Educating Children from Cross-Border Marriages: Understanding Japanese Heritage Transnational Families in Singapore

by Glenn Toh

Overview

This book analyses how children from transnational Japanese-Singaporean families are educated. The author demonstrates that the negotiated educational pathways of these children have significant bearing on the ways in which individual identities of mixedness may be constructed or contested – where notions of mixedness are necessarily recognised for their inherent fluidity, contextuality and contingency. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to students and scholars across the fields of education, neoliberalism, globalization, multiculturalism, mobility and cross-border migration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031225369
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	393 KB

About the Author

​Glenn Toh is Senior Lecturer at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Backgrounding Japanese-Singaporean Families: Discourses, Histories, and Ecologies.- Chapter 2: Japanese Identity Discourses: Homogeneity Versus Heterogeneity.- Chapter 3: Singaporean Identity Discourses: Narratives and Questionings of Racialization and Cultural Diversity.- Chapter 4: Navigating the Japanese and Singaporean Systems of Schooling: Challenges, Choices, and Enigmas.- Chapter 5: Families of Japanese Heritage Mixed Marriages in Singapore: Educational Trajectories and Lived Stories.- Chapter 6: Conclusion: Enabling the Imagination and Anticipating the Future.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Infused with discernment, this sharp critique is an invitation to sift inner workings of educational institutions as they impinge students’ aspirations and are themselves bound by ideology and political discourse. Readers are encouraged to interrogate established boundaries and comprehend causes and effects of power and control which are present but hidden in teaching and learning. In his thought-provoking account spanning individual identity, language practice, pedagogical tradition, and national identity, Dr Toh interweaves historical precursors, current practices and perceptions, and personal experience as a teacher and parent, with precision and depth of understanding. The result has been for me a gleaning of wisdom and an investment with insight. This book has a winnowing effect, as if throwing complications into the air and allowing a wind to blow away impurities. The author reminds all who are impacted by educational processes to look beyond what is frequently seen to what is commonly unseen.”
—Paul McBride, Tamagawa University, Japan

“With more and more Japanese choosing to leave the archipelago to live and work abroad, the notion of Japaneseness remains ever more relevant for its educational institutions. Parents may find themselves asking how children might be educated to both affirm the national sense of homogeneity but also to celebrate emergent forms of cultural identity ushered in through transnational trends and flows. The author does an exceedingly good job in addressing these questions. Aware that half of humanity now live in some form of city environment, he gets right to the task of addressing the defining questions of the 21st century – that is the educational issues surrounding race, diversity, linguistic and cultural heritage, global citizenship, and the sense of dignity in our rapidly changing urban environments.”
—Joff P. N. Bradley, Teikyo University, Japan