Paper short abstract:

This research examines how the Japanese context affects the experiences of immigrant Muslim women and how they navigate new body norms. This paper demonstrates that Muslim women are able to navigate through different body norms to gain convenience in different contexts.

Paper long abstract:

This research focuses on the experiences of immigrant Muslim women in Japan, exploring the ways in which the Japanese context shapes the nature of public attention on minorities' bodies and how visible minorities negotiate new body norms at the individual level. In Japan, where a monoethnic ideology is officially and unofficially promoted, migrants, including Muslim women, are often downplayed or ignored and racialized as "non-Japanese." However, unlike the situation in Europe, their religious identity as Muslims has often taken a back seat to their foreign identity due to the salient Japanese/foreigner binary and the marginalized status of Muslims in Japan.

The study finds that although Muslim women appreciate the “less Islamophobic” environment in Japan and actively absorb body norms (e.g., greeting, manner, dress code) from Japanese society that align with Islamic values, their visible foreign identity and the Japanese perception of visible non-Japanese as equivalent to temporary foreign residents prevent them from "taken seriously,” leading to feelings of exclusion and isolation.

The nature of these experiences resulted in Muslim women expressing frustration that their embodied change and attempts to integrate did not appear to be accepted by the receiving society. Nonetheless, Muslim women are able to move between different body norms in different contexts to gain convenience: By occasionally playing the "foreigner” or “Muslim card," for example, they were exempt from some of the social norms imposed on local Japanese people.