| Popis: |
This paper examines a newly emerging pattern in transnational living arrangements observed among Japanese-Pakistani mixed marriages. By examining these transnational family practices and the fluidity and uncertainty that accompany them, the paper explores a shifting notion of "family", as well as the hopes involved couples project upon future generations. In addition, it finds that within this newly emerging pattern in transnational families, one encounters conflicting desires and images in regards to the "family". This paper draws mainly on in-depth interviews carried out since 1998 with 40 Japanese women married to Pakistani migrants, and it is divided into three sections: The first section points to an increase of these mixed couples in Japan since the 1980s and situates this phenomenon in new patterns of international marriage observed in Japan over the last two decades. The second section provides a brief description of how from the early stages of marriage the Pakistani husbands develop new ties to their natal families even as they maintain existing ones. The third section focuses on a recently emerging pattern in living arrangements which extends beyond the suburbs of Tokyo to a transnational space in which Japanese mothers and their children cross national borders while their Pakistani husbands remain in Japan to send remittances to family members scattered across the world. It then goes on to examine the complex factors which lead to this type of transnational dispersion of family members and explore what kind of "relatedness" is imagined or constructed within its setting. |
