Restricted access

Research article

First published online April 10, 2026

Request permissions

Kinning through the “House in Kirinosawa”: How migrants craft togetherness, relatedness, and belonging across time

Ksenia Golovina https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4380-3738 [email protected]View all authors and affiliations

https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381261441814

Abstract
References
Biographies

Abstract

Blending discussion with ethnographic writing, this article examines repeated visits to a residence in Japan that functions as a space for events organized by migrants for migrants. Beyond the visible themes of these gatherings lie subtler processes through which the house becomes meaningful. The house is enlivened through storytelling and interactions with objects, practices that forge relatedness over time. These practices express the migrants’ desire to belong with the host society. Yet belonging takes an unexpected form: the original owners with whom kinning unfolds are physically absent but experienced through material traces and imaginative engagement. Frequent references to the owners’ affluence reveal another migrant aspiration: to be well off. The article conceptualizes this crafting of relatedness as “kinning-through-the-house,” emphasizing its temporal dimension. It contributes to broader debates on kinning and belonging in migrant contexts by foregrounding the role of place in shaping social ties across time.

Get full access to this article

View all access and purchase options for this article.

References

Andrikopoulos A, Duyvendak JW (2020) Migration, mobility and the dynamics of kinship: new barriers, new assemblages. Ethnography 21(3): 299–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120939584

Arkhipova A (2025) Who are the Russians? Who eat olivier salad. Interview with Alexandra Arkhipova conducted by Katerina Gordeeva. Tell Gordeeva. Video, 2:39:56, 00:12:40–00:13:25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oEBUnGVh2Q (accessed 1 August 2025).

Boccagni P, Hondagneu-Sotelo P (2023) Integration and the struggle to turn space into ‘our’ place: homemaking as a way beyond the stalemate of assimilationism vs transnationalism. International Migration 61(1): 154–167. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12846

Carsten J (2020) Imagining and living new worlds: the dynamics of kinship in contexts of mobility and migration. Ethnography 21(3): 319–334. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120940343

Cole J, Groes C (2016) Introduction: affective circuits and social regeneration in African migration. In: Cole J, Groes C (eds) Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration. University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–26.

Docot D (2018) Anthropology of the Hometown: The Workings of Migration and Intimacy in the Town of Dollars. PhD Thesis. The University of British Columbia, Canada.

e-Stat (2025) Statistics on foreign residents. Immigration Services Agency. https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/policies/statistics/toukei_ichiran_touroku.html (accessed 15 January 2025).

Frohlick S (2024) Bloom Spaces: Reproduction and Tourism on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica. University of Toronto Press.

Geschiere P (2020) “The African family is large, very large”: mobility and the flexibility of kinship – examples from Cameroon. Ethnography 21(3): 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120938076

Golovina K (2020) Walking, cleaning, and “kinning”: material practice of grave-caring among Russian-speaking migrants in Japan. Japanese Review of Cultural Anthropology 21(1): 315–355. Available at: https://doi.org/10.14890/jrca.21.1_315

Golovina K (2023a) “The house with the red roof:” a migrant-owned apartment in Japan and the surrounding relations of a “society with houses. Housing, Theory and Society 40(4): 530–551. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2023.2226146

Golovina K (2023b) “Material stories” and cross-referencing: experiences of home and migration among women from Russia living in Japan. In: Yelenevskaya M, Protassova E (eds). Homemaking in the Russian-speaking Diaspora: Material Culture, Language and Identity. Edinburgh University Press, 63–77.

Haugevik K (2019) Kith, kin and inter-state relations: international politics as family life. In: Haugevik K, Neumann IB (eds) Kinship in International Relations. Routledge, pp. 43–61.

Howell S (2001) Self-conscious kinship: some contested values in Norwegian transnational adoption. In: Franklin S, McKinnon S (eds) Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Duke University Press, pp. 203–223.

