Exploring the Social Space of Filipino Catholics in Japan: [De]Ghettoization

Filipinos go to Japan for economic reasons but as they migrate for work, they bring along with them their ethnoreligious identity and heritage. Situated as "guests" in the Church of Japan, Filipino Catholics' (FCs) ecclesial presence is marked by narratives of seclusion, marginality, and negotiation. Data are drawn from qualitative field research on selected church communities in the Archdiocese of Tokyo in Japan, namely, Koiwa, Matsudo, Akabane, and Kasai. In an attempt to explore and nuance these contested spaces, I would make use of Loic Wacquant's theorization of urban ghettos and Pierre Bourdieu's ideation of "field". To illustrate this, the paper proposes a 'diamond-quadrant' (DQ) plane that may serve as a heuristic device for analytical purposes. Results from this study suggest that the early years of FCs' negotiation (1979-the 1990s) locate the players in the right plane of contested space defined by exclusionary tendencies of swording and shielding. In the mid-2000s, there has since been a major shift of negotiation to the left plane that is characterized by inclusionary attempts of fishnet and graftage. Despite this shift, it is still a negotiated space. The vision of full integration remains an ideal objective that if unmasked of its ambiguity and hegemonic nuances may be a welcome solution to the problems that affect the Church of Japan as a whole.