Making Home: Faith, Love and the Politics of Belonging in Japanese-Filipino Families

Forthcoming

Mario I. Lopez

How do faith, family, and migration intersect in the intimate lives of transnational couples? This ethnography examines Japanese-Filipino marriages in contemporary Japan to reveal how gendered Catholic practices, cultural negotiation, and the politics of belonging shape everyday life. Set in Northern Kyushu, this ethnography explores the often tense dynamics of these relationships—how love, faith, and social expectations are navigated across multiple domains. Through long-term fieldwork, it shows how Filipino migrants and their Japanese partners create “contact zones” where faith becomes both a resource for connection and a site of struggle. Religion, far from being a private matter, becomes a powerful tool for migrants to sustain family ties, negotiate identities, and transform the intimate spaces they live in. Centering religious practices within migration studies, this book offers fresh insights into the evolving landscape of transnational families in Japan.

“Written with the care and sensitivity typical of Lopez' work, Making Home places faith and intimacy at the heart of Japanese–Filipino family life. Exemplifying the value of slow ethnography, it opens new and compelling ways of thinking about affect, marriage, and migration in Japan.” – Jamie Coates, University of Sheffield

"Allow this book to welcome you to the intimate spaces of Filipino and Japanese marriages in Japan. An essential read for migration studies scholars, Mario provides us entry into the everyday lives of Filipinos in Japan and how their faith navigates these spaces." – Karl Ian Uy Cheng Chua, Asian Center, University of the Philippines-Diliman

“This book examines how Filipino migrant wives employ their religious faith as a form of agentive and persuasive power and re-negotiate and transform their affective relations with their Japanese husbands. The result is a very readable ethnography based on compelling personal narratives about how migrant religiosity influences intimate familial contexts.” – Takeyuki Tsuda, Arizona State University

Mario I. Lopez is an anthropologist and migration specialist based at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University

Publication Year: 2026
216pp / 235 x 187mm
9 graphs, 1 map, 5 images
Paperback
ISBN: 978-981-325-317-9