Howell S (2003) Kinning: the creation of life trajectories in transnational adoptive families. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9(3): 465–484. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.00159

Johansen MLE, Grøn L (2022) Intimate belongings – kinship and state relatedness in migrant families in Denmark. Genealogy 6(3): 70. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy6030070

Joyce RA, Gillespie SD (eds) (2000) Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kalir B (2020) To deport or to “adopt”? The Israeli dilemma in dealing with children of non-Jewish undocumented migrants. Ethnography 21(3): 373–393. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120939593

Kim V, Balgoa NG, Yamamoto BA (2021) The Politics of International Marriage in Japan. Rutgers University Press.

Kim V, Golovina K, Mukhina V (2026) From liminality of marital citizenship to precarity of denizenship in Japan: female migrants from former Soviet states and their sense of belonging. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1–21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2026.2629027

Kokudokōtsūshō (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism) (2024) Reiwa 6 Nendo Jūtaku Keizai Kanren Dēta [Fiscal Year Reiwa 6 Housing Economy Related Data]. https://www.mlit.go.jp/statistics/details/t-jutaku-2_tk_000002.html (accessed 27 July 2025).

Li TE, Chan ETH (2018) Connotations of ancestral home: an exploration of place attachment by multiple generations of Chinese diaspora. Population, Space and Place 24(8): e2147. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2147

Low SM (2003) Embodied space(s): anthropological theories of body, space, and culture. Space and Culture 6(1): 9–18.

Low SM, Lawrence-Zúñiga D (2003) Locating culture. In: Low SM, Lawrence-Zúñiga D (eds) Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture. Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1–47.

Mogstad H, Rabe T (2024) From asylum seekers to kin: the making and effects of kinship between Norwegian citizens and migrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 50(6): 1489–1507. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2023.2183354

Moriyama T (2025) “Yobikake” no jinruigaku he mukete [Toward an anthropology of “calling”]. Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology 90(1): 005–018. Available at: https://doi.org/10.14890/jjcanth.90.1_005

Nikaido Y (2025) Japan to punish longer-term foreign residents in arrears. The Asahi Shimbun. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15832898

Rocheva AL (2015) Issledovanie pozitsii ‘kar’ery kvartiros’yomshchika’ i modelei prozhivaniia v Moskve migrantov iz Kirgizii i Uzbekistana [Research of ‘tenant career’ positions and housing models of migrants from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in Moscow]. Sotsiologicheskii Zhurnal 21(2): 31–50.

Rytter M (2010) The family of Denmark’ and ‘the aliens’: kinship images in Danish integration politics. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 75(3): 301–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2010.513773

Sahlins M (2011) What kinship is (part one). The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17: 2–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2010.01666.x

Speier A (2015) Czech hosts creating “a real home away from home” for North American fertility travellers. Anthropologica 57(1): 27–39.

Streeck J (2013) Transforming space into place: some interactions in an urban plaza. In: Motomura Y, Butler A, Bekki D (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). Springer, Vol. 7856, pp. 217–232.

Tan SK, Tan SH (2023) A creative place-making framework – story-creation for a sustainable development. Sustainable Development 31(5): 3673–3691. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2619

Tungohan E (2018) Temporary foreign workers in Canada: reconstructing “belonging” and remaking “citizenship”. Social & Legal Studies 27(2): 236–252. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663917746483

Voutira E (2020) Genealogies across the cold war divide: the case of the Pontic Greeks from the former Soviet Union and their “affinal repatriation”. Ethnography 21(3): 355–372. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120939589

Weatherly MS (2010) Transforming Space into Place: Development, Rock Climbing, and Interpretation in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, 1960-2010. MA Thesis. University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Wieczorek M (2019) Introduction: anthropological debates on place-making. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 48(1/2): 1–12.

Biographies

Ksenia Golovina is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Sociology at Toyo University, Japan. Initially trained in Japanese Studies, she received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Tokyo in 2012. She is the author of Russian Women in Japan: Migration, Marriage, and Life Crafting (Akashi Shoten, 2017, in Japanese) and has published in journals such as Housing Studies, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, and The Journal of Material Culture. Her current research investigates Russian-speaking migrants in Japan, with a focus on housing, homemaking, and placemaking.

|

You currently have no access to this content. Visit the access options page to authenticate.