‘I'm not going to be in Japan forever’: how Filipina immigrant youth in Japan construct the meaning of home

Abstract

This article, based on an ethnographic study of five Filipino-born daughters of Filipina migrant workers in Japan, discusses how these young women construct understandings of home as they navigate the borderlands between the Philippines, Japan and the US. The study reveals the ways in which these young women negotiate the possibilities and constraints of their homeland in the Philippines, their new land of Japan and an imagined future home in the US. Their senses of safety, economic security, community and cultural/linguistic affirmation all affected how they understand these countries as potential and possible homes. The study reveals how these youth search for and build homes across multiple spaces and the struggles they encounter within that search.