2019 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Migration infrastructure and Nepali student-migration to Japan
| Project/Area Number |
19K13923
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
SHRESTHA TINA 早稲田大学, 高等研究所, 講師(任期付) (10832470)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Migration infrastructure / intermediaries / student-workers / recruitment / Nepal / Japan |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The project examines the overlap between brokerage practices and labor regulation in the ‘middle-spaces of migration’ interconnecting Nepal and Japan, especially through ongoing state institutionalization of employment-recruitment agencies, training and education programs. The focus is on the collaborative role of the state and private institutions-education consultancies, language institutions, and government-initiated training-intermediating and facilitating Nepali student-migration to Japan.
Research among employment-recruitment agencies in Nepal indicate the following: (i) brokerage practices generative of migration aspirations and social imaginaries, informing the recruitment norms and encounters on the ground; and proposed that (ii) migration infrastructure when contextualized within its socio-cultural particularity reveals the oft-unplanned and experimental dynamics embedded in migration brokerage activities. By looking into state institutions and educational-recruitment agencies in Nepal facilitating student migration to Japan, the project analyzes both, processes and sites of knowledge practices, broader social imaginaries being (re)configured-and made claims for-on the terrain of inter-Asian migration infrastructure.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Preliminary fieldwork in Kathmandu, Nepal
A. State institutions and private companies facilitating migration (i) The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) : manages several government scholarships and educational exchange training programs (ii) The Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) manages and oversees new skilled-migration to Japan in the coming year (iii) The Ministry of Labor, Employment, and Social Security(MoLESS)assesses, implements, and institutionalizes training programs, including those undergoing review at DoFE (iv) The Association for Overseas Technical Cooperation and Sustainable Partnerships (AOTS) alumni members in Nepal, who have returned from various technical and management trainings in Japan over the last twenty-eight years (v) Nepal, Educational consultancies and language institutions facilitating student-migration to Japan
B. Participant-observation and research conducted at the Panacea International, Kathmandu: recruits and organizes student-migration from to Nagoya, Japan.
C. Connected with think-tanks Social Science Baha and Martin Chautari for future research collaboration on the contemporary Nepali migration.
D. Other research activities: Survey of local and international news media outlet in Kathmandu that regularly report on the ongoing discussion between Nepal-Japan regarding the recently signed Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) between the two countries regarding Nepali skilled labor migration as a part of Japan’s long-term labor recruitment policies.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Given the current restrictions on domestic and international travel due to the global pandemic, fieldwork in Japan as well as research trips to Nepal initially scheduled for early AY 2020 have been postponed and revised. Additionally, I am on maternity leave (May 2020-August 2020). As such, in AY 2020, I will primarily be participating and presenting research at peer-reviewed workshops an conferences (domestic and international):
(i) I will be presenting my research on Nepali migration to Southeast Asia and Japan to two peer-reviewed international workshops: “Inter-Asian Referencing and Beyond” at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (November 2020) and “Asia as Method” at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague (early 2021). I am also a co-organizer for both of these international workshops.
(ii) “‘Fear of being left behind’: Migration aspirations, educational consultancies and language institutions in Nepal”, 33rd JASAS Annual Conference, Kyoto University, October 3-4, 2020
(iii) “Global Studies on the Formation and Development of Co-existential Space, Society and Thought through Transnational Mobility and Knowledge,” Nagoya University Institute for Advanced Research [2021]
(iv) “Credibility, claimant-testimony, and the frame(s) of victimhood in the US asylum process,” Truth, Responsibility, and Accountability in Asylum Engagements: Refugee Epistemology and Fugitive Anthropology, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, St. Louis, November 18- 22, 2020
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| Causes of Carryover |
Given the current restrictions on domestic and international travel due to the global pandemic, fieldwork in Japan as well as research trips to Nepal initially scheduled for early AY 2020 have been postponed and revised.
In AY 2020, I will primarily be participating and presenting research at peer-reviewed workshops an conferences (domestic and international).
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