Controlled internationalization: The case of kikokushijo from Belgium

Education, as an institutional tool to shape and bundle the social behavior and the minds of future generations into a basic form of national unity, has always occupied a special position in Japanese society and culture (Kobayashi, 1978; White, 1987). One of the principal objectives of this chapter is to capture the complex reality of Japanese youngsters studying at the International School of Brussels through participant observation, ethnography and interpretative analysis within the larger context of internationalization processes and the discourse on Japanese ethnic identity. In the first part the interplay of migratory, institutional and social processes will be presented. There exists a worldwide network of Japanese schools, which aims at providing unaltered Japanese education on foreign soil, and thus preparing Japanese youngsters for a smooth re-insertion process from the overseas experience into mainstream Japanese society. In the second part, the particular experiences of Japanese youngsters will be discussed in detail. In the concluding note, an attempt is made to venture into explicatory schemes of this controlled internationalization process.