Description
Based on empirical data collected between 2008 and 2016 via research with children born to Japanese-Filipina couples, I explore processes of boundary-making that affect ‘mixed race’ mobile youth in the post-colonial and post-imperial socio-political contexts of the Philippines and Japan respectively. In previous work, I explored the mobilization of what I term consanguineal capital. Extending from Bourdieusian arguments, I aimed to capture how notions of actual or imagined ‘blood ties’ and belonging are turned into a symbolic currency and leveraged to gain access to resources through the legal implications that are provided by biological relationships, but also through symbolic claims for belonging to a nation or people, by virtue of descent. In this paper, I tease out how alterity and fraternity are negotiated in migrancy, and how the racialization of JapaneseFilipino children remains tied to their parents’ migration biographies that are embedded in processes of globalization marked by income inequalities and unequal access to cross-border mobility. The gendered and classed migrations of Filipino women to Japan- and of Japanese men to the Philippines- have reinforced inequalities that today find expression in their offspring’s access to or denial of Japanese citizenship and in the terms of acceptance as part of the Japanese nation, both formally and in everyday life. Moving beyond the white-Others binary and the focus on skin colour, this paper contributes to discussions of racialization and racism outside of ‘Western’ experiences.| Period | 17 Jan 2020 |
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| Event title | Presentation at Workshop: "New Racism and Migration: Beyond Colour and the ‘West’", Asia Research Institute, NUS |
| Event type | Other |
| Location | SingaporeShow on map |