ABSTRACT
This concluding part, while summarizing the whole book, advocates more flexible approaches to the self as a narrative and proposes a more nuanced approach to self-searching migrants with further sensitivity to the power imbalances involved. First, it summarizes both the idiosyncrasies of self-searching migrants as specific cultural and historic outcomes of Japanese society, and its ubiquities as a phenomenon of postadolescence in postmodern, postindustrial societies. The author supports the idea that the self is a construct of self-reflexive narratives, but suggests that the flexibility, not the consistency of the narratives, should be sought after, as leading a consistent life is becoming increasingly difficult around the world, especially among mobile people. To discuss the future research of global self-searching migrants, the author reiterates two major power imbalances that have been discussed in the book, that is, Anglophone-West-centrism and androcentrism, which disadvantage certain migrants compared to others. Then the author argues that more awareness of diversity and power imbalances among people, even from the West or Anglophone regions, would further develop studies of self-searching migrants, as well as continued scrutiny of how technologies affect people’s perceptions of East and West, mobilities, and self-searching, as well as the self itself.
