Lifestyle Migration and Native Speakerism in Japan: The Case of NOVA Eikaiwa

In this article, the author illustrates how lifestyle migration to Japan is tied to organizational norms of native speakerism and capitalist exploitation. Drawing on 32 interviews and nine months of fieldwork in Tokyo, the author describes how one of the largest foreign conversation schools in Japan (NOVA) has invested in broadcasting whiteness and English skill as traits of authentic native speakers. This process depends on who is viewed as a valuable teacher, but it also depends on migrants who pursue life in Japan through language teaching. Work at NOVA is highly exploitative. Yet because most of the workforce has ulterior motivations, they are willing to exchange substandard work for the privilege of mobility. This case highlights the overlaps between lifestyle migration and native speakerism at the organizational level and how supposedly "win-win" arrangements with labor create an enduring, material setting for the reproduction of ideology.