The Thai state and its Japanese migrants: A lesson in managing transnational migration

The current migration debate in Britain and in the West is reaching feverish heights. Given the growing backlash against globalisation (Stiglitz 2002, 2017), multiculturalism (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010), and migration in general (Spencer 2011), are there more successful approaches to managing migration? What lessons can be learned from outside the Western migration orthodoxy?

Thailand has experienced very high levels of immigration and population growth over the post-war period. One of its migrant communities, Japanese, has grown exponentially over the last three decades, currently hovering at above 100,000 strong. They enjoy extensive economic rights but hardly integrate culturally and rarely become naturalised. Yet, there are neither ethnic tensions, nor anti-migrant backlash, nor even an explicit integration policy or migration debate. How does this mode of co-existence work?

Based on a 30-year long involvement with Thailand’s Japanese community and PhD ethnographic fieldwork, this research looks at what can be learned from how the Thai state manages its migration and how Japanese migrants make home in Thailand.

About the speaker

Dr Artour Mitski is a scholar of global Japanese migration with focus on Asia-Pacific and specifically on Thailand. He is interested in the historic configurations of Japan's involvement in Asia and the role of institutions and cultural nationalism in Japan's nation-building. His MA dissertation in Social Anthropology entitled "Japanese in Thailand: the discourse and routines of national identity in a globalising world" served as a launchpad for his fieldwork-based PhD thesis "Japanese Bangkok and Bangkok’s Japanese: the structures and practices of transnational belonging in a global city" (SOAS 2022). He is currently working on turning the thesis into a book for Routledge as well as on a number of spin-off articles, whilst pursuing his long-standing interest in teaching.

Registration

This event free, open to the public, and held both in person and online. If you would like to attend, please register using the available links.

• Organiser: SOAS Japan Research Centre
• Contact email: centres@soas.ac.uk

Header image credit: Hiro_ A via Flickr