Abstract
Since the amendment of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act in 1990, many studies have been conducted on newcomer foreigners in various fields. In the sociology of education, on which the author relies, research on newcomer foreigners can be divided into the periods of acceptance and of settlement. In the acceptance period, difficulties at school are often portrayed, while the settlement period is characterized by issues such as identity that are further rooted in daily life. However, even in these studies, the perspectives of migrants are only discussed through the researchers, and there is still room to examine the reality of migration from the perspective of the people themselves.
In this article, the author will use autoethnography to depict the story of his own migration from Brazil to Japan in his childhood and examine the meaning of migration and its influence on his life from his own perspective. In analyzing the narrative of migration, the author will adopt Hage’s (2007) “Existential Mobility” as a perspective for analysis to focus on migration not only as a physical movement, but also to consider the inner life of migrants. This article addresses four migrations in the author’s life: three international migrations between Brazil and Japan, and one domestic migration in Japan. The analysis of the meaning of migration based on these stories clarified that the importance of meaning and the mental burden of migration are not necessarily proportional to the distance. The burden of travel was not determined by distance or purpose, but it varied greatly depending on “who they are traveling with” and “what they are traveling for.” Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the meaning of migration is given later by the life which comes after the relocation. This article depicted the background of migration, focusing on the author’s own subjectivity, which will provide new suggestions for future research.
