Psychosocial issues and impact of Filipino immigrants in Japan: Building young adult’s advocacy group in Tokyo Building Youth & Young Adult’s Advocacy Group in Tokyo

This presentation will discuss about the psychosocial issues and the impact of Filipino migrants through the dialogue among the group members. Immigration of Filipino women to Japan started in the 1980s mainly as entertainers and wives in the rural areas. Currently, about 252,000 Filipinos live in Japan permanently mainly as spouses of Japanese and children of Filipino mothers. However, there seem to have serious psychosocial issues in terms of the discrimination and stigma towards Filipino women, etc. and domestic violence (Tsuda & Kim, 2015). An advocacy group for Filipino Japanese young adults in Tokyo was built in 2016. The presenter has lived as “one of them” for more than 30 years and has worked for 15 years as a community leader and a researcher. We attempt to act together in order to reflect the history and rebuild the images of Filipino women immigrants and to empower the youth who are struggling in a psychological conflict in terms of their cultural identity and career development. We aimed at “an open gathering/network” or “ibasho (a psychological space)”. Meetings and group activities were held face-to-face once every 2 months, and shared information and updated minutes simultaneously through a closed group in Social Networking Service (SNS) to keep the members informed. The group is organized by leaders and researchers in all age, gender, nationality, and those who have been spending their adult life and driven to take action for the Filipinos and other multicultural communities in Tokyo.