Everyday Mobility: the Normalization of China- Japan Migratory Flows and Their ‘Everyday Practice’
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DOI: 10.1515/irsr-2013-0002 IRSR INTERNATIONAL REVIEW of SOCIAL RESEARCH Volume 3, Issue 1, February 2013, 7-26 International Review of Social Research Everyday Mobility: the Normalization of China- Japan Migratory Flows and their ‘Everyday Practice’ Jamie COATES• Department of Anthropology School of Culture, History and Language Australian National University Abstract: Chinese migrants now constitute the largest group of registered ‘foreigners’ in Japan, with over 600,000 documented in 2006. This is the result of an intersection between the Chinese government’s drive for educational and economic success, and Japan’s flexible student visa labour system. It is the product of a ‘normalization’ of mobility amongst young mobile Chinese. Based on 20 months fieldwork in Tokyo, Japan, I explore the ways in which the decision to move is experienced as mundane, and how it is negotiated as a form of ‘everyday practice.’ Through this lens, this article posits multiple relationships between mobility, its limits and how this relates to mobile people’s sense of place in the world. Keywords: Japan, China, young mobility, everyday practice. Contemporary movements between selected. Furthermore, the restrictive China and Japan defy simple limitations imposed on Chinese tourist classification. Like other forms of visas mean that many Chinese people mobility, the boundaries between with ‘touristic’ aspirations choose other categories of movement such as tourist, visas which afford greater mobility. As student and migrant are blurred. such, mobility is the primary marker of Moreover, the visas which define these people rather than classificatory people’s movements between China terms such as migrant, tourist, student and Japan do not necessarily encompass or labourer. what they actually do. Tourist, student The purpose of this article is to and work-related visas act merely as demonstrate how the experiences of channels for a range of aspirations that young mobile Chinese in Japan collapse do not necessarily fit the visa category simplistic distinctions of necessity and •e-mail: [email protected]. Jamie Coates is Phd candidate at Dept. of Anthropology, CHL, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. © University of Bucharest, February 2013 8 | IRSR Volume 3, Issue 1, February 2013 desire for movement, and to show how securing mobility, but also in trying this experience of mobility is akin to limit mobility. Once, mobile, to other mundane realities for many. young Chinese in Japan often find Mobility involves complex relations the everyday realities of a mobile between the hopes an individual’s life disorienting and difficult. They families have for them and the hopes are unable to remain indefinitely in they have for themselves. Rather than Japan, but also find it difficult to return the common assumption that mobility to China. In particular, the difficult is a sign of flexibility or success, this choices presented by a mobile life were paper interprets mobility as the result described as less an issue of choice than of both successes and failures. It as a general experience of ‘floating.’ involves tactical and strategic reactions This draws attention to what Franke to the options available and the forces Pieke calls the ‘mundane realities of which create these limitations. In this life beyond what is immediately policy sense, mobility is best interpreted as relevant’ (Pieke 2007: 82) and shows a continuation of ‘everyday practice’ how, through the lens of ‘everyday in China rather than something practice,’ mobility itself can become exceptional or successful (De Certeau an obstacle for mobile Chinese youths. 1984). Young mobile Chinese in Japan narrate their mobility as ‘everyday’ From China to Japan and mundane; as a practical choice made within a range of options which After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 are created by wider institutional forms a period of rapid economic growth in both countries. This can be seen as and social change emerged in China. ‘normalization,’ where the institutional Since this period of ‘open’ policies and discursive encouragement of (CHN: gaige kaifang)1 , there has been migration between China and Japan a large emphasis on growth in China. becomes internalized as a ‘normative’ This period saw the transformation act for many mobile Chinese, despite of a once solely state run economy overseas movements being only into a hybrid market economy, and an available to a small proportion of opening of diplomatic and migratory China’s population. This paper argues relations with countries shut off from that an ‘everyday practice’ approach the PRC during Mao’s rule, such as to mobility allows us to acknowledge Japan. These changes were particularly the ways Chinese mobile subjects are notable in the 14 prescribed ‘special formed by these institutional forces, economic zones’ (SEZs) along China’s without dismissing individuals’ own eastern coastal cities, but have also sense of the practicality in their spread generally