Transnational Divorce in Euro-Japanese Couples in Europe: Intersection of Gendered Mobility, Women's Career, and Child Custody

This paper examines the constraints faced by Japanese migrant women during the process of divorce or separation in the context of French-Japanese mixed marriages. In France, a French-Japanese marriage typically refers to a union between a French husband and a Japanese wife; Japanese wife/French husband combinations are ten times more common than the reverse.

Over the past few decades, a significant number of child abductions have been documented, where mothers return to Japan with their children without the consent of their ex-spouses. While the issue has primarily been discussed from the legal perspective of the application of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the circumstances that lead to divorce or separation, child abduction (or not), and the challenges confronted by migrant spouses have not been thoroughly studied. In the case of mixed marriages, gendered expectations in marital norms, distinct perceptions of women's work, and language barriers make life post-divorce difficult for these women residing in a foreign country. This study draws on ongoing ethnographic research with Japanese (ex) spouses in France, examining their socio-economic situation before and after marriage migration, as well as their intimate relationships with their (ex)partners in the context of a mixed couple's life.

Miyako Hayakawa is a social anthropologist, Postdoctoral research fellow for the project AspirE, at the ULB. She received her PhD from EHESS (Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in France. In her PhD dissertation, entitled “Patriarchal constraints in migration: gendered experiences of Japanese migrants/expatriates in France,” she examined how patriarchal gender relations continue to be maintained in a receiving country where more “modern” family values are constructed, and how women challenge patriarchy by everyday social practices, particularly by their language behaviour. Her research focuses on anthropology of family and kinship, Japanese migration, international divorce, and privileged international mobility.
She is a former JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) fellow for her research on political science, at Sophia University and the University of Tokyo. In 2015, she received the Louis Dumont Prize for her research in social anthropology. She is the author of "Migrating to an ideal country? Democratisation of Japanese Migration to France" (Ebisu, Etudes japonaises, forthcoming 2023). She is a member of MAF (Migrations asiatiques en France), Asian migration research network, and one of the main researchers of the REACTAsie project of MAF, an action-research on racism and discrimination against Asian immigrants in France.