“The House with the Red Roof:” A Migrant-Owned Apartment in Japan and the Surrounding Relations of a “Society with Houses”

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the case of a migrant-owned apartment in Japan that has been rented to migrants for over a decade. The apartment, located in the “house with the red roof,” and people’s relations that develop within and around it are approached through the anthropological concept of “societies with houses.” The apartment is regarded not only as a dwelling but as an institution that governs relations in a loosely tied migrant society with houses. The study contributes both to migrant housing studies, offering an experimental perspective that goes beyond inquiries into migrant spatial distributions and notions of home, and to the “societies with houses” concept through expanding its toolkit and application. The apartment in question not only provides a place to live for migrants but also enacts the functions of protection, capital accumulation, social memory reproduction, disguise and exposure, and metaphorical kinning.

KEYWORDS:

• societies with houses
• Lévi-Strauss
• migrant housing
• tenancy
• kinning
• Japan

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the informants in this study, as well as the local neighbours in the houses adjacent to the research site, who collectively tolerated the frequent appearance of an outside anthropologist. I am also grateful to my research assistant, Mariia Ermilova, for doing justice to the ethnography through sketching, and for the support of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science through funding. Finally, I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of my paper and important recommendations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Japan’s migration policy comprises 29 (with subcategories) residential statuses. Routes to permanent residency include a marriage with a Japanese national or another permanent resident (over 3 years of marriage with over a year of residence) or work (over 10 years of residence with over 5 years of work). Apart from permanent residency, the only other residency type that allows a permanent stay is Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals #2 Status (HSFP-2), a point system based on one’s background, skills, and income (Immigration Services Agency of Japan 2022). Twenty five percent of migrants from post-Soviet countries hold permanent residency in Japan compared to 0.05% holding HSFP-2.

2. The research assistant Mariia Ermilova is a Russian-speaking migrant in Japan who is a post-doctoral scholar with expertise in visual ethnography. She has been hired locally and compensated based on the guidelines of Toyo University.

3. The study has been part of larger research projects (“Modes of Diversity in Japan: Russian-speaking Migrants and their Material Culture” and “Russian-speaking Migrants in Japan: Space, Place, and Social Integration”; Rep: Ksenia Golovina; 2018–2022 and 2022–2026) funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant numbers #18K12591 and #22K01082).

4. Attwood (2012).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [Grants-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists #18K12591; Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) #22K01082]