De-territorialized Ethnic Community: The Residential Choices and Networks among Japanese Lifestyle Migrants in South-East Queensland

Abstract

This article illustrates the contemporary characteristics of the Japanese community in South-East Queensland, Australia. Although traditional migration studies reveal a common tendency for immigrants to congregate and form their own ethnic niche in cities, the contemporary Japanese settlement in South-East Queensland has unique features, as well as theoretical implications for migration study. This ethnic community can be characterized by the absence of a geographic point, what we could call a ‘psychological centre’. Using a term developed by Appadurai and García Canclini, the article describes it as a ‘de-territorialized community’ where migrant networks are established and maintained on an individual basis rather than through the construction of a centralized ethnic urban space and traditional ethnic Japanese community organization.