Expatriates on the margins––a study of Japanese women working in Singapore

Geoforum 33 (2002) 539–551 www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Expatriates on the margins––a study of Japanese women working in Singapore Leng Leng Thang a

a,*

, Elizabeth MacLachlan a, Miho Goda

b

Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore, Blk AS4 9 Art Link, Singapore 117570, Singapore b Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Received 1 May 2001; received in revised form 25 March 2002

1. Introduction With rapid globalization, transfer of international capital and intensive linkages of the world economies, skilled transient migration represented by the movement of expatriate communities 1 has become a major feature of global migration systems. Since Cohen’s (1977) comment that ‘relatively little attention has, up till now, been paid to expatriates as a sociologically distinct, analytical category’ (p. 8), scholarship on the expatriate communities have expanded noticeably in the more recent decades of the 1980s and 1990s (Findlay, 1995; Beaverstock, 1994; Beaverstock and Bostock, 2000; Cohen, 1997; Castles and Miller, 1993; Alder, 1994; Hardill and MacDonald, 1998). These studies, however, are characterized by their focus on male expatriates. Females are generally subsumed as passive followers and dependents of their husbands. Where women are the subjects of research on international migration, they are dominated by images of unskilled laborers in factories and domestic helpers (cf. Huang and Yeoh, 1996; Lim and Oishi, 1996; Lamphere, 1987; Romero, 1998). In an examination of the study of skilled female migrants in Europe, Kofman (2000) argues that this invisibility of women is not due to a lack of numbers per se, but rather to the choice of research agendas which generally focuses on higherranking expatriates who work in male-dominated transnational corporations.

*

Corresponding author. In Cohen’s comment, expatriates is a loose term, capturing that category of international migrants who fill the gap between the tourist, on the one hand, and the semi-permanent or permanent immigrant, on the other (1977, p. 7). He defines the term as referring to those voluntary temporary migrants, mostly from affluent countries, who reside abroad because of business, mission, research and leisure (1977, p. 6). 1

This study counters this trend by focusing on a small but significant group of female transnational migrants. Referred to as ‘new Japanese expatriates’ (The Straits Time, 24 August 1994), this group of single Japanese women have left their homeland for jobs in Singapore. Educated, outgoing, and accepting employment on local, rather than expatriate terms and conditions, these women contrast sharply with the image of Japanese expatriates as company men from Japanese multinational company accompanied by their full-time homemaker wives and children. Besides adding a gendered dimension to the stereotypical image of Japanese expatriates, the presence of these women challenges the assumption of the positive roles of male Japanese expatriates in Japan’s ‘internationalization’––a widely debated issue in Japan that is closely related to globalization. There are disputes as to what constitute ‘internationalization’ (kokusaika), but in general they include factors such as foreign language learning, travel abroad, having non-Japanese friends and consuming non-Japanese products (Clammer and Ben-Ari, 2000, p. 30). Given such indices, it is doubtful that economic globalization as represented by the transnational movement of Japanese corporations automatically qualifies the male Japanese expatriates and their families––who typically stay within their own enclave––as ‘internationalized.’ Who are these new Japanese expatriate women? Why do they choose to move to Singapore? To what extent do they experience and contribute to ‘internationalization’ differently from their male counterparts? Through an examination of first hand accounts given by Japanese single women working in Singapore, this study investigates their experiences working and living in Singapore. While previous studies on Japanese women working overseas have focused on the economic role they play in providing affordable bilingual support to Japanese expatriate males (Ben-Ari and Yong, 2000, see below), this study will explore the social dynamic by

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focusing on their lives both in and out of the workplace. After a brief introduction to the methodology employed in our study, we will explore this social dynamic through a discussion of the four following elements: professional and geographical fluidity; quality of life; cross-cultural encounters; and self-discovery. We will conclude by arguing that these experiences constitute a key difference between these women and their Japanese male expatriates and their families, and in contrast to employment conditions which relegate women to lower status positions vis-
a-vis Japanese expatriate men and their nonworking spouses, these social experiences empower women by integrating them more deeply into the local community.

2. Japanese expatriates in Singapore Singapore is an interesting site for the study of Japanese expatriates as Japanese constitute one of the largest expatriate communities in the city-state, comprising about 25 000 (figure from the Embassy of Japan) of an estimated 80 000 expatriate population in the citystate (The Straits Times, 20 May 1999). Japanese expatriates have gained prominence in Singapore over the last three decades with the expansion of Japanese direct foreign investment in manufacturing industries in the 1970s and service and financial industries in the 1980s and 1990s (Thang and MacLachlan, 2002). Today, there are about 3000 Japanese companies in Singapore, a growth which resulted both from the Singapore government’s effort to lure foreign investments, and the need for Japanese companies to move overseas because of high domestic labor and production costs. The growth in Japanese companies has led to demand for more staff bilingual in Japanese and English. The increasing number of Japanese expatriates and their families in Singapore has also raised the need for services to facilitate their daily living, such as Japanese travel agencies, grocery stores, hair saloons, medical clinics, and schools. Moreover, the relative popularity of Singapore as a tourist destination among the Japanese adds to the already ample job opportunities for Japanese women. This is facilitated by Singapore’s open policy towards foreign talent, which makes it relatively easy for one to obtain a work visa compared to other popular destinations such as Hong Kong, Britain, and the United States (Kaigai de hataraku, 2001). This paper focuses mostly on Japanese women migrants who find employment locally in Singapore, rather than migrants transferred with their corporation who are predominantly male. As the Immigration Department was not able to release figures of Japanese women on employment visas in the county, and the Embassy of Japan’s registration does not provide a separate category for Japanese women who are here on work visas, it

