The Making of a Minahasan Community in Oarai: Preliminary Research on Social Institutions of Indonesian Migrant Workers in Japan (特集 茨城県大洗町のインドネシア人労働者コミュニティ)
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概要
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In the mid-1980s, Minahasan migrant workers from North Sulawesi began to trickle into Oarai Town of Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, to work in the local seafood processing companies, and Oarai became 'little Manado' with their increasing numbers. As primarily irregular workers, the Minahasans depended heavily on social institutions for help on the basis of kinship, locality and religion, as the pillar of the Minahasan societies. This self-support system of Minahasan family and kerukunan (village association in Indonesian) promoted the endurance and sustainability of their community. Later, the system came to be extended to larger organizations in connection with the outside world, such as kaisha (company in Japanese) and Christian churches in Japan. The Minahasan people successfully penetrated the Japanese labor market by translating their concept of family to the kaisha or traditional labor-management relations. Additionally, they performed informal religious activities in their kerukunan until the kerukunan were finally integrated into formal churches. Thus, they developed their social institutions, sometimes in extending them to the local inhabitants of Oarai and the neighboring areas. This paper discusses the developing roles of these institutions, family-kaisha and kerukunan-Church, in the life of the vulnerable community of Oarai. At the peak of the Minahasan immigration in early 2000, the Oarai-Minahasan numbered slightly over one thousand people, and there flourished four churches and ten kerukunan. The future of those Minahasan, however, seems to be bleak because of intensifying control since the 1990s of irregular workers by Japanese immigration officers as well as the police. In fact, the employers of Oarai have started to recruit regular workers, such as the nikkeijin (Japanese-descended foreigners) and kenshusei (trainees). This structural change in the employment system of the manufacturing industry has weakened the existing employment channels of Minahasan irregular workers. As a consequence, many of the Minahasan have moved from Oarai to other regions in Japan, or have returned to their homeland.