Paper Short Abstract:

Using case examples among young Chinese people in Japan, I explore how the anthropology of play helps us theorise togetherness among migrants beyond standard representational signifiers, such as community, family, and ethnicity

Paper Abstract:

Within this paper I explore how the anthropology of play helps us theorise togetherness beyond its standard representational signifiers, such as community, family, and ethnicity. Drawing inspiration from play and enactment theory, I argue that dominant theories of identity and togetherness often assume too much sincerity and stability in the collective labels people use to describe their affinities with one another. To provide a counterpoint, I trace the enactment and spread of ‘in-jokes’, such as one about ‘the God of LED/LSD’, during ethnographic fieldwork with young Chinese migrants in Tokyo. These jokes, I argue, despite their seemingly insincere and nonsensical nature, afford a playful way to create new affinities and share them with differing networks of people. I extend my analysis to examine the ways play and joking can help us better navigate the paradoxical qualities of migrant sociality more generally. As many scholars of play contend, the ‘as if’ qualities of play help us better understand social life because it moves away from questions of whether experiences or identities are ‘authentic’ or ‘sincere’ (Seligman et al. 2008). Jokes and play can represent ways in which insincere and non-indexical forms of communication might be more salient performances of togetherness than other supposedly meaningful expressions of community. This focus helps us move away from many associations made with migrants, whether as ‘suffering subjects’ (Robbins 2013) or people constantly squeezed through an ‘ethnic frame’ (Caglar and Glick Schiller 2018).