Abstract
Etsuko Kato’s book makes an important contribution to sociological debates about how selfhood becomes tied to work by locating transnational mobility among Japanese migrants within this broader question. Kato defines ‘self-searching migrants’ as people whose movement overseas is driven less by income or promotion than by a search for an ‘authentic self’ and for work they feel they truly want to do. In this sense, the book moves beyond conventional migration studies and instead explores a form of lived experience shaped by post-modern, post-industrial, and ‘post-adolescent’ conditions.
The first half of the book develops this framework clearly. Kato begins by explaining the linguistic and cultural background of jibun sagashi, showing that ‘self-searching’ is both a wider late-modern phenomenon and one with a specific historical trajectory in Japan. She then introduces the idea of ‘self-work identification’, arguing that in post-industrial societies, work has increasingly come to be imagined as a site of self-realisation. In Japan, however, the employment crises of the 1990s, the expansion of precarious work, and persistent uncertainty have made this aspiration increasingly difficult to achieve. One of the strengths of the book is that it places this predicament within gendered structures of power: women, being less firmly bound to domestic workplace norms, are often more likely to seek self-work identification abroad, whereas men remain more deeply constrained by corporate-centred employment cultures and masculine expectations.
Building on this, Chapter 3 reframes the search for self and work as ‘self-searching migration’, a more mobile and opportunistic form of lifestyle-oriented movement that often emerges in ‘post-adolescence’. Crucially, Kato does not present this mobility as a free or purely personal choice. Rather, she shows how Anglophone West-centrism shapes Japanese migrants’ destination imaginaries. Despite the growing significance of neighbouring Asian countries, Canada and Australia continue to appear as more legitimate sites for self-discovery. The empirical chapters, however, make clear that such imaginaries rarely translate into straightforward self-realisation. Vancouver and Sydney both accommodate and make use of young sojourners, while simultaneously placing ‘glass walls’ between them and the formal labour market. As a result, the boundaries between youth and adulthood, work and leisure, and temporary residence and settlement become increasingly blurred, turning ‘indefinite sojourning’ into a prolonged youthful project.
The discussion of Japanese male ‘immobility’ is especially compelling. Here, Kato shows that the state-led discourse of ‘global human resources’ is fundamentally nationalistic, corporate-centric, and elitist, directed mainly at male graduates from high-ranking universities. By contrast, ‘self-searching’ is more often associated with less-privileged women, as well as some less-privileged men. Migration thus appears not simply as a matter of individual preference, but as something shaped by the interaction of gender, class, and state discourse.
The chapter on Singapore extends the book’s geographical and analytical reach. Kato suggests that when Japanese migrants encounter limits in the Anglophone West, Singapore emerges as a compromise destination. Yet most do not cease their self-searching there. Instead, they develop two new affirmative positions, as ‘Asians’ and as ‘mobile workers’, through which they reframe both Western and Japanese workplace cultures. At the same time, West-centrism, hierarchical Asianism, and the continuing pursuit of vocational specialisation propel many of them to keep moving.
Overall, the book’s main value lies in refusing to treat ‘self-discovery’ as a depoliticised psychological narrative. Instead, Kato shows clearly how selfhood, work, mobility, and coming-of-age remain embedded in institutions, power relations, and social inequalities. This is a book that deserves close attention from readers interested in migration, youth, labour, and identity.
