Contested and Celebrated Glocal Hybrid Identities of Mixed-Ethnic Girls in Japan

This chapter examines contested and celebrated linguistic and ethnic ‘hybrid’ identities of six adolescent girls in Japan of Japanese and ‘white/foreign’ mixed parentage who assume a ‘third’ ethnic identity differing from either of their parents. These mixed-ethnic girls, themselves born/raised in Japan, all have one Japanese parent and one English-speaking parent who was born/ raised outside of Japan, allowing them access to a world larger than Japan which few of their Japanese peers can claim. They also have Japanese relatives, Japanese (dual) nationality and they use Japanese as their first – or one of their first – languages. Nevertheless, they are still often marginalized as ‘half’ or ‘foreign outsiders’ on the local level. This study looks at how they draw on their intercultural and global knowledge and experiences in order to empower themselves in their homeland, Japan. They do this through a number of discursive strategies in their conversations together in order to contest marginalization and racialization. One strategy is to construct various forms of cultural and linguistic capital, often performed through their ‘Englishing’ (Joseph, 2004) or ‘doing English’ (Pennycook, 2007). Also examined here is their language choice along with the discursive construction or rejection of their identities as ‘English-knowing bilinguals’ (Higgins, 2009; Pakir, 1991) or English experts.