Testing Immigrants' Loyalty: Tensions in Teacher-Parent Relations in Japan

• In Event: 392 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Education and Social Inequality. The Role of Teachers

Abstract

Positive relationships between immigrant parents and host-country teachers can encourage parents’ trust in the schools and foster more consonant assimilation in immigrant families. However, global migrants are settling in new destinations, like Japan, where tens of thousands of immigrant children are attending public schools. Japanese teachers often have little experience teaching immigrant children and have few resources to support them. In this context, what is the nature of the relationship between Japanese teachers and immigrant parents? How are school practices influencing the context of reception, and how can a negative context of reception impact immigrant parents’ sense of belonging in the host country? Based on ethnographic fieldwork at a public elementary school in central Japan that has more than 50 immigrant children, the majority of whom are Peruvians of Japanese descent, I explore the context of reception for immigrant Peruvian parents, including teachers’ relationships with the parents, teachers’ expectations, their complaints, and their questions about Peruvians’ commitment to living in Japan. I argue that these practices constitute tests of Peruvians’ loyalty to Japan that produce a cycle of hostility in which Peruvian parents respond to their reception in Japan by seeking to instill Peruvian, and not Japanese, identities in their children. These efforts lead to more resentment and distrust by teachers, who view these ties as an act of betrayal. Teachers’ resentment, in turn, further encourages parents to not think of Japan as “home.”

Author

• Robert Steven Moorehead, Ritsumeikan University