Language teacher subjectivities in Japan’s diaspora strategies: Teaching my language as someone’s heritage language
-
Kyoko Motobayashi
Abstract
This study demonstrates the ways in which discourses in a state-sponsored volunteer program incited transformations of individual subjectivities, focusing on a group of Japanese language teacher volunteers training in Japan to become teachers of Japanese as a heritage language for the country’s diaspora (Nikkei) population in South America. As teachers of heritage Japanese at Japanese language schools in these Nikkei communities, their work was central to Japan’s diaspora strategies, which reframe the Nikkei population as Japan’s “diplomatic assets” connected to Japan through their Nikkei identity. Focusing on these language teachers as important actors in Japan’s diaspora strategies, this study illustrates how their encounter with the institutional discourses resulted in the transformations of their subjectivities. Such transformations occurred during the volunteer training sessions hosted by Japan’s international cooperation agency to conceptualize their roles as teachers of Japanese as someone’s heritage language. By illustrating the ways in which these volunteer individuals’ transformations fit within state diaspora strategies, this article underscores the role of state actors in the process of subjectification, which has tended to be overlooked in previous studies of governmentality.
Acknowledgement
This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Toronto. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Monica Heller, for all her guidance and support throughout the dissertation project. My appreciation also extends to Normand Labrie, Shiho Satsuka, Bonnie McElhinny, Ken Kawashima and Miyako Inoue, for their invaluable comments as committee members or reviewers of the dissertation. I would also like to thank Kati Dlaske, Mireille McLaughlin, Elisabeth Barakos and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. This research was made possible in part by the Government of Canada Award and Matsushita International Foundation Research Grant.
References
Adachi, Nobuko (ed.). 2006. Japanese diasporas: Unsung pasts, conflicting presents, and uncertain futures. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Adachi, Nobuko (ed.). 2010. Japanese and Nikkei at home and abroad: Negotiating identities in a global world. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.Search in Google Scholar
Aso, Taro. 2007. Nihon ni totte Chuunanbei no Imi wo Tou: Shinjidai no Paatonaashippu wo Sodateru Toki [Examining Latin America and the Caribbean from Japan’s perspective: Fostering partnerships for a new age]. Address by Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Aso at the Japan Business Federation Conference Hall, 6 July 2007. http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/press/enzetsu/19/easo_0706.html Provisional English translation available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/latin/speech0707.html (accessed 19 March 2011).Search in Google Scholar
Baines, Donna. 2004. Caring for nothing: Work organization and unwaged labour in social services. Work, Employment & Society 18(2). 267–295.10.1177/09500172004042770Search in Google Scholar
Bröckling, Ulrich, Susanne Krasmann & Thomas Lemke (eds.). 2011. Governmentality: Current issues and future challenges. New York, NY: Routledge.10.4324/9780203846476Search in Google Scholar
Boutet, Josiane. 2012. Language workers. Emblematic figures of late capitalism. In Alexandre Duchêne & Monica Heller (eds.), Language in late capitalism. Pride and profit, 207–229. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
De Larrinaga, Miguel & Marc G. Doucet (eds.). 2010. Security and global governmentality: Globalization, governance and the state. London and New York: Routledge10.4324/9780203865736Search in Google Scholar
Dean, Mitchell. 2010 [1999]. Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Search in Google Scholar
Doerr, Neriko. 2010. Introduction: Heritage, nationhood, and language. Critical Asian Studies 42(1). 53-62.10.1080/14672710903537472Search in Google Scholar
Duncan, Tara. 2008. The internationalization of tourism labour markets: Working and playing in a ski resort. In Tim Coles & C. Michael Hall (eds.), International business and tourism: global issues, contemporary interactions, 181−194. London and New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203931035.ch10Search in Google Scholar
Ferguson, James & Akhil Gupta. 2002. Spatializing states: Toward an ethnography of neoliberal governmentality. American Ethnologist 29(4). 981–1002.10.1525/ae.2002.29.4.981Search in Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2000 [1982]. The subject and power. In James D. Faubion (ed.), Power/ Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, (trans. Robert Hurley.), 326–348. New York: The New Press.Search in Google Scholar
Fukuma, Yoshiaki. 2003. Henkyo ni Utsuru Nihon: Nashonaritii no Yuukai to Saikouchiku. [Japan reflected in its periphery: Dissolution and reconstruction of nationality] Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobo.Search in Google Scholar
Gao, Yuan. 2002. “Futatsu no Kindai” no Konseki: 1930 nendai ni Okeru “Kokusai Kankou” no Tenkai wo Chuushin ni [Traces of “dual modernity”: Focus on the development of “international tourism” in the 1930s]. In Yoshimi, Syunya (ed.), 1930 nendai no Media to Shintai [Media and bodies in the 1930s], 128–164 (Chapter 4). Tokyo: Seikyusya.Search in Google Scholar
Gill, Rosalind. 2002. Cool, creative and egalitarian?: Exploring gender in project-based new media work in Europe. Information, Communication and Society 5 (1). 70–89.10.1080/13691180110117668Search in Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2007. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hilgers, Mathieu. 2012. The historicity of the neoliberal state. Social Anthropology 20(1). 80–94.10.1111/j.1469-8676.2011.00192.xSearch in Google Scholar
