Abstract
Seeking to provide an integrative account of Indonesian nurses’ encounters with a culturally and socially distinctive work environment in Japan, this article provides a number of case studies, especially important among which are the diverse and conflicting interactions between these nurses’ individual socio-cultural backgrounds as represented in their age, marital status, ethnicity, family values and relationship, work experience, self-motivation and expectation on the one hand, and the work culture as well as the institutional underpinnings of their work environment on the other. Probably the most enlightening finding of this study is that such encounters across differences can bring about “friction” — to use Anna Tsing’s felicitous term [2005] — which has turned out to be both enabling and constraining in terms of Indonesian nurses’ adjustment to unfamiliar cultural settings, and this in turn has proved to be sign cant in shaping their decision as to whether they should continue working in Japan or return to their home country.
