Visual Studies and Displacement in/to Japan

Visual Studies and Displacement in/to Japan
Anchors of Belonging: Migrant Lives, AI, and the Digital Turn

Leader: Megha Wadhwa, wadhwamegha@sophia.ac.jp

Former Leader: David H. Slater, d-slater@sophia.ac.jp

This project builds on the previous years led by Prof. Slater. Beginning in Year 3, leadership has transitioned to Prof. Wadhwa, ensuring continuity while opening new directions in research on AI, digital technologies, and migration. Prof. Slater continues to be a participating member, ensuring continuity and collaboration across all phases of the research.

Participating Members

Japan Team:

The Japan-based team provides on-the-ground expertise and collaborative support for research and dissemination.

David H. Slater, d-slater@sophia.ac.jp; founding leader of the project, continuing as an active collaborator
John Williams, john.100meterfilms@gmail.com, contributes expertise in visual and supporting videographic documentation
Maiko Kodaka, m-kodaka-8d2@sophia.ac.jp, will explore how AI is reshaping human encounters, from romantic to potentially predatory contexts, offering critical perspectives on technology and society
Hannah Holtzman, holtzman@sophia.ac.jp, brings expertise in film and media studies, offering support for visual analysis

International team:

This project also benefits from the expertise of an international team whose work on migration, transnationalism, and digital cultures strengthens its comparative and interdisciplinary dimensions.

Ruth Achenbach (Goethe University Frankfurt) – contributes insights on transnational mobility, integration, and return migration. Her research on Chinese migrants in Japan and Singapore, as well as Japanese migrants in Germany, brings valuable comparative perspectives to the project
Michel Baas (University of Amsterdam) – brings anthropological expertise on South Asia and skilled migration, enriching cross-regional perspectives. In his current project he is also working on an anthropological approach of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by collaborating with artists and data scientists
Cornelia Reiher (Free University of Berlin) – offers critical perspectives on urban-rural Japan, media, and migration, expanding the project’s analytical lens.

Together, these partners ensure the project is situated in wider global debates on migration and technology and maintaining its focus on Japan and beyond.

Summary:

This proposal builds on the success of our ongoing multi-year initiative Visual Studies and Displacement in/to Japan. Now entering its third year, the project has established a strong collaborative foundation across Japanese and international institutions.

Year 1(2024):

Featured the lecture series Migration, Memory, and the Art of Storytelling on Film, which drew significant scholarly and public engagement. This was done in collaboration between ICC x Free University of Berlin and FUB also funded the event. Please see below list of the notable events during year 1 –

Living like a Common Man – Sanderien Verstappen (June 12, 2024)
Between Memories – Martha-Cecilia Dietrich (July 16, 2024)
Ainupuri – Laura Liverani (August 13, 2024)
To Whom It May Concern – Zakaria Mohamed Ali (September 17, 2024)
Finding Their Niche: Unheard Stories of Migrant Women – Megha Wadhwa (October 22, 2024)
In Discussion with Özgür Çiçek – Özgür Çiçek (November 12, 2024)
Refugee Stories Through Comics, Games, Videos, and Websites – Gregg Bucken-Knapp, Rosa Barbaran, and David Slater (December 22, 2024)
Forced Migration and Humanitarian Action: Perspectives from Humanitarian Actors – JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute (January 31, 2025)
A Symposium about Syrians in Japan – Dania Alakkad, Yahya Aoyagi, Suzan Husseini, and Mohammed Al-Masri (July 21, 2024)
Transnational Repression and Resilience in the Myanmar Diaspora – Discussant: Tin Tin Htun (December 14, 2024)
Vietnamese Perspectives on Vietnamese Migrants in Japan – Mai Chi Nguyen, Phuong Anh Le, Bao Quyen Tran, and Hong Vy Huynh Vu (June 23, 2024)

Year 2 (2025):

In partnership with Free University of Berlin, we expanded these conversations through cross-cultural collaborations across Europe. A key thematic focus that emerged was the role of objects in migration narratives. During 2025, we have spent the spring and summer on data collection building our research into memory, objects and also experiencing evidence of the role of digital technologies amongst the migrants’ groups that we have interviewed. Currently our data sample includes interactions with 18 women migrants from Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Cameroon, Afghanistan, Iran, and Nigeria and are working in caregiving sectors, a taxi driver, trailing spouses, refugees or seeking refuge in Japan.