is hard to obtain the exact number of Japanese women who are working in Singapore. It is important to note that due to the importance the Singaporean government places on work experience in granting work visas, most of these women are in their late 20s and 30s. The Director of a recruitment agency who has been instrumental in promoting the wave of Japanese women working in Singapore estimated that they number at least 1000. Of these, only a handful have come as corporate sponsored expatriates. The overwhelming majority have come on their own without corporate sponsorship, a housing allowance, or an implicit guarantee of a post back in Japan upon completion of the overseas tour of duty. 2 The rhetoric surrounding these Japanese working women overseas differs markedly between media reports and scholarly works. While media reports on these women overseas often celebrate migration as a tool of empowerment and emancipation from the gender discrimination that continues unabated––and even exacerbated––in recession-entrenched Japan (Torabayu, 7 March 1996; Asahi Shinbun, 24 January 1994; Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 16 August 1995), the few scholarly works that exist have unanimously interpreted these women’s positions as marginalized, if not exploited (Sakai, 2000; Ben-Ari, 2000). Focusing on the cultural identities of locally hired Japanese women working in Japanese financial firms in Britain, Sakai (2000) refers to them as ‘floating between cultures,’ having been marginalized both by the Japanese and the British community. Although she attempts to conclude in an optimistic tone, mentioning that these women ‘ha[ve] also gained other discourses, for example, skills and qualifications for work, the enjoyment of personal lives, living without ties to family or relatives’ (p. 236), her overall evaluation invokes disillusionment experienced by these women as they ‘sometimes regretted their decision to stay in Britain’ (p. 236). Similarly, a pioneer study by Ben-Ari and Yong (2000) on Japanese single working women in Singapore defines these women as ‘twice marginalized’ because ‘as expatriates, they are distanced from local Singaporean society. . . But as single working women they are also estranged from their male colleagues and their wives (p. 110).’

3. Data collection Despite the reality of their marginal status in the migratory experience, Singapore remains a popular destination for well-educated Japanese females who seek 2 In our survey of Japanese women working in Singapore, only 2% were employed on expatriate terms.

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to venture overseas to work. To understand why they would come and stay on given their marginal status we distributed a questionnaire survey with portions of open-ended questions. We then conducted tape-recorded interviews with selected informants. As Yeoh and Khoo (1998) have pointed out, the literature tends to focus on ‘the range of institutional mechanisms controlling and promoting the new patterns of skill transfer which have emerged’ (Findlay and Gould, 1989, p. 5; cited in Yeoh and Khoo, 1998, p. 161), and there is a lack of literature on ‘individual experience of being part of the international circuit’. Through this research we hope to contribute to the literature by focusing on individual voices recounting their migratory experience. The survey was conducted in 2000 using the snowball sampling method through friends and acquaintances we know. Announcements of the project were also put in Japanese newspapers including Shin-nichiho and J-plus inviting interested individuals to participate in the survey. We also distributed questionnaires to Japanese teachers through the school principals of three Japanese schools, a Japanese supplementary school and a private Japanese language school. Ad hoc telephone calls were made to Japanese companies to find out the number of Japanese women working in their companies, and when numbers were substantial enough, we requested permission to send questionnaires to their female employees. We distributed 410 questionnaires and received 194 (119 single and 75 married women), resulting in a response rate of 47.3%. As this paper focuses only on the single working women, only 119 replies are included in the analysis. In addition, we selected 12 women among the single respondents and conducted in-depth interviews lasting one to three hours with each one of them. Interviews were also conducted with one Japanese woman married to a Singaporean whom she met after working here, one former Japanese male expatriate, and a Japanese expatriate who runs his own match-making agency for Japanese. To understand the recruitment process, we also conducted several in-depth interviews with the director of a recruitment agency that has played a key role in promoting Singapore as a work destination for Japanese women. The ages of these women ranged between 21 and 56 years, with 73.9% falling within the 29–39 age group. An overwhelming 83.5% had work experience in Japan before moving here. All of them obtained tertiary education, graduating from at least a two-year college, if not a four-year university. As explained above, because of the visa requirements, it is difficult for those with little work experience or lower educational qualifications to obtain work visas in Singapore. This partly explains why the average age of the female local hires is a relatively high 31.2 years old. Most of the women reported that they had come to Singapore through jobs obtained through a recruitment

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agency specializing in the placement of women in companies both domestically and overseas. The types of jobs most commonly reported were secretarial or administration jobs in banking, manufacturing, or securities companies. This was followed by sales and marketing and then by teaching.

4. Japanese single working women as local hires Since the 1970s, there have been small streams of Japanese women who, disillusioned with job prospects in Japan, have left to learn English and eventually take up employment overseas. A desire to live in the exotic West has attracted many women to British Commonwealth countries (particularly Australia, New Zealand and Canada) where those below the age of 25 can apply for ‘working holiday visas’ which allow them to work in the country for one year, usually in menial jobs such as sales assistants in Japanese supermarkets, duty-free shops at airports or tourist locales. An economic recession in Japan dating back to the early 1990s and continuing gender discrimination found in the workplace despite the 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Law, has in the recent years accelerated the trend. Kelsky (1999) notes that most of the women leaving Japan are young, single urban office ladies (OLs, common term in Japan for female office workers) who don’t mind landing jobs as local hires with low pay as a way of emancipating themselves from their oppressive working environment and the family (pressure to get married) constraints back home. Referred to as ‘spiritual migrants’ rather than the ‘economic migrants’ predominant during the aftermath of poverty-stricken Japan in the mid-1940s and early 1950s, this group of women are characterized by their motivation to migrate not for financial reasons, but in response to constructed perceptions about the West and Japan (Sato, 1993; cited in Sakai, 2000, p. 214). Beginning in the mid-1990s, as work opportunities shrunk in Western countries due to local unemployment and increasingly stringent visa requirements, Japanese women saw a window of opportunity as Asian countries opened their doors to welcome them. The ‘Japanese women work in Asia’ boom first started with Hong Kong, after the autumn 1993 career seminar on Hong Kong conducted in Tokyo and Osaka by Persona Personnel Inc., a recruitment agency (News Japan, 1995). At that time, there was a rise in the demand for Japanese–English bilingual staff in Hong Kong due to an increase in the number of Japanese companies which had set up branch offices there in an attempt to cash in on the thriving local economy and prepare to advance into the potentially huge Chinese market (Shukan ST, 8 April 1994). Hong Kong then had a relatively liberal policy on issuing working visas to foreign workers.

