OKAWA, Mayuko
Staff tenure: October 2010 - March 2013
Research Associate, Dr.
Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa,
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
3-11-1 Asahi-cho, Fuchu-shi,
Tokyo, 183-8534, Japan
Email: mokawa[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp
Personal Homepage: http://fieldnet.aacore.jp/wiki/利用者:大川真由子
Research interests: Social anthropology, Middle-Eastern area studies, return migration studies
Toward “The anthropology of return migration”
It is a little known fact that Oman was a maritime empire which controlled Zanzibar as well as other points on the East African coast, at its height, in addition to area along the coast of what is now Pakistan, and the seas in between. I have worked on Omani-Arab immigrants who arrived at East Africa originally as a result of such massive colonial immigration movement to Zanzibar which was promoted by Oman from the mid-19th century, and then returned to Oman after 1970. They mostly comprised Swahili-speaking people of mixed African origins. I would like to explore from the anthropological viewpoint the process in which their identity has been discussed, crystallized, and constituted, since they have different experiences and memory (particularly, colonial experience and slavery in East Africa) from those of the native Omanis, who had lived in Oman before 1970. I am interested in the identity politics of return migrants affected by various factors such as ethnicity, nationalism, and networks.
Recently, I have tried to locate African Omanis case in the whole return migration studies theoretically. I define African Omanis as “colonial return migrants”, differentiated from “economic return migrants” which have been the mainstream case of return migration studies. Then, I would like to compare African Omanis with Japanese and European colonial return migrants, employing the achievements of colonial and imperial studies. I just started a study group with young researchers on the comparative ethnographical studies on return migrants, aiming at establishing “the anthropology of return migration”.
Research Projects:
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