Expected Outcomes

October 2025 - Feb 2026

Presentation of our preliminary data on memory and objects (joint presentation with David H. Slater and Megha Wadhwa
A small conference on Memory as Anchor: Exploring Migrant Women’s Journeys Through Objects and Stories, organised through an open call to bring in new perspectives and attract outside scholars
Critical Encounters: A Photography Workshop by Laura Liverani

Our research so far shows that while material objects often hold deep symbolic importance for migrants, their significance is not always consciously articulated — and, in many cases, the increasing presence of AI and digital technologies shifts the weight of memory and identity away from objects. This finding has opened new directions for inquiry. It suggests that AI and digital technologies play a growing role in shaping how migrants narrate displacement, belonging, and identity. For example, as in the image of an Afghani woman showing photographs of her home to her Japanese language teacher using her phone, we see how digital and AI-powered tools act as new vessels of memory and communication. Alongside sharing images, she also relies on Google Translate to communicate, demonstrating how AI is woven into everyday acts of connection and integration. Building on our established methodology of interviews and visual ethnography, this proposed one-year project will extend our previous focus from objects to AI and digital technologies. As with earlier phases, the project will integrate interviews and photographic/videographic research, culminating in two public presentations of findings, publication and a workshop, ensuring both academic and wider community impact.

1. Anchors of Belonging: Migrant Lives, AI, and the Digital Turn (Year 3: 2026)

2. Description

In our 2024 series Migration, Memory and the Art of Storytelling, we explored how memory is carried, embodied, and narrated through objects in the lives of migrants in Japan. The series was well attended, and the recorded discussions and films have since been used as course materials in migration and visual studies, extending its impact beyond the events themselves.

This ongoing work has given us insights through our interviews that while objects often act as powerful anchors of memory and identity, their significance is increasingly complicated by the pervasive presence of digital technologies. Migrants may carry treasured items across borders, but the role of smartphones, translation apps, digital archives, and communication platforms often overshadows these material objects, reshaping how narratives of belonging and displacement are experienced and shared. For example, this image of a stuffed toy was shown by an Indonesian migrant. The stuffed toy was a gift from her best friend, and she carried it with her when she moved. Yet, when speaking about this friend, her stories unfolded mainly through the photos she shared with us. The toy remained an important anchor, but the memory of her friend was not fully articulated or shared without the aid of technology — both for herself and in communicating with others.

Building on these insights, in the year 3 the project now expands from objects to technology in the direction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its entanglement with migration in Japan. The project aims to examine: How does AI , in its everyday and institutional forms, reconfigure the migration experience? The project focuses primarily on migrants’ social worlds — including communication, integration, and diasporic ties — while also recognizing how institutional uses of AI (such as biometric systems or visa procedures) form part of the technological environment that shapes migrant lives. This dual perspective allows us to examine how AI and digital technologies function simultaneously as tools of belonging and as mechanisms of control. Migrants’ encounters with AI technologies are wide-ranging and often ambivalent. These include:

Using translation apps to navigate daily interactions
Relying on digital platforms for job opportunities and social connection.
Engaging with algorithmic management systems in gig and platform economies.
Encountering biometric identification and automated procedures in immigration processes.
Using AI-powered social media tools to sustain diasporic ties.
Experimenting with AI-driven creative tools to share stories or artistic expression.

Together, these experiences highlight the double-edged nature of technology: it can ease communication and foster belonging, while also reinforcing precarity, surveillance, and exclusion. By capturing these dynamics through interviews, videography, and participant-generated content (video/photo diaries, digital storytelling), this project will foreground migrant voices and imaginaries of AI.

This interdisciplinary approach will reveal how migrants in Japan are not passive recipients of technology but active negotiators, shaping new narratives of identity, autonomy, and community. Just as our previous work illuminated memory and objects as emotional anchors, this project will illuminate how AI and digital technologies emerge as new anchors — and sometimes as new constraints — in the lives of migrants navigating Japan’s complex migration experiences.

