Ethnic Ties Stronger than Family Ties: Ethnic Social Capital Utilized by Japanese Immigrant Women

• In Event: 469 - Section on International Migration Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Migrant Social Capital

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss how Japanese immigrant women utilize their “ethnic social capital” for their mutual support. On the basis of interviews with 17 Japanese women who immigrated to California after the Second World War, the author found that they rely on their Japanese friends immigrated to the US more than their family they had made in the US. This tendency increases when they are getting older.
Previous studies on immigrants and ethnic social capital tend to focus on how it works with immigrants’ social-economic success, such as finding jobs or starting new business. However, this paper indicates that ethnic social capital, either formal or informal can also provide them with reciprocal relationships to assist immigrants’ well-being. Japanese immigrant women value those ethnic networks because they provide them with the opportunity to talk in Japanese and eat Japanese dishes. Since most of the Japanese immigrant women in post war era are married to Americans and their family consists of the people of different cultures, extrafamilial reciprocal networks with their Japanese friends are especially needed to supply the shortage of the cultural identity of their family.

Author

• Yuko Nakanishi, Musashi University