Reconfiguring boundaries : Japanese women in Shanghai

Abstract

This thesis explores migratory processes of Japanese women to Shanghai since the early 2000s. It sheds light on the -shifting meaning of boundaries between Japan and other Asian countries, particularly China, through these migratory processes. I argue that urbanization and opportunities associated with rapid economic growth in China, as well as growing economic ties between China and Japan, are central to their migration processes. Their acts of migration are part of the processes of redefining and renegotiating boundaries between Japan and other parts of Asia. In this regard, I stress that they are not passive recipients of transnational processes. Rather, I suggest that they are active participants in the dynamic processes of place making and negotiating borders as well as countering, questioning and re· imagining the state practices of demarcating boundaries. Transnational migration is a vital part of enacting such processes as it enables individual migrants to relate to the place, culture and/or people beyond "our" territory: an imagined community that is sustained through the acts of forgetting and remembering and of securitizing border-crossings as a threat to the secure and bounded community. By drawing attention to the migratory processes of Japanese women to Shanghai, I suggest that the global cities in the Asia· Pacific region may provide a significant space for critically interrogating the questions of boundaries, mobility and territoriality. I thus argue that the movement of people is vital to the reconfiguration of boundaries. Show more