Rhacel Salazar Parreňas

 Migration is a way to move from one place

to another in order to live and work.
Movement of people from their home to
another city, state or country for a job,
shelter or some other reasons.
 Migration- process of putting
their life in the Philippines on hold
while they are in Japan. (Parreňas,
2010)
 internal migration: moving within a state,
country, or continent
 external migration: moving to a different
state, country, or continent
 emigration: leaving one country to move to
another
 immigration: moving into a new country
 return migration: moving back to where you
came from
 seasonal migration: moving with each season
or in response to labor or climate conditions
 According to Cambridge Dictionary, Global
Migration a situation in which people go
to live in
foreign countries, especially in order to
find work, Most global migration is
from developing countries to developed ones.
 Japan’s Nightlife Industry
◦ workers secure an entertainer visa as contract labourers
for 3-6 months.

 Philippines – 60%
 Korea
 Thailand
 Taiwan
 Russia
 Colombia
 Bulgaria
 Permanent Migration
◦ Long-term legal residency; Wives and mothers of
Japanese nationals

 Indefinite Migration
◦ Visa overstayers; those with a precarious status as
undocumented workers

 Short-term Migration
◦ contract workers with three to six months
entertainer visas
 unlikely to seek long-term residency and stay
in Japan either permanently or indefinitely
 experience migration as short-term migrants
and contract workers
 10% of them attain long-term permanent
residency by marrying their customers or
having a child with a Japanese national
 there are approximately 28,000
undocumented Filipina entertainers in Japan
 Circular Migrants
◦ maintain greater allegiance to the sending country
◦ is the temporary and usually repetitive movement
of migrant workers between home and host
societies
 Transnational Migrants
◦ balances their allegiance to both sending and
receiving countries
◦ a process of movement and settlement across
international borders in which individuals
maintain or build multiple networks of
connection to their country of origin while at the
same time settling in a new country
 Home Societies
◦ sending country
 Host Societies
◦ receiving country

 Japan as a Host Society:

◦ enforce the ‘differential exclusion’ of migrants and
accept migrants only within strict functional and
temporal limits
◦ more likely to welcome migrants as workers but not
as settlers and as temporary sojourners and not
long-term residents
 Differential Exclusion
◦ consequently encourages migrants to extend
citizenship beyond the territorial boundaries of
the nation-state and to inhabit a transnational
sphere as the scholars of transnational migration
◦ migrants are incorporated into certain areas of
society (eg. the labour market) but denied access
to others (such as welfare systems and political
participation)
 United States
◦ where migrants work as seasonal or low-wage
employment workers such as constructions workers,
hotel housekeepers in resorts, and cannery industry
workers
◦ workers are considered permanently temporary and/or
permanently circular

 Europe
◦ greater intraregional migration as a result of bilateral
agreements that allow the exchange of short-term
migration without the issuance of work permits between
Ukraine and Poland

 Poland
◦ recognizes the growing number of migrants who only
remain in Poland for several months in the year
 Settlement of short-term
migrants remains inadequately
explored in the literature,
 Scholars predict that more nations
will develop temporary migration
programmes, leading to an
increase in short-term migration
and a consequent rise in circular
migration
 Countriesare maintaining or
formally putting in place
temporary labour migration
programmes:

a)Australia
b)United States
c)countries in East Asia
d)Middle East
e)Europe
I. Temporary labour migrants in
liberal democratic states are
more likely to make the
transition to permanent
settlement

II. Access to re-entry encourages

short-term circular migration.
III. Skills would determine the
pattern of settlement, with
highly skilled tem- porary
labour migrants more likely
than low skilled ones to settle
permanently in the host society.
IV. Differential exclusion as the
basis of membership for
migrants would encourage their
circular migration
 Migrationis a social process with
its own inherent dynamics. As a
self-sustaining process, migration
is shaped not only by structural
forces but also by migrant agency
(Castles 2004).
 Interview with 56 Filipina migrant hostesses
in Tokyo ( 56 female and 11 transgender) and
focused on the process of labour migration.
 3 churches, 8 restaurants, 1 food store
frequented by filipino hostesses, and 3
Philippine club.
 Permanent, indefinite, and short-term
 16 temporary contract workers and 22 former
temporary contract workers
 Identified potential interviewees by direct
contact.
 Thissection illustrates the
homeward bound orientation of
entertainers by describing the
practices of planning sayonara
(goodbye) parties and sending
balikbayan (return home) boxes.
 Hostess clubs celebrate not the arrival
but the departure of entertainers.
 They host a party, which members of
the community refer to as a sayonara
a) Sayonara - an event in which
entertainers wear gowns – long
evening dresses – that range from
Philippine couture to generic taffeta
or chiffon prom dresses.
 The sayonara represents the finale
of an entertainer’s six months in
Japan.
 Entertainers view this event as
perhaps their last opportunity to
say goodbye to customers and
their last chance to collect
presents.
 The entertainers in female clubs start
worrying about what material acquisitions to
take back to the Philippines from Japan soon
after they get there.
 Open and partially filled balikbayan boxes,
cardboard containers measuring six cubic
feet, are part of the furniture in any resident
entertainer’s apartment.
 Balikbayan - literally means to
return home and return migrants
usually use these boxes for the
perishable goods, including
chocolates and tinned foods, they
bring home to the Philippines.
 The practice of planning sayonara
parties and sending balikbayan
boxes home to the Philippines
symbolizes the sojourn of
entertainers and illustrates how
they migrate to improve their lives
in the Philippines.
 The homeward migration of temporary
labour migrants distinguishes their
experience from what we know in the
literature as transnational migration.
 In circular migration, the movement of
migrants between the country of
origin and country of destination is
oriented towards building their life in
the country of origin.
 Their homeward bound orientation manifests
in their experience of settlement in the host
society as one of
 SEGREGATION:
Temporal
Social
Spatial

