Children of the danchi: a Japanese primary school for newcomers

Abstract

Practices and policies of Japanese schooling for immigrant and marginalised students are examined through the lens of a primary school which serves one of the largest foreign student populations in Japan. Student families include Southeast Asian refugees, South American immigrants of Japanese descent, recent and longstanding Chinese and Koreans, and low-income Japanese nationals. Years of ethnographic fieldwork in several low-income Japanese urban communities preceded this work, consisting of interviews, site visits, historical documentation and professional consultations. Study of the chosen school offers a snapshot of not only the contested terrain of schooling, but also the larger context of these young peoples’ lives: demands on foreign labourers, shifting and constructed identities, laws that both welcome and constrain. In the midst of apparent chaos, this school attempts to respond to the challenges presented by a system ill-prepared to work with children who are ‘different’.