2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Creating a Multicultural Japan: Ethnographic Study and Digital Oral Interview Archive of Social Integration by Civic Institutions Supporting Recent Migrants in Kanto
| Project/Area Number |
18K02006
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| Research Institution | Sophia University |
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Principal Investigator |
Slater David 上智大学, 国際教養学部, 教授 (70296888)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
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| Keywords | archive / oral narrative / refugees |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In order to understand the situation of refugees recently entered Japan, we proposed three concurrent approaches:
1. Refugee Interviews: Our proposed oral narrative approach to capture refugee's voices has been very productive. With more than 240 hours of digital interview with mostly African and Middle Eastern asylum seekers, two new migrant groups, now coming into Japan in increasing numbers. Because they are still not well-studied, we have a significant archive here--the largest in Japan in only two years. We have establish strong and durable relationships with a wide range of refugees and asylum seekers, which suggests strong likelihood of continued research in this field.
2. NPO and CSO: We know these groups very well--the church, mosque, civic groups, etc and have been ale to document their activities. But most of this data has been gathered through more informal interaction--participant observation. (The more formal interview have been somewhat less productive as the members usually only re-iterate the official positions--建前.)
3. In terms of our 3rd goal, our community outreach is very strong, with many events that have been well-attended, including Refugee Cafe, collaborative learning event, and most recently, health checks to prevent covid-19 infection. This has been an important way for us to gain trust of refugees and expand our scholarly understanding of how the refugees and community tend to interact in a direct way.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Progress Report:
This year has produced a greater collection of refugees interviews than we expected. With 240 hours, we have collected more than we had expected. As a result, more of my time has been spent on original data generation--less on analysis. Nevertheless, all of these interviews have been transcribed and most of them coded these so as to become a more valuable resource for us and other scholars working on this or related topics. We are still somewhat lacking in non-African interviews. As data, it is all valuable, but if we are to evaluate this data set relative to our own goals, it is still a bit unbalanced.
In fact, we are somewhat behind on our interviews with the support staff at churches and NPO's. We are evaluating if formal, recorded interviews are the most suitable and productive for this group. We think that we will not continue to interview these individual, but rely on their own reports and our observations of their activities. (We are in a somewhat awkward situation because few of the groups are living up to their own charter or benchmarks; they the refugees who they are supposed to be supporting have a very mixed view of most of these organizations.)
The community outreach is successful as a service to refugees and community, but also productive of research insights. In particular, it changes the epistemological orientation of research. That is we move from "studying object" others to "working with" them in a more collaborative search for greater understanding.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
We will continue with our refugee interviews as before, trying to focus more on those in the Middle East. In order to do this, we have made systematic efforts to work with mosques and to snowball through the Middle Eastern communities within Saitama. So far, we are off to a good start on this approach.
The community outreach is going very well, and no change is foreseen i the structure of our efforts there.
As noted above, given the nature of the data we've collected from the NPO and CSO, I do not expect to use too much more time or energy on this segment of the project. We will try to do a "needs analysis" of the refugees to see what needs are being met, and what are not. But this will have to be done in a delicate way because findings that are critical of these support groups will negatively impact our ability to continue working with them. We are still searching for the right approach to this segment of the reserach.
A new report by the Ministry of Justice has been released this week that could dramatically change the way refugees are evaluated, treated and processed. Depending on how this will be implemented, it is possible that we will have to refocus our efforts on the legal and bureaucratic apparatus changes. This will require a shifting back to a review of the policy aspects, which we had thought we had finished.
We will be turning our attention to the digital creation of the archive and open website in 2020.
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| Causes of Carryover |
I have been fortunate enough to get additional funds that I needed to spend this year. I received money from Sophia University as part of a joint research project, and then I was asked to apply for the Abe Foundation Program (安倍フェローシップ・プログラムは国際交流基金日米センターと米国社会科学研究評議会). The Abe allowed me to do comparative refugee research in the US for a few months, thereby reducing the money I would be spending otherwise. In order to make my research funds stretch as far as possible, I did not use my kaken in 2019.
I will be using the whole of this amount for the very labor and money intensive production and post-production phase of turning the data in a proper archive that can be use by many researchers. This will include research assistants and technical specialists in video and website work.
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Research Products
(10 results)
