Discourse analysis of seeking comfortable life as migrants in a multi-cultural society: A case study of Japanese women living in the UK

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K12876
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: HATA Kaori 大阪大学, 言語文化研究科(言語文化専攻), 准教授 (50287801)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: Discourse analysis / Migrant / Japanese women / Narrative / Participation framework

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aims to propose how we can deal with the multi-cultural society which has already come to Japan, applying the case of the UK. In 2016, the UK had a referendum of the Brexit, which revealed ‘potential’ discrimination to the migrants including the Japanese women living in the UK.

As a result, they were seeking positions in their local community they belong to. They categorised themselves as migrants but sometimes divided ‘migrant’ into several categories in order to be in the ‘good’ migrant group. It shows that social change leads to the reconstruction of the identities of minority people who need to manage to find a position to adapt to the new social order.

Free Research Field

談話分析、ナラティブ分析