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However, as the country experienced economic downturn and rising unemployment in the mid-1990s, it became increasingly difficult to obtain visas to work there. The focus of work in Asia then turned to Singapore, which had ample job opportunities and a liberal policy on foreign workers. The city-state continues to remain attractive with its efforts to recruit ‘foreign talent’ as a ‘key to Singapore’s future’ (The Straits Time, 15 August 1999). Besides Singapore, Japanese single working women can also be found in other Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, working mostly in Japanese-related business such as trading companies and travel related businesses which require knowledge of Japanese and experience in dealing with the Japanese. On the surface, these Japanese working women may seem merely a gendered variant of Japanese skilled labor migration––like corporate-sponsored expatriates, local hires must hold employment passes 3––but on closer examination, differences between the two groups merit their consideration as an alternate community to the mainstream Japanese expatriate community dominated by Japanese company men, their wives and children. 4 In addition to providing a challenge to the dichotomous categorization of Japanese expatriate as either corporate-sponsored (male) breadwinner or non-working (female) trailing spouses, the ‘exodus’ of these women to Asia forms an interesting contrast to the established notion in migration literature that Japan is a ‘labor importing’ rather than a ‘labor exporting’ country (Skeldon, 1992, p. 42; Weiner, 1999). The existence of these local hires, although small in number when compared with male Japanese expatriates and their families, thus illuminates variations in the migration of the Japanese overseas as well as in the more general patterns of expatriate migration. It is necessary to provide a Singaporean definition of expatriates. While the term ‘expatriate’ simply means ‘‘to leave the homeland’’ (Webster’s New World Dictionary, 3rd edition (1994)), in Singapore, the term has

3 Foreigners working in Singapore are broadly divided into two categories based on their income and qualifications. Employment passes are issued to those who earn more than $2000, they are usually professionals including white-collar and technical specialists who possess a recognized diploma, degree, or professional qualification. They are permitted to marry locals or bring their immediate ‘‘dependants’’ to Singapore. Those who earn less than $2000 are issued the more restricted work permit. This category of foreigners is usually from the third world; they comprise a significant proportion of the workforce in construction and domestic workers (Yeoh and Khoo, 1998, p. 163). 4 Ben-Ari and Yong (2000) have qualified that the Japanese community in Singapore is definitely not a miniature version of Japanese society, as it is dominated by nuclear families evincing a neoconservative life-style, making it difficult for single working women to situate themselves (p. 110).

come to take on a narrower definition as foreign professionals working in Singapore on short-term assignments from their companies. They receive housing allowances and other perks such as children’s educational allowances and travel allowances. They usually live in private condominiums and socialize within their own expatriate circle (Yeoh and Khoo, 1998). The gender and occupational stereotypes of an expatriate as a white-collar male working in the financial sector or large multinational corporations fits the Japanese male expatriate perfectly. By contrast, most Japanese female migrants who find employment as support staff in regional headquarters, subsidiaries and factories of Japanese companies overseas, and as local hires, receive compensation more in line with that paid to local staff. While the Japanese male expatriates migrate as part of ‘career path’ migration, where such secondments also imply promotions from the previous post in the home country (Ben-Ari, 2000, p. 41), Japanese women generally come as independent migrants, making lateral career moves, and more often than not receiving lower pay and benefits than they would have, had they remained in Japan. Besides the distinctions in work status and benefits that differentiate them from male expatriates, these Japanese women also find themselves in a different social position from women who have migrated to Singapore with their husbands. Kanako, 5 who worked as a tour co-ordinator in Singapore for two years before marrying a Singaporean and switching to part-time work at a Japanese medical clinic, described Japanese expatriate wives in the following way: The typical Japanese wives in Singapore just follow their husbands. They follow and then do nothing. They kill time going to high tea or lunch. They play everyday. They try to enjoy their lives in Singapore as much as they can because they know they have a limited time in Singapore. Their lifestyle is totally different from mine. Similar comments are voiced by single women, who find themselves even more distanced from the expatriate housewives than Kanako, a mother of two young children. While some betray a sense of envy over the lifestyle of full-time housewives who seem to enjoy a life of leisure in Singapore, at other times, many express pity for the housewives whom they feel are constrained because of their status as non-working women: Those wives who come with their husbands cannot get visas to work. Sometimes I go to Japanese gath-

5 Names given to the respondents are fictitious to preserve anonymity.

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ering and meet my clients’ wives. They seem quite talented and they speak good English, and it makes me think that they must have been active career women in Japan. But here there is no place that they can put their talent to use. It is such a waste. 6 (Yuri, an ex-money broker). Falling outside the usual perception of Japanese women as trailing spouse, Japanese female expatriates are difficult to position within the common framework of Japanese overseas. On the one hand, these women are ambitious and independent; Shigeru, who runs a matchmaking agency in Singapore, even goes so far as to warn male clients who enroll in his match-making service that the Japanese women in Singapore may not be as ‘kind and traditional’ as they want. Yet on the other hand, many admit that although they chose to work overseas as a means to circumvent the patriarchal Japanese corporate system, they do not classify themselves as career women. 7 According to Shigeru, many of these women are not serious in their jobs; they see the opportunity to work in Singapore more as a chance to experience living outside of Japan. He describes these women as ‘more open-minded, active and chasing after dreams’.

