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摘要
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This study employs narrative analysis to explore how Taiwanese women who migrated to Japan in the late 1980s and 1990s construct and present their identities through retrospective life stories about study abroad and marriage. Situated within the context of Taiwan’s rapid democratization, this study examines how these women negotiate prevailing gendered expectations, social constraints, and personal aspirations in both Taiwan and Japan.
The analysis draws on life story interviews conducted in Japanese in 2021 with two Taiwanese women whose children were college students at the time. Both participants followed similar migration trajectories: they came to Japan as language students, pursued further education, married Japanese men, and settled permanently in Japan.
The findings reveal that, growing up in a democratizing Taiwan, both women were inspired by expanding opportunities for overseas study and aspired to gain international experience. However, they also confronted strong social norms, including parental expectations regarding financial independence and marriage. In Japan, they encountered additional gendered constraints, particularly in pursuing professional careers as foreign women. Both narratives demonstrate agency in decisions related to education and financial independence; however, in the domain of marriage, the women describe compromises shaped by gender norms and limited career prospects. These experiences are often recounted with laughter as a discursive strategy to reframe constraints as humorous episodes. At the same time, both participants position themselves in contrast to other women in order to reaffirm their sense of agency. Finally, although they retrospectively characterize their early lives in Japan as “hardship,” they reinterpret these experiences as formative and meaningful. Moving beyond the victim-centered perspectives in migration studies, this study highlights that agency is not a simple binary of resistance or conformity, but rather a dynamic and nuanced process of negotiation embedded within enduring social structures. |
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