Celebration of Multi-Ethnic Cultural Capital Among Adolescent Girls in Japan: A Post-Structuralist Discourse Analysis of Japanese-Caucasian Identity
Laurel Kamada, Aomori Akenohoshi Junior University, Aomori, Japan
This paper aims to contribute to the study of multi-ethnic identities using discourse analysis approaches through examination of a non-European/non-North American model: Japan. It also attempts to fill a gap in research on multi-ethnic identity in Japan by looking at multi-ethnic children who are not associated through the community of practice of an immersion school (Bostwick, 1999, 2001) or an international school (Greer, 2001, 2003). This study focuses on the construction of identity by six Japanese-Caucasian adolescent girls who were born and raised in Japan, who are all in the same grade at different schools, who have been associated through their foreign parents’ network of friends and associations since preschool, and consider each other to be “best friends”. Spread over a geographically broad community in northeastern Japan, all of these girls attend Japanese schools, which socialize them in Japanese customs, mores, language, and thought parallel to their Japanese peers. The study uses qualitative analysis of semi-structured group-discussion talk to examine how this network of multi-ethnic girls create identities for themselves through their discourse. It found that the participants work to re-position themselves away from ethnic discourses of powerlessness while simultaneously creating and celebrating multi-ethnic cultural capital for themselves within alternative discourses of empowerment.
