Paper short abstract:

This study explores the dynamics that inform the integration aspirations of foreign Muslim women in Japan. I argue that although Japan is seen as a favorable environment for Muslims, the experiences that come with their intersectional identities also shake their willingness to integrate.

Paper long abstract:

While the debates about Muslim women migrants in Europe keep being a focal topic for issues related to gender equality and immigrant integration, their counterparts in Japan have been an outlier case to discuss. Although Japan's Muslim population is relatively small compared to European countries, it has doubled in the last decade to an estimated 200,000 (Tanada 2019). It has become increasingly difficult not to acknowledge Muslim migrants' existence, especially with the growing influx of female Muslims into Japan as international students and trainees. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Sendai, I adopt an intersectional perspective on how everyday negotiations with Japanese society at the individual level affect the integration aspirations of Muslim female university students living in Japan.

Observations reveal that Japan appears to be a better place for interlocutors to settle as Muslims compared with Europe or America because, as they noted, Japan and Islam share comparable values, and Japanese people usually do not judge others by their religious identity first. However, being visible foreigners who practice an “exotic” religion, Muslim women in a less cosmopolitan Japanese provincial city also confront a variety of challenges on a daily basis, such as the language/cultural barrier, unwanted attention, and exclusion from the local Japanese people. Although Japan is perceived as a favorable environment for Muslims to settle, their multi-layered intersectional identities other than being Muslim women reveal a different reality. Having often failed in their attempts to be "one of them," Muslim women in Sendai no longer strive to integrate into Japanese society; instead, they reconcile the fact that they are mostly seen as simply Others and put more effort to become “better Muslims”.