throughout the urban movements. centres of China. Young mobile Chinese in Japan are This new emphasis on economic subject to many obstacles in securing growth was accompanied by visas, passports and access to mobile educational reforms. Studying overseas lifestyles. However, the precarity became popular and prestigious after of their situation is not limited to June 1978, when Deng Xiaoping Jamie Coates Everyday Mobility | 9 instructed education departments to this is found in a 1992 State Council expand the scale of people travelling report on the principles of overseas overseas for studies. Since then China study policy. These principles were to has become the world’s largest exporter ‘support study abroad, promote return, of international students. In 2006 [uphold] freedom of movement,’ and to there were 343,126 recorded Chinese ‘promote overseas individuals to serve international students, constituting the country,’ with ‘serve the county’ 14% of the total international student (CHN: wei guo fuwu) becoming the population and amounting to three times standard slogan for overseas students the total of the second largest exporter, (Nyiri 2001; Cheng 2003). India (UNESCO 2006). This drive for In her research amongst students international study has become a major in the reform era, Vanessa Fong means for legal overseas travel from has argued that images of China’s China. Of the total number of Chinese place in the world are embedded in students travelling, 89,000 Chinese a broader notion of ‘modernising’ students went to the USA and 79,000 China that is subject to the perceived to Japan. However, due to special need for China to modernise (Fong vocational (15,000 students) and pre- 2004; Fong 2007; Fong 2011). The university language student (30,000 students Fong interviewed often students) visa arrangements between voiced disappointment with the rate of China and Japan, Japan arguably progress in China, and the perceived constitutes the largest recipient of inferiority of Chinese standards of educationally-channelled Chinese living. Hence, they felt it necessary to migrants. For example, Liu-Farrer has go overseas to develop themselves. At calculated the total of educationally the same time, they framed this desire channelled Chinese migrants in Japan in terms of filial duty to the nation by to be 120,176 for 2006 (UNESCO cultivating themselves overseas and 2006; Liu-Farrer 2007; Liu-Farrer returning at a later date. 2011). By the 1990s, China’s new Educational travel is one of emphasis on overseas study and the most reliable means for young migration coincided with Japan’s Chinese citizens to travel overseas. own social developments. Japan’s Legal overseas migration has been ageing population, labour shortage, encouraged by the Chinese Communist and the hesitation of the domestic Party (CCP) in the reform era as part population to engage in certain kinds of the developmental imaginaries of employment, created a new labour of the nation (Nyiri 2001; Xiang market for temporary migration (Liu- 2003; Fong 2004; Fong 2007; Xiang Farrer 2007). These developments were 2007; Nyiri 2010; Fong 2011). In the catalyst for several migratory flows particular, overseas study has featured into Japan. For example, Brazilian prominently in this promotion, as citizens with Japanese ancestry were the CCP attempts to create broad granted a special visa entitlement to international networks of economic work and live in Japan (Roth 2002). and cultural development (Nyiri 2001). Similarly, young Southeast Asian A particularly indicative example of women were attracted to Japan via 10 | IRSR Volume 3, Issue 1, February 2013 entertainment visas and trainee visas. students originally intending to enter a Entertainment visas were promoted university in Japan opt to work instead as a cultural exchange visa, although and, vice versa, those originally trying they were predominantly used within to earn money end up attempting some Japan’s adult entertainment industry form of education due to the advantages (Hisada 1992; Douglass and Roberts it brings. Moreover, the possibility of 2000). Trainee visas were designed becoming more cosmopolitan through as a form of ‘on the job training’ but ‘touristic’ experiences abroad also play have been widely criticised as an a role in young mobile Chinese lives exploitative and short sighted scheme in Japan. In this way, mobile Chinese to bring cheap labour into the care people living in Japan rarely fit a industry (Terasawa 2000). simple classificatory migration model. According to my own research, as This is due to the high living costs well as that of other scholars, young associated with living in Japan and the mobile Chinese predominantly come desire for mobile life trajectories. to Japan on educational visas (Tajima 2003; Liu-Farrer 2011). The relative ease in attaining one of the several Studying mobile people: method types of student visas and the part-time and positionality work arrangements permitted under the various educational visa categories has My research is based on 20 months of ensured that student visas have become ethnographic fieldwork in Ikebukuro, a proxy channel for labour migration.