This master’s thesis deals with collective identity and discrimination as witnessed in the case of Nikkeijin return migration. The background to their return migration, as well as the position they then assume in their new environment are given analysis, before dissecting the discrimination they are faced with. It being tied to the others’ categorisation of their group and the discriminating or rather discriminatory consciousness resultant from it, and both also being propagated through their own group identification, means that discrimination remains pretty much unavoidable for them. In the thesis I then explain the processes of (self)identification and discrimination (both on the level of its expression and its experience) and through the analysis of Japanese media discourse, present the discrimination that is still present in the Japanese ideology of tabunka kyōsei (多文化共生). In the thesis, however, the impossible task of objectively studying discrimination is emphasized throughout, the human experiencing of it representing the subjective level of reality.
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