From aspiration to crisis management: rethinking education migration with Japanese migrants in Southeast Asia

This article rethinks the category of educational migration by foregrounding the experiences of Japanese mothers who relocated to Southeast Asia not for capital accumulation or global mobility, but as a response to intersecting crises in post-3.11 Japan. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and digital content analysis with families in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, I examine how these mothers interpreted migration as a means of protecting their children from the breakdown of normative lifecourse expectations, particularly around education, care, and social belonging. While educational migration has often been framed as aspirational or capital-driven, I show how these mothers described their departures as a response to ikizurasa – the pain of living within Japan's normative lifecourse – and sought not prestige but the possibility of more inclusive, plural futures for themselves and their children. Their migration was not merely a pursuit of academic opportunity, but an act of ‘crisis management’ in the face of a system that no longer offered safety, recognition, or dignity. By situating these narratives within broader debates on crisis migration, gendered care, and lifecourse, the article expands the analytical lens through which educational migration is understood and contributes to feminist and affective approaches in migration studies.