3. Research Aims and Objectives:

The aim of this one-year project is to investigate how migrants in Japan experience and imagine Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital technologies in their everyday lives, and how these technologies simultaneously enable belonging and reinforce precarity.

Objectives –

Document everyday experiences of AI and digital technologies among migrants in Japan, focusing on communication, work, and integration.
Explore the ambivalence of AI by examining how tools such as translation apps and digital platforms can both support belonging and reinforce precarity.
Capture migrant perspectives and imaginaries of AI through interviews, videography, and participant-generated content (e.g., photographs, video diaries, digital storytelling).
Contribute new insights to debates on migration and technology by foregrounding Japan as a case that moves beyond Eurocentric frameworks.

4. Methodology:

Calling upon the network of scholars Dr. Slater and Dr. Wadhwa have established over the past decade, we will recruit 20-25 migrants of different nationalities and professions living in Japan. Participants will be selected through a combination of community outreach and snowball sampling to ensure diversity in profession, nationality, and background. The project will focus on migrants who regularly engage with digital and AI technologies in their everyday lives, such as:

Migrant workers (e.g., Technical Interns Trainees Program, Specified Skilled Workers, Trailing Spouses and any migrant in a vulnerable position)
Refugees and asylum seekers, accessed through language schools, community groups, and advocacy organizations.
Diaspora community members, including students and professionals who use AI tools for communication and integration.

Data Collection
The project will employ a multi-method qualitative approach:

Semi-structured interviews (approx. 1–1.5 hours each) focusing on participants’ use of AI and digital tools in communication, work, and daily life.
Participant observation in community events, language schools, and informal gatherings to understand the social contexts in which AI is used.
Photographic/Videographic research documenting how AI tools (e.g., translation apps, digital platforms) are integrated into everyday practices.
Participant-generated content such as photo/video diaries or digital storytelling, enabling migrants to represent their own experiences and imaginaries of AI.

All data will be collected with informed consent, and ethical protocols will ensure participants’ anonymity (or not – with consent) and agency in how their stories are represented.

5. Timeline (April 2025 – March 2026)

April – May 2025

Finalize research design and ethical approvals.
Contacting NGOs, language schools, and migrant support organizations in Tokyo.
Recruit initial participants through existing networks.

June – September 2025

Conduct semi-structured interviews (target: 15–20 participants).
Begin participant observation in community events, workplaces, and language schools.
Collect participant-generated content (e.g., photos, video diaries, digital storytelling).
Continue iterative recruitment via snowball sampling.

October – December 2025

Complete remaining interviews (target: 5–10 additional participants).
Conduct videographic documentation of everyday use of AI tools.
Begin preliminary coding and thematic analysis of interview and video data.
Hold an internal review workshop to assess emerging themes and refine focus.

January – March 2026

Finalize data analysis and integrate visual/participant-generated materials.
Prepare outputs:

- Draft one peer-reviewed article.

- Develop a policy brief for NGOs.

- Curate audiovisual materials for dissemination.

Public dissemination: two presentations of findings in Japan and one collaborative workshop with partners.

6. Expected Outcomes:

Deeper insight into how migrants in Japan use AI and digital technologies in daily life, and how these tools shape belonging, connection, and precarity.
Audiovisual documentation (photography, short video pieces, and participant-generated content) illustrating migrant encounters with AI and digital tools.
One peer-reviewed article on AI, migration, and belonging in Japan, contributing to debates in migration and technology studies.
Workshop open to a wider audience — including migrants, NGOs, scholars, students, and the public — to share findings and spark discussion about the role of AI and digital technologies in migrant lives, highlighting both opportunities and risks.
Two public presentations to share findings with academic, community, and public audiences.
A short film or digital showcase (10–15 minutes) co-created with participants to highlight migrant voices and experiences of AI, suitable for both academic and public dissemination.

7. Ethical Considerations:

The research will adhere to ethical standards concerning informed consent, privacy, and the right to withdraw. Participants will be fully informed of the purpose of the research, how their images and narratives will be used, and their right to contribute, review, or withdraw their material at any stage of the process. The material collected will be dealt with utmost care and will be kept safely.

Images from top to bottom

From Cottonbro Studio via Pexels

From Antoni Shkraba Studio via Pexels

Photo by Megha Wadhwa