discovering that the women tend to take recourse to expressions of Japanese femininity that they once viewed negatively, and that this is tied to their lack of social skills and access to the cultural capital of mainstream society. Re-moulding the self through conventional Japanese notions of gender ironically provided them with a convincing identity, that of a minority migrant woman. Nevertheless, through an analysis of members‟ engagement with an association of Japanese women marriage migrants in a suburb of Sydney‟s west, this thesis reveals a nuanced sense of ambivalence expressed by these Japanese women: between their Japanese community and Australian life. This results in a dilemma for these women: they negotiate between their „given‟ Japanese femininity and the „chosen‟ images of self that can be achieved in their new life in Australia.

Download from: https://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:8986

More from Takeshi Hamano: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Takeshi_Hamano

Social Share
One Comment
  1. Tomoko Sugiura July 22, 2020 at 9:31 pm Reply

    I do not identify myself with the subject of this researcher’s study and doubt many of my Japanese women friends in Australia do. Having said that, for women who “take recourse to expressions of Japanese femininity that they once viewed negatively, and that this is tied to their lack of social skills and access to the cultural capital of mainstream society” what would be more useful than a description of their plight is unpacking of their evolutionary edge through their trials and tribulations. In the context of growing number of international marriages and lives lived abroad by choice, useful information, in my view, is not what happened to women’s hopes and dreams but how women adapted to new environment.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

*
*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Recent Posts

[Lecture] Keiko Tamura "Life Story of Cross-Border Women: Japanese War Brides in Australia" & Interview with Alumni
Jan 20, 2021
Loveday Project by Christine Piper
Jan 04, 2021
Cowra Voices report in Studies in Oral History: The Journal of Oral History Australia
Dec 21, 2020
父を語る(About My Father)
Dec 17, 2020
Cowra Voices recognised by 3 History Awards
Nov 26, 2020
My Life Story by Iseko Williams
Oct 16, 2020
Reading Embraced by Australia Hiroshima Modules 1 and 2  by: Carol Hayes, Yuki Itani-Adams
Oct 15, 2020
Yushiro Mizukoshi speaks with SBS - Japanese in Australia – Japanese footprints over a century goes online
Oct 09, 2020
Study finds positive outlook for Nikkei worldwide
Sep 18, 2020
Pearl Hamaguchi's Oral History from Broome
Sep 11, 2020
Interview with Ida Hasegawa on Hasegawa Family History
Aug 31, 2020
The first recorded Japanese in Australia: Steve Dawson's family story
Aug 29, 2020
Solrun Hoaas / After Tatura - Unrealised film footage at NFSA
Aug 29, 2020
Akane Kanai’s Nikkei family
Aug 28, 2020
Bridging Australia and Japan: Volume 2 The writings of David Sissons, historian and political scientist
Aug 24, 2020
Staying till the End? Japanese Later-Life Migrants and Belonging in Western Australia
Aug 19, 2020
Radio documentary tells the story of Japanese POWs and internees in Hay, a small town in NSW
Aug 17, 2020
Nikkei Australian Identity
Aug 12, 2020
Nikkei Block Party Week 7 - as part of JAMPilgrimages Tadaima!
Aug 10, 2020
Japanese in Australia - Japanese footprints over a century now digitised
Aug 07, 2020

Follow Blog via Email


 

Thank you for your support

Please support Nikkei Australia to promote research, study, arts & cultural practices and community exchange about Nikkei Diaspora in Australia.
  • Home
  • About Nikkei Australia
  • Support Nikkei Australia

Major support by The Japan Foundation Sydney

The Japan Foundation, Sydney



Pandora Archive pandora_logo

Tweets by @NikkeiAustralia
Nikkei Australia (c) 2014-2020 - All rights reserved