Search results

Increasing numbers of low-income single male retirees from Japan are migrating to Southeast Asian countries to live in isolation. They migrate to avoid the emotional burdens in Japan associated with an acute sense of shame, inferiority and displacement. This article argues that their migration should be understood as a type of anticipatory action taken by the retirees—that is, an action driven by the awareness of one's own social incapability, particularly the lack of social relations and self-esteem—to create a meaningful future in Japan. I demonstrate how the men became socially incapacitated through events in their life course, focusing on the dominant work regime, family regime and gender ideology in post-war Japan. The concept of "social incapacitation" contributes to the study of aging futures by foregrounding the significance of gendered norms and emotion, as well as demonstrating how history and futures are interlinked in embodied ways.

Most of the existing literature on international marriage in Asia focuses on Southeast Asian brides marrying into East Asian families, particularly those in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Our study examines a "reverse" case, that is, Japanese women marrying Southeast Asian males and settling with their husband's families in Southeast Asia. Primarily based on qualitative data from in-depth interviews in Bali (Indonesia) in 2010, this article explains why and how reverse marriage migration takes place from the Japanese wives' point of view. Unlike the "usual" marriage migration that is often purposely and even commercially brokered, reverse marriage migration typically resulted from the Japanese women's self-discovery journeys, which were in turn driven by various structural conditions in Japanese society. After marriage, the women desired to be integrated in the local community and were committed to the extended family norm. The article concludes that reverse marriage migration is a unique aspect of the grassroots transnational relationship between Japan and Southeast Asian societies.

PurposeThis article aims to explain how a transnational "retirement industry" in Southeast Asia has emerged recently as a result of interplays between various national and transnational forces, particularly in the domain of elderly care. "Retirement industry" refers to business operations related to the relocation of foreign retirees, primarily Japanese pensioners, who seek affordable social care and alternative retirement life.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on extensive documentary studies and multi‐sited ethnographic research from 2004 to date. In‐depth interviews with retirees and relevant agencies were carried out in Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.FindingsThis article delineates how demographic and economic changes in Japan create demand for the transnational retirement industry, and how Southeast Asian countries actively promote the industry as a national development strategy. As such the boundaries between nation‐state and between the market and the state are simultaneously crossed. The industry opens new transnational routes and spaces and thus further complicates the transnationalization of elderly care in Asia.Originality/valueCurrent research on social welfare remains dominated by methodological nationalism, and this article calls attention to the transnational dimension in understanding recent changes in social care. By engaging the predominant paradigm of "care diamond", the article shows that how boundaries shift between various care providers within nation states is inextricably related to how borders are crossed between nation states.

Since the late 1990s, Asian nations have increasingly encouraged or demanded the return of emigrants. In this anthology, cases of return migration in Asia provide the ground for rethinking relations between nation-states and transnational mobility.

Despite being a relatively recent research topic, studies on transnational later-life retirement have noted the diversity of the phenomenon. This study of Japanese women in later-life moving to live in Western Australia and Thailand adds to the diversity by examining the gendered dimension of the phenomenon. Through an analysis of the dominant narrative of "seeking for freedom" in their motivation to leave Japan, the paper examines what are the expressions of freedom as perceived by the women and the challenges confronting them in later-life migration. Their subjective experiences reflect migration in later-life as a dynamic process, and later-life migration as more complex than mere classification of their motivations into amenity-seeking or otherwise.

AbstractResearch on transnational care work has tended to focus on the migration of women for either domestic work or nursing, and the two bodies of work have remained largely separate. In developed countries such as Singapore, however, the high level of female labour force participation alongside a rapidly ageing population has led to the deployment of both groups of migrant care workers to alleviate the impending eldercare crisis. Migrant domestic workers are employed to look after the elderly in private domiciles while foreign healthcare workers provide eldercare in institutions such as nursing homes. Recognizing that the transnational labour migrations of women as domestic and healthcare workers are integrally linked in the care chain, we attempt to bring the two together in this article. We first examine how state policy differentially regulates the entry of these two groups to work in two very different spaces: the domestic space of the home, and the institutional space of nursing homes. Drawing on interviews with employers, we go on to argue that while the institutional mechanisms differ for the groups of care workers employed in these two spaces, Singapore's solution to its eldercare predicament is predicated on 'othering' the care worker's body along discourses of gender, nationality and notions of elderly care work as dirty, demanding and demeaning.

AbstractThis special issue on 'Transnational mobilities for care: rethinking the dynamics of care in Asia' examines the intersections between transnational mobilities for care and the practices of care through the lens of transnational migration for work and marriage. In this editorial introduction, we highlight three key themes explored by the articles that make up the collection – the transposability of care; the reciprocity of care; and the continued feminization of carework In discussing these themes, we consider how we can contribute to a rethinking of 'care' and the notion of the global care chain from a perspective beyond that of the Global North.