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. Having witnessed at a distance the lives of their relatives settled in the US, UK and Canada, they had similar expectations for their own future lives in Japan. But the reality was to prove different from the expectation.