5. Professional and geographical fluidity In her research on Japanese women, Iwao finds it is not uncommon for working women who are dissatisfied with the lack of challenge in work to leave the security of their jobs in well-reputed big companies to do free-lance work or temporary work, thereby casting themselves on the periphery of a work culture that prizes security and belonging in a company. Despite their marginal status, Iwao notes the ironical truth that it gives them greater mobility and therefore freedom (1993, pp. 170–171). This flexibility is also found among the Japanese local hires who display relative fluidity shifting between cultures, jobs, and their status as tourists, students and/or employees. In general, these Japanese women share a common interest in traveling. To stay overseas for them is somewhat equivalent to being a prolonged traveler. In answer to our survey question ‘What do you like about Singapore,’ many wrote that ‘it is easy to travel overseas when staying in Singapore’. This statement not only implies their frequent travels out of Singapore, but also 6

The frustrating experiences of expatriate wives having difficulty in finding a job here because of their visa status are discussed in Yeoh and Khoo’s paper (1998). 7 79% in the survey answered ‘no’ to the question whether they think they are career woman.

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reflects the perceived difficulty of travelling abroad from Japan. These difficulties include the geographical distance of the airport for many in Japan, the social sanctions against employees taking their full allotment of vacation days, and the expectations for the person who goes on a trip to bring back souvenirs for people staying back home. Among the respondents, many had experienced prolonged stays in the West, either as children of Japanese expatriates, or as students. Such experiences overseas have facilitated their decision to work in Singapore and other countries. Unlike the Japanese expatriates who are bound to their companies, these women are characterized by their readiness to job hop, leave the country, or return to Japan if they are dissatisfied with their jobs. In a book written by Kubo (1997) on her life in Singapore as a locally hired working woman, she described the perception of the Japanese male expatriates towards female expatriates like herself as one which encompasses some degree of envy, despite the lower pay and lack of expat perks: ‘You have chosen to come to work here. I am envious that you have the freedom to quit and go back to Japan anytime if you don’t like the job. Although I have not chosen to come here, I can’t leave without the order from the company’ (1997, p. 116). While most Japanese expatriates can expect to stay in Singapore for about three to four years, the Japanese women in the survey gave vague responses when asked how long they would stay in the country, writing, for example, ‘I want to stay longer in Singapore. Even if I will to move to other countries after Singapore, I doubt I will return to Japan.’ However, according to one of our respondents, Naomi, who used to work in a recruitment agency that places Japanese women in jobs in Asia, most Japanese single women stay in a place for about three years, after which they will either go back to Japan or proceed to look for employment in another country. Having herself worked in Singapore for four years at an American financial company in charge of Japanese clients, she expressed her own need to think about her next move, even though she was satisfied with her current scope of responsibilities and working environment. Another respondent, Yuri, who had originally come to work as a money broker in Singapore, had just found a job in a financial institution in Hong Kong and was waiting for her work visa when we interviewed her. She had just quit her Singapore job after two years and four months, and when asked if she had also looked for other jobs in Singapore, she replied, Um, ya, a little bit, but I wanted to go to another country. There were some companies which offered me jobs here and I know I should feel very happy about it, but actually I was looking for a job in

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Tokyo. I thought I wanted to go back to Tokyo. But suddenly I changed my mind––maybe I don’t have to go back this early since I will return sooner or later. I decided to go to Hong Kong but not because I did not like Singapore. No, I have always had a curious mind and I wanted to try out a different country, simple as that . . . Mika who is single and 47-year old is an example of extreme mobility quite rare among the women. She has been working in different countries since her late 20s. When we interviewed her, she had just tendered her resignation as an account executive at a hotel in Singapore after working for two months, and was preparing to return to Japan. She told us she had first visited Singapore as a tour leader almost 20 years ago while working for a travel agency in Japan. Fascinated by the multicultural atmosphere of Singapore, she quit her work in Japan and came on a student visa to study Chinese. She was keen to have a more in-depth understanding of Singapore’s culture so after studying for six months, she took a job at a Japanese restaurant which had agreed to sponsor her work visa. However, she found the working conditions unbearable and quit to return to Japan. Subsequent to that she moved then to the United States to study English, then to China, Vietnam and Cambodia for travel and work in the hotel industry, and in between, she even returned to Singapore once to work in a hotel. She has ambivalent feelings about Singapore; on the one hand, she has good local friends whom she made while she was a student; on the other hand, she finds the work culture unsuitable. Yet she somehow keeps returning to work in Singapore, mainly, she says, because of Singapore’s political stability as compared to the other countries in the region she has visited. To Mika, lateral job movements do not bother her; she sees work only as a necessity because it brings in money. Her passion is traveling and learning about new cultures: ‘The world is so big with many cultures, and so little time to experience it. I rush to see things.’ She is now preparing to write an autobiography about her travel experiences. Changing to a work visa after visiting Singapore as a tourist is one of the most common patterns among these women. This does not preclude them from further change in status, but few appear intent to settle down in Singapore. Although they are able to apply for permanent residency as employment pass holders, only 4 (3.6%) out of the 111 respondents did so, and usually for reasons of extenuating circumstances. Kimi, for example, used to work as a travel agent in Japan. In her eight years on the job, she took the opportunities of discounted travel to travel as often as she could. Her favorite destination was Singapore which she had visited at least 10 times, usually for no longer than

