Longer-Term Consequences of ‘Youth’ Migration: Japanese Temporary Migrants in China and the Life Course
Longer-Term Consequences of ‘Youth’ Migration: Japanese Temporary Migrants in China and the Life Course
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“青年”移民的长期后果：日本在华临时移民及其生命历程
DOI：
10.1080/07256868.2018.1533537
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发表时间：
2018
影响因子：
1
通讯作者：
Kumiko Kawashima
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Kumiko Kawashima
摘要本文考察了二十多岁至三十多岁的日本“年轻人”，他们在人生的转折点临时移民到中国东北城市大连。他们离开了经济停滞的日本，进入了针对日本市场的数字服务外包行业，用他们的母语提供远程客户服务。虽然这些工人享有企业就业和技术移民身份的一些福利，但移民使他们的工资降至与日本最低工资相当的水平，而移民控制和离岸外包的不断变化的性质使他们的存在基本上不稳定。基于半结构化的访谈，我认为，地理流动性提供了一个临时避难所，从规范的期望，一个定居的成年人的生活，但在这个阈限的时间-空间，分类和性别的生活过程规范继续框移民的解释，他们的现在和未来。我的研究结果表明，远程服务工作者同时在家里从事暂停生活的多个暂时性，通过想象的迁移增加了现在和预期未来的停滞。分析表明，跨境流动使人们摆脱了预期生活过渡的限制，但也可能通过新的剥削模式陷入困境。
ABSTRACT This paper examines Japanese ‘youth’ in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties who participated in temporary migration to Dalian, a northeastern Chinese city, at a turning point in their life course. They left economically stagnant Japan to work in the digital service outsourcing sector targeting the Japanese market, by providing remote customer service in their native language. While the workers enjoy some perks of corporate employment and skilled migrant status, migration reduces their salaries to levels comparable to Japanese minimum wages, and the constantly shifting nature of immigration control and offshore outsourcing renders their presence fundamentally precarious. Based on semi-structured interviews, I argue that geographical mobility affords a temporary refuge from the normative expectations of a settled adult life, but in this liminal time–space, classed and gendered life course norms continue to frame the migrants’ interpretation of their presents and futures. My findings show that the remote service workers simultaneously engage in multiple temporalities of suspended life back home, increasing stasis in the present and anticipated futures through imagined migration. The analysis illustrates that cross-border mobility produces freedom from the constraints of expected life transitions, but also potential entrapment through new modes of exploitation.