ALFP e-magazine issue 6: Migration and Multicultural Coexistence

When a Hyphen Matters: Identity and the Children of International
Marriages
Nelia G. Balgoa1 (Philippines)
Associate Professor, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology / ALFP 2013 Fellow

I first met 16-year old Takeshi when I interviewed his mother and grandmother, both Filipinas andboth former entertainers, in a small café in Osaka sometime in 2010 for data gathering for my Ph.D.
dissertation. Takeshi is a quiet boy who shyly admitted that he loves “adobo” (the quintessential“Filipino” food stewed in vinegar, garlic and soy sauce) and goes to a nearby Catholic church every
Sunday to hear mass. Linda, his mother, proudly said that Takeshi might change his citizenshipfrom Japanese to Filipino when he turns 20.
Kenji, whose Filipina mother, Chona, I met in a Bible camp organized by a Catholic Church inNagoya, did not even bother to mask his negative feelings of having a Filipino lineage. His
classmates bullied him when they learned that his mother is a Filipina and he does not like goingto the Philippines because his relatives would often ask for gadgets and presents from Japan.
However, he likes the idea of going to church every Sunday which he associates with his Filipina
mother.
Takeshi and Kenji are children of marriages between Filipino women and Japanese men, and such
unions, where one of the spouses comes from a different national or ethnic group, are calledinternational marriages. But Takeshi and Kenji’s parents’ marriages are trajectories of internationalmigration, where specifically these Filipina women crossed national borders to seek employment
in the entertainment industry in Japan and eventually got married to Japanese men. Thus, within
the context of international migration, international marriages go beyond socio-demographic
differences of couples and legal aspects of the union and also put into perspective what sociologists
Asuncion Freznosa-Flot and Gwenola Ricordeau term as “the dynamic interaction between nation
states with diverse migration, citizenship, and family policies shaping the family formation processof couples, their social lives, sense making, and strategies.”2
Family formation and processes manifest the most complex and nuanced dynamics of international
marriages. The inevitability of conflicts brought by differences in culture necessitates negotiating,asserting, bargaining or ceding of spaces where cultural encounters happen and where identity isformed or reconstructed. Raising children is one of these most potent spaces and Takeshi andKenji show the complexities of straddling simultaneously two different cultures, resulting inambivalence and fluidity of their identity/ies. Takeshi and Kenji’s circumstances are captured invarious academic parlance: “children of mixed heritage,” “cross-cultural children,” “children born
1 The author is currently co-writing with Drs. Viktoriya Kim and Beverley Ann Yamamoto of Osaka University

the book The Politics of International Marriage in Japan which is on review by the Rutgers University Press, NewJersey.
2 Auncion Fersnoza-Flot and Gwendolin Ricordeau, eds., International Marriages of Southeast Asian Women throughthe Lens of Citizenship (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).
© 2020 International House of Japan and Japan Foundation

ALFP e-magazine issue 6: Migration and Multicultural Coexistenceof/from international marriages.” Derogatory terms, however, have also emerged in Japan todescribe Takeshi and Kenji: hafu (half), daburu (double), konketsuji (mixed-blood child). When we
describe them as Filipino-Japanese or Japanese-Filipino, the hyphens linguistically indicate how
identity is neatly placed in two dichotomies of ethnic groups, but Kenji and Takeshi have shownthat this is not the case.
My research on international marriages and family formation, specifically those of Filipino andJapanese, has shown that assimilation processes cannot explain anymore the way migrants copewith and survive the difficulties of living in receiving countries. Globalization and ready access toinformation have more or less lessened the exilic nature of migration. Transnationalism allows
migrants to establish ties, whether political or cultural, not only in the host country but also in thecountry of origin and thus the idea of home is now multilayered. Alienation has now several
dimensions; it is no longer just isolation nor the lack of belongingness but the jolting realizationthat there is now a disconnected and disassociated relationship between symbols of their identitythat were once familiar and their meanings. In the process, migrants look for a space where they
can reconfigure their identity, negotiate meanings and make sense of the disjunctions. The CulturalStudies scholar Homi Bhaba 3 calls this the “third space,” an in-between space, a space fornegotiation which allows new subject positions to emerge. These positions emerge from theinterweaving of the elements of the two cultures, challenging the validity and authenticity of any
definitive or essentialist cultural identity. Thus, when Takeshi professes to love being a Filipino
because “Filipinos are kinder and happier,” eats “adobo” and is a Roman Catholic, a religion heassociates with his mother, and yet holds a Japanese passport, speaks Japanese and goes to Japanese
schools, his identity becomes “hybrid”—an identity which is neither Filipino nor Japanese but anidentity that is fluid and socially constructed within the context of international migration. What isbeing an “authentic” Japanese or Filipino is now displaced with “moments” of being Japanese orFilipino. And these moments are never-ending and are always unexpected, thus the disjunction anddisconnection. For Takeshi and Kenji, the incommensurability of these “moments” and theconstant negotiation is what define them as children of international marriages.
These moments of incommensurability and constant negotiation therefore give a new dimension
to how we look at multiculturalism. Takeshi and Kenji’s narratives would tell us that it is in theeveryday cultural encounters where multiculturalism is at play—those intimate, small momentsinterplaying with the social, political, economic or even historical structures which migrants utilize
to construct strategies of action to diffuse or solve conflicts. Thus, we cannot reduce
multiculturalism to “people of different cultures making beautiful music together” but rather how
moments of “third space” and moments of unsettledness are being recognized and addressed byinstitutional structures and government policies. If this is the case, the hyphen in the identity ofTakeshi and Kenji will no longer make sense.

The contents of this article reflect solely the opinions of the author.
3 Homi Bhaba, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 2017).

© 2020 International House of Japan and Japan Foundation