The effects of transnational mobility and language on japanese national identity in three groupsjapanese graduate students studying abroad, kikokushijo, and nikkei brazilians

Abstract

Japan’s explosive GDP growth in the 1980s and 1990s created conditions for increased mobility of several groups of people, namely workers of Japanese companies that expanded abroad, workers from overseas that were needed in Japanese manufacturing and agricultural industries, and mostly students from newly middle class and wealthy families who had the financial means to study abroad. The workers who went abroad often stayed for several years and brought their families with them. The children of these workers, who eventually returned to Japan, are called kikokushijo, or returnees. The massive workforce that arrived after Japanese immigration law changes in 1990 are called Nikkei-jin, because Japan only allowed a large influx of immigrants with proven Japanese ancestral ties to enter Japan on special work visas. The largest Nikkei group that went to Japan to work was from Brazil. The number of study abroad students also increased dramatically during this time period, with about 25,000 students studying abroad in 1990 to more than 75,000 students in 2005. However, Japan’s economy, especially after the 2008 financial crisis, has grown more slowly. The government has employed several measures to increase its global competitiveness in order to revitalize its economy, including supporting Japanese language schools abroad and special university entrance examinations for kikokushijo, creating goals to increase the number of study abroad participants, and new immigration laws targeting Nikkei-jin. How has this increased mobility and language learning affected the national identities of kikokushijo, Nikkei-jin, and study abroad students? My research goals, therefore, were to study the effects of language and transnational mobility on Japanese national identity in these three groups. No other study has combined these three groups to investigate these research themes. To conduct my research, I interviewed a total of 20 participants: 4 Nikkei Brazilians, 14 kikokushijo, and 2 long-term study abroad students. I focused mainly on the participants’ language learning histories and their current use of English and Japanese as well as how the participants viewed their national identities in our interviews. I used positioning theory to analyze the data that was co-constructed in our interviews. It was found that some of my participants’ Japanese national identities were affected by Japanese and English language learning and usage. Transnational mobility also seemed to have varied effects on my participants’ Japanese national identities. The Japanese government’s efforts to increase mobility of these three groups and its language promotion strategies will also be discussed.