weekend or a few days, staying at discount hotels, eating local foods, and shopping for inexpensive goods. Her parents joined her on some of these trips. At the age 29, when most of her female colleagues were marrying and resigning from their jobs, she decided to move to Singapore. Through a recruitment agency in Tokyo, she soon found a job at a Singapore-based travel agency. She has since changed to work for another travel agency and will soon marry a Singaporean she met over the Internet. After marriage, she plans to apply for permanent residency and settle down in Singapore. Other women seem to move back and forth between different work statuses with little difficulty. Hiromi, who first visited Singapore in 1997 to attend a Christian conference, was impressed with the active churches as well as the country itself. She went back to Japan and quit her job as a church worker. Barely a month later, she returned to Singapore on a tourist visa again. This time, she walked into a recruitment agency in Singapore specializing in placements for Japanese women, and within a week, found a job in a Japanese trading company as a sales coordinator serving Japanese clients. She enjoyed the job, but decided to change to a Japanese manufacturing company one year later because of the heavy workload. Actually I went to the job agency to ask them to persuade my manager to hire one more sales coordinator to reduce my workload. I had talked to my manager about it, but he refused to do anything. Then, instead of talking to my boss, the job agency introduced me to a Japanese MNC. It was not my intention to change jobs but I ended up changing anyway. The job was a promotion in terms of pay and conditions. She worked for two years at the company but then quit when she was offered a sponsorship by her church to do a one-year full-time course in theology. She was elated because it has been her plan all along to return to church work. She exchanged the employment pass for a student pass and began her new status as a student on student allowance from the church. It is her dream to return to Japan to strengthen the churches in Japan after she graduates. Another respondent, Mariko, lived in the United States when she was young because of her father’s job transfer. After graduating from a journalism college in Japan, she worked for almost three years as a flight attendant with an American airline company, then as a cabin attendant on a limited express train in Japan, a secretary in an American company in Okinawa, and a trainer in a flight attendants school. When the last job became too stressful for her, Mariko’s parents intervened:

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I was so stressed out, it’s not that I didn’t like the job, but I could not afford the time even for myself . . . then my parents asked me to go on holiday. I visited Singapore because my uncle was stationed in Singapore as an expatriate. After four more visits to Singapore, Mariko searched out information on getting a job there. She found a recruitment agency in Singapore catering to women like her, and flew to Singapore to meet them. During that visit, she had five interviews from different companies, out of which four offered her a job. She chose to work as a coordinator in an insurance company, but then jobhopped twice after that. Now she works as an assistant manager in a human resource department of a big Japanese retail store, in charge of training staff on the sales floor and in customer service relations. She is satisfied with her present job because she is able to utilize her past experience fully in this position. Sachiko was an OL in Japan, a job she described as very relaxing and mundane, offering no real satisfaction. After five years on the job, at the age of 27, she decided to go overseas and took up a position as a Japanese language teacher in Singapore. At the end of her twoyear contract, she decided that she was not cut out to be a teacher, and after failing to obtain an employment pass for another job in Singapore, returned to work in Japan. During the next three years, she worked as a branch manager of a marriage consultant firm, but when the stress to meet quotas and maintain profitability got too great, she decided to return to Singapore. She flew to Singapore as a tourist, went for an interview arranged by a recruitment company and was offered work as a sales executive in a large Japanese manufacturing company. When she put in her letter of resignation three years later, a subsidiary of the company asked her over as a secretary. Although the increase in pay was tempting, she felt ‘there was little challenge in working as someone else’s secretary’ and decided to look elsewhere for work. When a friend told her of a job opening in a seafood importing company, she immediately applied although she had no knowledge of seafood products. She was employed as a manager and received a pay package that included housing and transport allowance. It is an achievement for a local hire to obtain similar perks offered to expatriates recruited from Japan and Sachiko is satisfied with her present job. She thinks she would probably continue working in Singapore but may retire back in Japan to take care of her elderly mother in the future. The job and regional mobility of these Japanese women is extremely high and goes against a Japanese work ethic that equates loyalty and reliability with long service. Yet as the various trajectories of our informants demonstrate, job hopping does not negatively affect these women’s abilities to find new and improved posi-

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tions, nor does it indicate a lack of commitment on their part towards professional upward mobility. In fact, by moving between jobs, women are not only able to maintain the freedom they desire to travel, but often they are also able to leverage better salaries, fairer treatment, and interesting assignments for themselves through the constant and unspoken threat of quitting. Despite Sakai (2000) and Ben-Ari and Yong’s (2000) somewhat negative portrayal of these women in the periphery, women from this study demonstrate that through managing the mobility made possible by their marginal status, they are able to overcome the disadvantages of not belonging to the ‘elite track,’ while at the same time winning themselves more satisfaction in their personal lives.

6. Quality of life The hope for a better life is central to most decisions to migrate. Singapore’s relatively high standard of living and its global character have drawn many Japanese women to migrate to the country. In our survey, some respondents indicated it was more convenient to stay in Singapore than in Japan, commenting that ‘shops here stay open late’ (10 pm compared to 8 pm in Japan); they are ‘able to use debit cards for purchases’ (in Japan, cash transactions are still the norm); there is a ‘well developed infrastructure’; ‘public transport is cheap and convenient’ and ‘things here are cheap.’ The presence of a Japanese community provides easy access to Japanese consumer products, food and mass media that further makes Singapore an attractive destination. Forty-seven-year old Mika recalled the five reasons that prompted her to reside in Singapore in the first place: It was easy to make international call to Japan, I had a Singaporean friend, the food was cheap, there was a Yaohan (Japanese supermarket), and there was good infrastructure. As far as her insistence on Japanese food, she later confessed, ‘I was quite immature, I thought Japanese food was important. But after staying in Singapore, I stopped eating Japanese food because local food is so delicious, so interesting, especially in hawkers and wet market (i.e. food stalls and fresh produce markets)’. Naomi, who works at an American financial firm, usually spends her weekends in Singapore playing golf. She enjoys playing golf back in Japan as well, but finds it difficult to do so frequently because of the expense and distance from Tokyo. Here in Singapore, she has the added bonus of being able to write off golf expenses

