Dear all, 

 

I hope this message finds you well. A bit of self-promotion in our lecture series this time -- I'd love to invite you all to the fifth lecture of our online series Online lecture series: Migration, Memory, and the Art of Storytelling on Film. We will be screening excerpts of my film -Finding their niche: Unheard stories of migrant women on 22^nd October 2024, 11:00 to 13:00 (CEST), 18:00 to 20:00 (JST). This film documents the lives of two Indian women migrants who moved to Japan more than a decade ago, as a case study of the 'trailing spouses' concept in migration. Read below for more details or see the poster here - 

https://www.icc-sophia.com/_files/ugd/2edff9_67b7f28f131649c0bcc23f0bd3715ee7.pdf

 

Looking forward to seeing you!

Best wishes, Megha 

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ICC Sophia University and the Free University of Berlin presents an Online Lecture Series, Migration, Memory, and the Art of Storytelling on Film - Lecture 5

 

Screening & discussion with Megha Wadhwa 

 

Finding their niche: Unheard stories of Migrant Women by Megha Wadhwa

 Japan and Berlin| 2024| 58 mins| Hindi/English with English Subtitles

Hosted by David H. Slater

 

22 October 2024 (Tue)
11:00 to 13:00 (CEST)
18:00 to 20:00 (JST)

 

All the lectures will be on Zoom. 

Register here - https://forms.office.com/r/YRfdXeybLt  (Please save the zoom link you see on your screen after registration) 

 

Finding their niche: Unheard stories of migrant women

This film documents the lives of two Indian women migrants who moved to Japan more than a decade ago, as a case study of the 'trailing spouses' concept in migration. 

Jyoti, 41 and Mandeep, 39, grew up in the state of Punjab, northern India, in middle-class households. They received a good education and had promising careers in India. Then, in their early 20s, they each agreed to marry men living in Japan by arrangement. 

The women were excited to move to a foreign country and to be with their husbands, but they had no prior knowledge of Japan. Through personal narratives told by the women, we examine past, present and future expectations and see how these affect their roles as Indian women, wives, mothers and workers in a foreign country, as well as the challenges they faced in 'Finding their Niche'.

 

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/743482060?share=copy

 

Megha Wadhwa is an anthropologist, filmmaker, and writer based at the Free University of Berlin's Japanese Studies department. She is an adjunct assistant professor at Temple University Japan. She is also a visiting scholar at Sophia University Tokyo. She is the author of Indian migrants in Tokyo: A study of socio-cultural, religious and working worlds (Routledge:2021). Her current research looks into migration trends of Indians in Japan, Singapore and Germany.

 

This project is a part of BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research Germany) funded project - Qualification and Skill in the Migration Process of Foreign Workers in Asia (QuaMaFA) and supported by Free University of Berlin, Goethe University Frankfurt and the ICC Collaborative Research Unit "Visual Studies and Displacement in/to Japan", a Joint Research Unit between Institute of Comparative Culture of Sophia University and Free University of Berlin.

 

 

Megha Wadhwa, Ph.D. 
Post-Doc/Research Associate 
Institute of East Asian Studies

Japanese Studies 
Freie Universität Berlin 

 

Ad. Assistant Professor

Temple University Japan 

Communication Studies

 

Visiting Fellow
Institute of Comparative Culture
Sophia University Tokyo