Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I will critically examine the implications of changing (emerging) elements of transnational migration in East Asia, through an ethnographic case study on cross-border marriage migration between Japan and the Philippines.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I will critically examine some of the changing (or emerging) elements and implications of transnational (cross-border) migration in East Asia, through a case study on cross-border marriage migration between Japan and the Philippines. Since the last two decades of the 20th century, marriages between Filipina women and Japanese men have been one of the dominant patterns of cross-border (transnational) marriage (so-called “kokusai kekkon” ) in contemporary Japan. Before 2007, the majority of Filipina women marrying Japanese men had already entered Japan legally as “entertainers” to work in bars and clubs in Japan. However, the pattern has recently changed significantly, as Japanese immigration control policy was tightened considerably in response to the U.S. “anti-human trafficking” campaign. In this presentation, I will examine some of the new developments and problems with current cross-border marriage migration between Japan and the Philippines, including legal/institutional barriers, the issue of “gisou kekkon”(fake/imitation marriage), the paradoxical(perverted) side effects of immigration control policy by the Japanese government, and the problem of so- called “konkyu houjin” (impoverished Japanese marriage migrant men), and so on. Through the ethnographic case study on these issues and developments, I will critically reconsider some of the dominant assumptions and discourses based on the “center/periphery” schema in migration (or globalization) studies.