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when playing with her Japanese clients––something she will not be able to do in male-dominated Japan. 8 One of the major differences between the local hires and the Japanese expatriates is said to be housing where women are usually excluded from the more luxurious private housing and condominiums. The survey, however, reveals that most Japanese single working women choose to share a condominium unit or private apartment with other women in similar situations, with only 18.9% of the respondents renting a room or unit from a low rental public housing estate. Thus, housing does not affect their quality of life or lifestyle. When asked what they dislike about staying in Singapore, their answers are similar to the responses of most Singaporeans and other foreigners: ‘cars are too expensive here’; ‘there are too few arts and cultural events here’; ‘no four seasons’; ‘too hot and humid’; ‘Singaporeans are not gracious’. One respondent feels that Singapore is too metropolitan and has lost the authenticity of ‘Asian-ness,’ while another claims that the Japanese society here is too claustrophobic. Perhaps more important than the material conveniences of living in Singapore are the non-tangible benefits gained by staying out of Japan. Several survey respondents wrote that being overseas gives them ‘more private space’ in the sense that life here is less enmeshed in the complex network of human relations found back home. Naomi, who had lived and worked in Tokyo for 10 years before moving to Singapore told us, My first impression of Singapore when I came as a tourist was that it is very relaxed, compared to Tokyo. . . This first impression is still valid. Most of my colleagues here are very flexible and relaxed and we can talk frankly. But in Japan, I have to think carefully before talking. It is very stressing there. To Hiromi, a devoted Christian, what Singapore offers is the freedom to be different: I don’t have to pretend I am a standard Japanese, typical Japanese here. In a way, being a Christian in Japan is already odd, I really feel like deru kui wa utareru (nail being hammered for being different), but I don’t have to worry about it here. It doesn’t mean that I can be really weird, it’s just that I can be myself and do whatever I believe is good. As most of the single working women are already over the mean marriage age of 26.8 for women in Japan

8 See Ben-Ari (2000) for an understanding of the relationship between golf and business among Japanese expatriates in Singapore.

(Statistics on Japan, 1999), they frequently cite the desire to escape the pressure of getting married as one reason they leave Japan. ‘Except for conversations with our mothers where issues about marriage sometimes surface, nobody asks why are you not married here,’ one woman told us with a sigh of relief. Although Singapore offers much in terms of convenience and material comforts, what may be a most attractive feature about life in this country is its disengagement from Japanese society. For many women, it is the freedom that comes from being outside the Japanese social network, away from the pressures to conform to social norms, that makes Singaporean quality of life a key factor in their decision to stay.

7. Cross-cultural encounters Cohen (1977, p. 16) notes ‘‘expatriates all over the world create their own ‘enclave’ which shelters them off from the environment of the host society’’. This ‘environment bubble’ provides a safety zone in which typical expatriates can hide when they want to shield themselves from the host environment. The locally hired Japanese women, as Ben-Ari and Yong (2000) and Sakai (2000) have mentioned, also form their own environment bubble distinct from the one represented by male Japanese expatriates and their families. They establish informal network ties with other local hires who may be their fellow Japanese colleagues, university alumni, or members of informal friendship groups which sometimes advertise in local Japanese newsletters and magazines. However, unlike the mainstream Japanese community which is known for its closed nature, Japanese single working women tend to be fluid in their interactions, overlapping their own enclaves with those of the host culture. Many of our informants have local friends and seek out encounters with local cultures. The extent of the overlapping depends on personal initiative to reach out, and individuals’ encounters with the host culture range from almost no contact to that in which they see themselves as semi-local. At one end of the spectrum, there are women like Sachiko who spend their weekends with fellow Japanese single women cooking Japanese food and watching Japanese video programs. At the other end, there are those who make conscious efforts to befriend locals and spend time learning their culture. Hiromi has many local friends through her church and once stayed for a few months with the family of a Singaporean friend. Mariko, who picked up wakeboarding after she came to Singapore, has made many local friends through her new hobby:

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I have many many friends, and not only Japanese, because I try not to stick only with Japanese people. During my stay here, I have developed one big community. I have friends who are Australians and other nationalities as well. . . I have close Singaporean friends too. There is one family who treats me like their daughter. I call the mother okasan (mother). She is dating a Singaporean boyfriend now and does not dismiss the idea of marrying a foreigner. Kanako, who first came to Singapore as a student learning Mandarin at the university, made many local friends through her residence in the university hostel. She went back to Japan for one year after her study, but decided to return to Singapore to work: I chose Singapore because I was familiar with the place, and I could make use of my ability in English and Chinese language. I had no Japanese friends here, only Singaporean friends whom I met while studying Chinese at NUS (National University of Singapore). When talking about their cross-cultural encounters, these Japanese women tend to benchmark themselves against Japanese expatriates, and imply they are somewhat ‘superior’ because they experience ‘real local’ life. Kanako, who married a Singaporean she met while at the university, compares herself with other Japanese expatriate wives in Singapore: I found that Japanese in Singapore prefer to stay among themselves. They don’t mind not having local friends because in Singapore, they have Japanese department stores, Japanese schools, and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) programs as well as so many Japanese service industries like travel agencies only for the Japanese, moving companies only for the Japanese, real estate companies only for Japanese. So in Singapore, the Japanese don’t need to talk in English at all. I am completely different from them.