Jessop, Bob. 2011. Constituting another Foucault effect: Foucault on states and statecraft. In Bröckling Ulrich, Susanne Krasmann & Thomas Lemke (eds.), Governmentality: Current issues and future challenges, 56–73 (Chapter 3). New York, NY: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Japanese Overseas Migration Museum (JOMM). (n.d.). Kaigai Ijuu Shiryoukan [Japanese Overseas Migration Museum]. http://www.jomm.jp/ (accessed 9 January 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). 2004. Warera Shinsekai ni Sanka su: Kaigai Ijuu Shiryoukan Tenji Annai [We are participating in the new world: An exhibition catalogue of the Japanese Overseas Migration Museum]. Yokohama: JICA and JOMM.Search in Google Scholar
Larner, Wendy & William Walters (eds.). 2004. Global governmentality: Governing international spaces. New York, NY: Routledge.10.4324/9780203458488Search in Google Scholar
Larner, Wendy. 2007. Expatriate experts and globalising governmentalities: The New Zealand diaspora strategy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32. 331–345.10.1111/j.1475-5661.2007.00261.xSearch in Google Scholar
Maes, Kenneth. 2012. Volunteerism or labor exploitation? Harnessing the volunteer spirit to sustain AIDS treatment programs in urban Ethiopia. Human Organization 71(1). 54–64.10.17730/humo.71.1.axm39467485m22w4Search in Google Scholar
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan. 1995. Diplomatic Bluebook of Japan, vol.38. http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/bluebook/index.html (accessed 10 December 2010).Search in Google Scholar
Mita, Chiyoko. 2009. “Dekasegi (in the Chinese and hiragana characters)” kara “Dekasegi (in the katakana characters)” he: Brajiru Imin 100 nen ni Miru Hito to Bunka no Dainamizumu [From dekasegi (in the Chinese and hiragana characters) to dekasegi (in the katakana characters): The dynamism of people and culture from the perspective of the 100 years of Brazilian emigration]. Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan.Search in Google Scholar
Motobayashi, Kyoko. 2015. Language teaching as foreign policy: Japanese language teachers in Japan’s international cooperation program. Toronto: University of Toronto doctoral dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Overseas Emigration Council, Japan (OEC). 1993. Ijuusha oyobi Nikkeijin ni Kansuru Kongo no Seisaku [Future policies regarding emigrants and Nikkei population]. (OEC Opinion Report, 25 October 1993).Search in Google Scholar
Overseas Emigration Council, Japan (OEC). 1999. Kaigai Ijuu Shingikai Dai 73 kai Soukai Gaiyou [Summary of the 73th OEC general meeting]. http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/annai/shingikai/ijyu/73.html1 (accessed 24 October 2010).Search in Google Scholar
Overseas Emigration Council, Japan (OEC). 2000. Kaigai Nikkeijin Syakai tono Kyoryoku ni Kansuru Kongo no Seisaku [On the future of policies for cooperation with the Nikkei-jin society abroad]. (OEC Opinion Report, 11 December 2000). http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/annai/shingikai/ijyu/nikkei.html (accessed 6 July 2010). Provisional English translation available at http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/emigration/nikkei.html (accessed 10 April 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Oguma, Eiji. 1998. “Nihonjin” no Kyoukai: Okinawa, Ainu, Taiwan, Chosen Shokuminchi Shihai kara Fukki Undou made [The boundaries of “Japanese”: From Okinawa, Ainu, Taiwan, Chosen colonial rule to the returning activism]. Tokyo: Shin’yosha.Search in Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as exception. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press.10.1515/9780822387879Search in Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 2006 [1996]. Governing “advanced” liberal democracies. In Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne & Nikolas Rose (eds.), Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of government, 37–64. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Reprinted in Aradhana Sharma & Akhil Gupta (eds.), The anthropology of the state: A reader, 144–162 (Chapter 6). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Roth, Joshua Hotaka. 2002. Brokered homeland: Japanese Brazilian migrants in Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Stebbins, Robert A. 2004. Between work and leisure: A study of the common ground of two separate worlds. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Search in Google Scholar
Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2001. When identities become modern: Japanese emigration to Brazil and the global contextualization of identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(3). 412–432.10.1080/01419870020036729Search in Google Scholar
Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2012. Global Inequities and Diasporic Return: Japanese American and Brazilian Encounters with the Ethnic Homeland. Discover Nikkei, 25 Jun 2012. http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2012/06/25/diasporic-return-1/ (accessed 9 January 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loic. 2012. Three steps to a historical anthropology of actually existing neoliberalism. Social Anthropology 20(1). 66–79.10.1111/j.1469-8676.2011.00189.xSearch in Google Scholar
Yoshimi, Syunya (ed.) 2002. 1930 nendai no Media to Shintai [Media and bodies in the 1930s]. Tokyo: Seikyusya.Search in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- “Languaging the worker: Globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces”
- Language policy and governmentality in businesses in Wales: a continuum of empowerment and regulation
- Linguistic minorities and the multilingual turn: constructing language ownership through affect in cultural production
- Shaping subjects of globalisation: at the intersection of voluntourism and the new economy
- Language teacher subjectivities in Japan’s diaspora strategies: Teaching my language as someone’s heritage language
- Discussion: Imagining the languaged worker’s language
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- “Languaging the worker: Globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces”
- Language policy and governmentality in businesses in Wales: a continuum of empowerment and regulation
- Linguistic minorities and the multilingual turn: constructing language ownership through affect in cultural production
- Shaping subjects of globalisation: at the intersection of voluntourism and the new economy
- Language teacher subjectivities in Japan’s diaspora strategies: Teaching my language as someone’s heritage language
- Discussion: Imagining the languaged worker’s language
