Migrant Women in a Big City Entertainment Area: Changes Brought about by Filipino Women in the Sakae-Higashi Area of Nagoya City

This paper aims to clarify the steps that a migrant women's group has taken to alleviate the social problems and tensions in a local community “where globalization has brought about the new locality of hybridity” (Machimura 2006). The Sakae-Higashi area of Naka-Ward, Nagoya City is a local community categorized as a “newcomer dominant, inner-city in a big city type” multicultural area (Watado 2006a). This area has seen a massive inflow of young Filipino women since the mid-1980s. A number of Filipino entertainers who worked in “Philippine Pubs” in the area started to marry Japanese men from the 1990s onwards. They organized themselves and started the “Filipino Migrants Center (FMC) , Nagoya” in the area in 2000. The FMC has functioned as the most effective “window” through which the local Japanese society could observe the immigrant community. Compared with other immigrant communities, they are thought to be the ones with the most good will because of their readiness to cooperate with the local people. They have therefore played an important role in multicultural community development. This has been influenced by the fact that the vulnerability of migrant women has necessitated support from the local government, which further promoted their settlement. At the same time, Japan's multicultural local policy and administration needed a group of migrants who could work together with the local government. One particular problem was that migrant men were sometimes undocumented and therefore invisible, but through the women-led FMC, the local people were able to start talking with them too. To summarize, in the Sakae-Higashi area, an inter-ethnic relationship was first established between the local people/administration and migrant women. This relationship was nurtured by a local multiethnic project functioning as a “window” to the ethnic community. When the local people needed to talk with migrant men, they utilized this “window” and attempted to alleviate the social problems and tensions.