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their marital status, they are not the norm, not the mainstream. One woman said, ‘you know you may talk to these male managers, and they have a feeling that they are abroad, and international, but they are very much with their own clique. Look at who they go to lunch with, it’s always with the Japanese managers. Look who they go out to drink with after work. It’s always the same kind of group.’ (taken from Thang and MacLachlan, 2002) Studies of Asian migrant communities in the US have shown that the gender-based advancement made by women is often a result not of their own assimilation into the host community, but rather of the failure of their male counterparts to do the same (Min, 1998; Kibria, 1993; cited in Yu, 2000). This situation holds true for the Japanese women and men working in Singapore. Many male expatriates find themselves isolated from the social community at large. Because the Japanese work culture does not require men to be fluent in English, many male executives become dependent on their bilingual Japanese female assistants and secretaries. Careerwise, it makes sense to focus their energies on developing relationships with Japanese managerial staff who they might run into again back in Japan after repatriation, rather than local staff who remain in Singapore. Off hours, demands on their time by family and business associates leave almost no opportunity to develop close relationships outside these closed Japanese circles. By comparison, Japanese working women have a higher profile in the local culture. Not only do they develop more intimate relationships with the local community, but through their ability to speak English, they are able to attain deeper levels of connection. Hiromi, who has lived in Singapore for three years, told us

Inverting the notion that marginality is equated with powerlessness, Ben-Ari notes that among Japanese single working women in Singapore, it is precisely this position that grants them a privileged position in Singaporean society.

I feel that Singaporeans treat me differently but in a good way. They are very patient listening to my Japanese–English. I am really grateful for that. In the US (where she has stayed during high school and university as exchange student), if your English is not like theirs, they don’t want to listen to you. I sensed it. Here in Singapore, Singaporeans have been exposed to non-native speakers of English, so they are very patient and try to listen. They even try to use our way of speaking, like calling me Hiromi–san. It really gives me a warm feeling.

The Japanese single working women in Singapore, I think are the most interesting segment in Japanese community because they provide both a different perspective on both the community here and on Japan precisely because they are at the periphery of the community in terms of their jobs, in terms of

These personal contacts are valued not only by the women themselves, but also by the local population at large. Local women’s magazines often feature Japanese fashion segments including interviews with local Japanese working women, and a few recent Singaporean television drama series have portrayed Japanese

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working women in local office scenes (often played by local Chinese actresses). Images of Japanese expatriate men in Singapore, by contrast, have no such place in local popular culture. Because of their daily contact with the local culture through work and in their social lives, these Japanese women come to see alternatives to the ‘‘Japanese way’’ and use them as tools of criticism against Japanese male chauvinism. Naomi critiques her former bosses in Japan through an unfavorable comparison with her bosses in Singapore. . . . in Japan, if you have an idea, you talk to your boss and he might say, ‘I understand but we can’t do anything about it.’ They listen, but normally they won’t accept suggestions, just say that the company doesn’t allow it. But here, my opinions matter. And here when we have a meeting, we have to drag the chairs from the other side. When I first saw this I got such a shock because in Japan, the women and junior staff would have to drag the chairs for the bosses, but here in Singapore, it’s the other way round, and no matter which level, people help each other. Also, when I was working in Tokyo, I couldn’t leave office until my boss left the office and if I were a bit late for work, like five minutes, I would have to write a report. But here, nobody cares who is staying or leaving earlier. Here in Singapore these things don’t matter. It’s quite flexible. As a result of men’s reliance on Japanese women as linguistic and cultural intermediaries, and due to the pressure to conform to local gender norms, Japanese expatriate culture is noticeably more egalitarian than it is in Japan in terms of gender. Abe, one of the few women we interviewed on a full expatriate package, commented on this change: You know, the surprising thing about Japanese men, I find, is that they change. They change outside Japan. You know, although they’re acting like kings in Japan, once they step outside Japan, even as tourists, they become really, I don’t know, timid. They change their behavior which is amazing. So they look totally different inside and outside Japan (taken from Thang and MacLachlan, 2002). The cross-cultural encounters have highlighted the different receptions between the expatriate men and women. While the Japanese expatriate men and their families often live in their own enclave interacting only minimally with the host culture, Japanese working women, although a later group of migrants to Singapore, are already being featured prominently in the local

media. They represent a part of Singapore’s multiculturalism.

8. A process of self-discovery Cross-cultural experiences not only fulfill the women’s desire to become international, but at the same time, also serve as an opportunity for reflexivity. In Kelsky’s (1999) paper on the ‘exodus’ of professional women in Japan to the West, she gives accounts of their discovery of a ‘new self’ or the ‘real’ self as relating to their sexual, romantic, or marital union with a white man (p. 239): ‘‘But when you come to London, you find the chance to ‘discover yourself’ [disukaba jibun]. You can meet the self that you had never known was there, and have the chance to contemplate the self that you are going to become. . .’’ (Kokuni, quoted in Kelsky, 1999, p. 239). In a similar vein, women working in Singapore also regard their migration overseas as a process of self-discovery. In our survey, women’s responses to the question ‘what are the benefits of staying overseas’ included ‘I learn more about myself’; ‘I learnt that I have to be independent and rely on myself’; ‘it’s my first job overseas and through living on my own I have gained self confidence’; ‘my value judgment has widened’; ‘I became a proactive person.’ All the respondents also claim that to their surprise, they have discovered themselves to be more Japanese even as they stay overseas. Naomi, who in four years was promoted from client service executive to Japanese account manager in-charge of Southeast Asia, claims that she has developed an alternate-personality that is more outspoken and professionally motivated than the one she left behind in Tokyo. She has become more independent, flexible, and definitely more thick-skinned. She expresses a sense of achievement and pride in her professional accomplishments as one of the few Japanese in a 300 person company, telling us, ‘my colleagues are relying on me because they need to know how to handle the Japanese’. Although Naomi knows that she has changed to become more confident and outgoing, she acknowledges that deep down, she still considers herself to be a Japanese. Indeed it is her knowledge of Japanese culture and her ability to form personal relationships with Japanese clients that has enabled her to make positive contributions in her work. Mika, the 47-year old women who has worked in several different countries, considers herself international, but at the same time tells us that ‘Perhaps due to

