The Transnational Negotiation of Selfhood,Motherhood and Wifehood: The Subjectivities of Japanese Women through Oyako-Ryūgaku in Hawaii

Abstract

The existing scholarship on middle and upper-class East Asian transnational families accompanying their children to English-speaking countries has mainly focused on long-term transnational migration pattern. However, we know less about the short-term pattern, and how it affects the subjectivities of migrants. By conducting a case study of Japanese women participating in oyako-ryūgaku (a short-term parent-child study abroad trip) with their children in Hawaii, we demonstrate how they constructed their transnational gendered subjectivities. We argue that not only motherhood and selfhood, but also wifehood is actively negotiated among the short-term transnational mothers through oyako-ryūgaku.