2025 Volume 19 Pages 65-77
This paper clarifies the commonality and variety of educational strategies used within groups of South American territorial immigrant communities in Japan. There is a lack of studies examining the relationships between social structures and individual educational strategies and between territorial immigrant communities and educational strategies. Therefore, this study analyzes the ways in which communities affect the educational strategies of individual immigrants, based on a survey undertaken in the W Complex, one of the largest immigrant population centers in Japan.
All the participants had high educational awareness compared with other South American immigrants, and many prioritized studying. Propelling this commonality is a stigmatized view of the W Complex. All survey subjects who had internalized this stigma sought to differentiate themselves from “South American immigrants who do not fit into Japanese society” via educational diligence.
Variations in educational strategies are influenced by the institutional completeness of immigrant communities. When immigrants are few and institutions in their location are insufficiently equipped, they are motivated to rely on ethnic ties with their countryfolk and cooperatively adopt similar educational strategies. However, in a community such as the W Complex, which has a variety of institutional arrangements, parents were able to take advantage of these facilities to adopt individualized educational strategies.