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my stay overseas, I am beginning to discover the merits of Japan, I don’t want to lose these.’ Kimi, the one who is marrying a local man, has discovered that she treasures her ‘Japaneseness’ after all. Never before had she thought of herself as Japanese; in fact in many ways, she had always felt different from most Japanese. Yet since moving to Singapore, she has come to appreciate Japan. She never used to watch NHK (Japan’s public broadcasting station) in Japan, but after moving into her husband’s house, she subscribed to the station on cable television. She usually eats local food but cooks Japanese food once a week. And many of her friends are Japanese whom she met at her workplace. Although she may never have the chance to live in Japan again, she still feels entirely Japanese. She has influenced her husband too, who is beginning to learn Japanese, and even considering looking for a job in Japan if the opportunity presents itself. Three respondents quietly told us they are dating Japanese men who have been sent to Singapore to work by their companies. Keiko, who is a diving instructor, met her expatriate boyfriend a year ago when he attended her diving class. They are planning to get married this year. She was surprised at herself for ending up with a Japanese man because she had always preferred foreigners and had though she would marry one. But she maintains that her boyfriend is not a ‘typical’ Japanese. This raises interesting possibilities that she and women like her may one day join the mainstream of overseas Japanese society as a spouse of a Japanese company man-husband. Will their experiences as female expatriates on the periphery provide them the initiative to reach out to the local community even as ‘trailing spouses’?

9. Conclusion Japanese women working as local hires in Singapore find themselves in a marginal position vis-
a-vis the Japanese community. At work they are excluded from the management circles of Japanese male expatriates by virtue of their lower and non-permanent status in the company. Socially, they do not connect with Japanese trailing spouses who gather during the day when husbands are at work and children at school. Yet within this marginal space, women find opportunities for self-improvement professionally, socially, and emotionally. Professionally, women take advantage of their nonpermanent status by moving between companies and jobs when it suits them. Whereas Japanese men are forced to accept disagreeable bosses, unappealing assignments, and excessive workloads due to norms of Japanese long-term employment patterns, women are free to resign and find new jobs with few negative consequences. In doing so, women build on their profes-

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sional capital and gain a measure of power against their bosses who know they will lose their employees if they do not treat them well. As local hires, women are also free to take their full allotment of vacation days in contrast to male expatriates who feel pressure to work long hours and forgo holiday leave. Most women took full advantage of this by traveling to foreign countries and spending time taking classes, playing golf, and socializing with friends. Socially, working women in Singapore have huge advantages over Japanese expatriate males and their trailing spouses. By virtue of their English speaking skills, most of these women are able to converse well with locals and take advantage of the social networking opportunities provided through their jobs. Without children or business obligations to monopolize their time, single working women generally develop relationships with a broader range of individuals than either their Japanese bosses or their wives. Life on the margins also presents opportunities for emotional and spiritual development. Because these women are not enmeshed in social networks that trap other Japanese expatriates, they feel free to explore new identities and experience relationships with non-Japanese. Many of them indeed find life partners in Singapore, even those who claim to have left Japan due to the pressure to get married. Yet almost all of the women we surveyed felt a stronger appreciation of their ‘Japaneseness’ than they did before they left Japan. To argue that marginality can be empowering and liberating, of course, is nothing new. Migration by definition entails a struggle between the wish to assimilate and the desire to retain what is ‘‘original.’’ Huang et al. (2000) have written that, . . . migrants in diaspora––whether transnational or internal––use a wide range of strategies (with varying degrees of success) to reaffirm elements of their cultural identities to maintain links to their roots while negotiating the values and norms of their host societies in rewriting their identities (p. 395). As demonstrated in Dwyer’s (2000) study of Islamic immigrant women’s veiling in Britain and Jones’ (1998) discussion of female performance of ‘‘masculinities’’ in the workplace, decisions to relegate oneself to the margins of one set of cultural norms can win that same person a measure of power in another (Appadurai, 1996; Hannerz, 1997; Kondo, 1990). Following the same vein, this study examined the ways in which Japanese single working women in Singapore carve out a niche for themselves by contrasting themselves with the two versions of Japanese expatriate identity that threaten their status most––that of males in the workplace, and married women in the post-25-year old age group. Through this self-marginalization, we argue, these Japanese single

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women are able to secure a measure of freedom and autonomy vis-
a-vis their expatriate counterparts. What is intriguing is the fact that this migration pattern is at once short-term and permanent. On an individual basis, Japanese working women tend to stay in Singapore only a few years before moving onto another country or returning home. In this way, they are like their Japanese male/trailing spouse counterparts, albeit they tend to leave for personal, rather than professional reasons. At a more general level, the migration pattern for Japanese women is more permanent. While in the mid1990s the phenomenon of women––especially single, young women––who ‘rushed’ to work in Asia was designated a ‘boom,’ several years later, as the Japanese economy shows little signs of recovery, coupled with the opening up of nations such as Singapore to these Japanese women who fill the gap for bilingual professionals, what was referred to as a boom has seemed to settle into an ongoing option––simply one of the considerations for a Japanese woman in the job market. The lack of jobs in the management tracks for them in Japan and their capabilities as English speakers make transnational job possibilities attractive to them, thanks also to the Internet which has facilitated the availability of information in the international job market. As Japanese women working in Singapore return home, they will bring with them foreign ideas and new possibilities for their lives in Japan. The same holds true for Japanese male expatriates who work with these women and witness alternatives to the ‘Japanese way’ of doing business and managing employees. With patterns of Japanese migration continuing to bring individuals into contact with other cultures, what remains one of the most interesting questions is how life will change back home.

Acknowledgements This article draws on research funded by National University of Singapore research fund (R112-000-006112). The authors are grateful to the individuals who participated in the research.

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