Film Screening: “Finding their niche: Unheard stories of migrant women”
Date / Time
Sunday, 16 July, 2023 / 2:00-4:00pm (doors open at 1:30pm)
Venue
Room 226, Research and Lecture Building, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Program
- Screening of “Finding their niche: Unheard stories of migrant women”
- Q&A with director Megha Wadhwa
Moderator: Kensaku Mamiya (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Conditions
admission free, pre-registration required (limited to 200 seats), open to public
Co-organizers
South Asian Studies Center, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Center for South Asian Studies (CSAS), The University of Tokyo
Registration form
To register, please visit the link below.
https://forms.gle/ATwbSj48DyUcNk178
・A copy of your responses will be e-mailed to the address you provided. Please display it on your smartphone screen at the reception counter.
・Although it is possible to join the event without registration, you will be asked to register at the reception counter. Advance registration is recommended for a smooth entry.
Overview
Director: Megha Wadhwa
Director’s Biography: Dr. Megha Wadhwa is a migration researcher and Japanese and Indian studies Scholar. She is a Research Associate at Free University of Berlin, and a visiting fellow at Sophia University, Tokyo, which is also her alma mater. Originally from New Delhi and she was a resident of Tokyo for about 15 years before she moved to Berlin in 2021. She is the author of the book ‘Indian Migrants in Tokyo: A Study of Socio-Cultural, Religious and Working Worlds’ (Routledge:2021). She has also written several articles on the Indian community in Japan and other topics for The Japan Times and journals. Currently she is working on ‘Indian Professionals in Japan and Singapore: Migration Trends, Labor Market Integration and Challenges’ and is a part of the research project – ‘Qualifications and Skill in the Migration Process of Foreign Workers in Asia’(QuaMaFA), supported by Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (BMBF).
2022 / Germany / 58 minutes / Hindi and English, with Japanese and English subtitles
Synopsis
An hour-long film documents the life of two Indian women migrants who moved to Japan more than a decade ago as trailing spouses. The women were excited to move to a foreign country and to be with their husbands, but they had no prior knowledge of Japan. Having witnessed at a distance the lives of their relatives settled in the US, UK, and Canada, they had similar expectations for their own future lives in Japan. But the reality was to prove different from the expectation. In place of comfort, luxury, love, and fun, loneliness and fear took over. Through personal narratives told by the women, we examine past, present and future expectations and see how these affect their roles as Indian women, wives, mothers, and workers in a foreign country, as well as the challenges they faced in ‘Finding their Niche’.