Silence and the Image of Helplessness: The Challenge of Tozen Union

This chapter focuses on the Nambu Foreign Workers Caucus (FWC), the migrant workers' branch of the trade union, National Union of General Workers Tokyo Nambu (hereafter referred to as Nambu), and largely led by English-speaking migrants. It traces the events where the FWC split from Nambu, a trade union largely composed of Japanese-speaking members, to form a new union called Tozen. At the heart of the split was the question of silence. Many Nambu FWC members were troubled not only because they had been silenced by Japanese union members for their inability to speak Japanese, but also because their silence was linked to a sign of powerlessness. They were regarded as helpless victims, unable to act and speak on their own. By looking at Tozen's activities, the chapter also investigates how the union, driven by the need to make noncitizens audible, handles linguistic diversity among its members.

Untranslatable Community: Toward a Gothic Way of Speaking

This chapter examines how the various ways of dealing with the mismatch between visibility and audibility help one to imagine a social space centred on the failure of communication, or untranslatability. To do so, it considers the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, Bonnie Honig, and Slavoj Žižek. Nancy theorises community in relation to failed communication, whereas Honig and Žižek focus on uncertainty as a key affective device to discuss the link between community and unintelligibility. Built on their works, the chapter develops an understanding of belonging centred on a gothic mode of relationality where people relate to one another based on ‘not knowing’ others let alone themselves. Unlike a traditional form of belonging to a community where people search commonality through intelligible communication between the self and the other, the gothic mode of belonging is realised in people's own inability to translate their voice, in the failure to achieve intelligibility.

Language as a Contested Site of Belonging

This chapter explains how the research on language in the context of migrant activism can advance one's understanding of belonging, of what it means to be a legitimate member of a community. To do so, it broadly sketches the relationship between language and community and discusses how the focus on linguistic interactions between citizens and noncitizens offers a productive yet unexplored site of investigation in migration studies. The relationship between language and community has a dual nature. Language solidifies the boundary of community, and separates citizens inside the community from foreigners outside. And yet, it can also obscure the line between the two, exposing fluidity of belonging, and in doing so, imagining community as a dissolving entity. The chapter then provides the specific context in which migrant activism takes place in Japan, and explains how the Japanese case study is helpful for examining citizenship and belonging in relation to language.

The Hidden Space of Mediation: Migrant Volunteers, Immigration Lawyers, and Interpreters

This chapter describes instances where the voice of migrant protesters is made simultaneously both audible and inaudible through people who act as their agents. In particular, it looks at three different groups who assume such roles: migrant volunteers at the China Japan Volunteer Organization (CJVO), immigration lawyers, and interpreters. With their professional expertise on legal matters, familiarity with Japanese culture and language as well as those of migrant workers, these agents play an important role in migrant activism. They facilitate negotiations between migrant workers and their employers, represent them at court, and help migrant workers to communicate with their Japanese counterparts. Crucially, they act not only as the spokespersons of migrant protesters, but also as mediators. They interfere with the interaction between migrants and their employers, quietly and sometimes without the knowledge of migrants, to achieve what they see as the best course of action for the migrant protesters. In this way, they play an indispensable role in creating the ‘voice’ of migrants. While migrant protesters become visible and audible thanks to those who assume the role of their spokespersons, they do so, however, at the cost of losing control of their own voices.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter reflects on the insights obtained from the study on multilingual migrant activism. It does so in two areas. First, the chapter assesses the broader significance of this study for not only the ‘politics of translation’ but also the politics of untranslation — translation that fails to make interactions intelligible. The politics of untranslation offers an effective critique to the persistently divisive political rhetoric about migration where knowing ‘the other’ conditions the acceptance of migrants. Second, the chapter explores the hidden aspect of untranslatability, as found in migrant activism. It discusses how an appreciation of these aspects is important to the ongoing inquiry about community in the fields of international relations and political geography.

Rewriting the Meaning of Silence: Latin American Migrant Workers from Kanagawa City Union

This chapter discusses how migrant workers of Kanagawa City Union (KCU), who are largely from Latin American countries, participated in the annual negotiation meeting with government representatives and the union's well-known activity called ‘Day Long Action’. Japanese is predominantly used in these events, with little effort to translate for non-Japanese-speaking participants. While the previous chapter looks at an instance where migrant protesters challenge the gap between their visibility and audibility, this chapter shows that they strategically use such a gap for their own benefit. For some migrants, being unable to understand Japanese is not a hindrance but a convenient pretext to follow what they are ordered to do. In this regard, silence gives them an opportunity to perform their loyalty to the trade unions they belong to. Demonstration of such loyalty is a key strategy for KCU migrant members because it is Japanese unionists who ultimately handle migrants' labour disputes.

Solidarity Activism? Rethinking Citizenship Through Inaudibility

This chapter looks at the acts of citizenship in more detail, showing that not only the visible but also the audible presence of noncitizens is constitutive of struggles for citizenship. Attention to audibility is particularly necessary to analyse multilingual migrant activism where migrant protesters become physically visible but remain inaudible on account of their language. To develop an understanding of citizenship that is attentive to the link between audibility and inaudibility, the chapter considers the works of Jacques Rancière and Gloria Anzaldúa. They both regard inaudibility as an inseparable aspect of the making of political subjects. From the vantage point of the gap between visibility and audibility, the supposed relationship of solidarity between migrants and their local supporters reveals its complexity. The chapter also studies how the limitations of linguistic proficiency, embodied as noncitizens' inaudibility, facilitate or limit the possibilities of solidarity in migrant activism.