Onward lifestyle migration via the Global South: The interplay of lifestyle and educational aspirations of Japanese families in Malaysia


Hiroki Igarashi, Chiba University

The existing literature on onward migration--"a spatial trajectory that involves extended stays in two or more destination countries" (Ahrens and King 2023, p4)--has discussed the patterns of mobilities of people from the Global South to the North (Paul 2017) and within the Global North (Della Puppa et al. 2020) and Global South (Jung 2023). This study examines an under-explored pattern of onward migration from the Global North to the South and beyond and how such a complex mobility pattern is generated. As a case study, I conducted 46 semi-structured interviews with middle- and higher-class Japanese families migrating to Malaysia with children from 2016 to 2023. The first part of this study discusses how the development of migration infrastructure has facilitated the mobilities of people for international education, retirement, residential, and property tourism from Japan to Malaysia. In particular, for the purpose of education, Malaysia was chosen as an alternative site for international education since the early 2010s aside from the English-speaking West because of the lower cost of living and education and an environment where children can study English and Chinese--the hegemonic languages of the 21st century. The second part of this paper examines how Japanese families make sense in choosing Malaysia. In particular, I focus on how they evaluate international education in Malaysia as "ideal" by referring to Japanese education and other Western destinations of educational migration. These Japanese families perceive Malaysia as a cosmopolitan environment where children can grow safely without much racial discrimination and acquire a cosmopolitan openness to prepare to live in Asia and the West. The last part discusses how they imagine and generate future transnational mobilities from Malaysia. My findings show that they envision various types of future mobilities--such as return, stepwise education, and stepwise lifestyle mobilities on regional and global scales. I summarize three points that generate the onward lifestyle migration from the Global North to the Global South and beyond. First, racial and language hurdles exist for international migration from Japan to the Global North because Japan is racially peripheral within the Global North nations. Since international schools in Malaysia offer an environment for Japanese children to study with other Asian students, Malaysia is recognized by Japanese families as a first step for their transnational journeys for both parents and children to study English and acquire mobility capital that makes them feel at ease to move to the Global North in the future possibly. Second, attending an international school attracts students to move to the English-speaking West for higher education, but the fact that Malaysian international schools also offer opportunities to learn Chinese stimulates Japanese families imagination for regional mobility to Chinese-speaking regions. Lastly, Since parents and childrens preferred future migration destinations do not always match, they strategically and flexibly generate split-household arrangements to realize and negotiate the lifestyle and educational aspirations of family members.

This paper will be presented at the following session: