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Paper short abstract:

This ethnographic research focuses on the dynamics of intermarriage and transnational family lives of Japanese-Filipino couples residing in the Philippines.

Paper long abstract:

Japanese-Filipinas international marriages emerged in significant number as part of the labor and marriage migration trends in the 1970s, which shaped the Japan-Philippine migration corridor. Existing studies focus on Filipinas migrating as spouses to farmers in rural villages (Bauzon, 1999; Samonte, Suzuki 2004, Satake 2004), and as temporary migrant workers venturing in intimate liaisons with the Japanese across Japan (Suzuki 2002, 2005), little is known about the marriage and family lives of Japanese migrants in the Philippines.

This ethnographic research focuses on the dynamics of intermarriage and transnational family lives of Japanese-Filipino couples residing in the Philippines. It looks into the profile of Japanese who sought Filipino women as their spouse, the desirability of the transnational marriage market, and the gendered ways in which these couples define cross-cultural intimacy through their notions of love, marital life satisfaction as well as social mobility.

This study aims to provide insights into how cohabitation and re/marriage, along with migration, become strategic transnational family life course decisions that go beyond formalizing marital status to pursue labor migration in Japan (cf. Tokoro 2016). Analysis of couples’ narratives gathered from semi-structured interviews also suggests that Japanese and Filipinas negotiate gender-differentiated goals of socio-economic mobility, children’s education, as well as transnational family lifestyle. The current research highlights how gender intersects with class/status and generational identities in the lived experiences of Japanese and Filipina intermarried couples and families. It also aims to contribute to ongoing debates about masculinity (and femininity) in intermarriages.