 greater feelings of affinity for the home

society and fortifies their limited integration
in the host society.
 Temporal Segregation
◦ 3 month visas that are renewable for a maximum
stay of 6 months.
◦ limit their integration and make minimal efforts to
anchor themselves in the host society (investing in
home furniture or decor, taking language classes &
exploring Japan by leaving the vicinity of their
neighborhood).
◦ They limit their integration but entertainers must
still acculturate but not to the same extent as long
term migrants.
◦ Must acquire some language skills in order to
interact with customers.
◦
 End of 6 months:
- have usually acquired a rudimentary knowledge of the
language
•Effort in learning Japanese: Sayonara and increases the
likelihood of their return as a contract worker.
-earning abroad to spend money here in the Philippines
- In the case of migrant entertainers, their temporal
dislocation aggravates this sentiment as nighttime workers
whose schedule further limits their social interactions with
other members of the Filipino migrant community.
 Social segregation
◦ interacting only with customers and co-
workers in Japan.

Two essential factors account for their

social segregation:
1. Temporal location they occupy as night
time wokers
2. Social stigma attached to their works
 •Entertainers maintain a time clock that they
refer to in the community as ‘vampire hours’.
They are awake when most of Japan is asleep.
7pm to 4am or shorter periods between these
hours
 The different temporal location of
entertainers fosters their social segregation in
Japan, which undoubtedly intensifies their
orientation towards the Philippines. Being
awake at night and asleep during the day
segregates entertainers from most members
of the dominant society.
 Due to their different time clock, entertainers
tend to be socially isolated not only from
members of the dominant society but also from
other members of the Filipino migrant
community, meaning the non-entertainers who
include wives, domestic workers, male
construction workers, factory workers, and other
low-wage service workers (Ventura 2008).
 It is a reasonable assumption that the social
stigma attached to entertainers is a central
reason behind their marginalization.
 entertainers remain in the shadows of the Filipino
migrant community. Their invisibility
undoubtedly stunts their integration in Japan
while promoting their continued orientation
towards the Philippines in the process of
migration.
 Spatial Segragation
◦ the partition of space from others in the host
society(de Certeau 1984: 123; Lefebvre 1992).
◦ Entertainers remain geographically concentrated
not only in a specific locale but also in private
spaces within this locale, resulting bin their
experience of spatial segragation upon
settlement.
◦ Entertainers spend most of their free time
indoors in apartments and if oputdoors restricted
within their neighboorhood.
 The absence of entertainers in public places
seems to suggest their imprisonment, hence
trafficking, by employers… entertainers we
should note stay indopors not by force but ny
choice.
 Entertainers stay within the confines of their
apartments to minimize expense.
 Other factors constrain their spatial actions…
close vicinity of their workplace, their
temporal location, businesses are closed
when they get off work,the curfew imposed
by most club management and lastly their
illiteracy.
 The settlement of entertainers in Japan is one
of spatial segregation, as we see not only in
their confinement in particular
neighbourhoods but also in their
concentration and restricted movements in
their place of residence.
 Peddlars-many being Filipina wives of
Japanese men.
 Filipina entertainers in Japan as short-term
migrants to be a process of putting their life
in the Philippines on hold, which is a
sentiment aggravated by their experience of
temporal, social and spatial segregation in
Japan.
 It is important to point out that most
entertainers initially enter Japan with the
intention of settling for only a short period.
 With an unequal sense of allegiance for Japan
and the Philippines, most migrant
entertainers are unlikely to think of
themselves as transnational migrants who are
equally entrenched in the Philippines and
Japan. Instead, they view themselves as
visitors to Japan whose loyalties remain with
the Philippines.
 Parreňas suggest that accounting for short-
term migration requires a paradigmatic shift
from our models of settlement based on
long-term migration. Perhaps a more suitable
analytic framework for documenting the
settlement of temporary migrants would be
to look not at the extent of their integration
but instead at their segregation in the host
society.