The feminization of migration in the Asia-Pacific region is a salient characteristic that reflects the global trends of population movement, but also the persisting economic and demographic disparities that condition flows of Asian women particularly within the region. Over the last three decades, the increasing number and types of migrant women have depicted significant socio-structural transformation both in receiving and sending societies. While literature tends to focus on the macro-context of labor migration and transnational activism of female migrant workers (Kaur and Metcalfe 2007, Piper and Yamanaka 2003), this interdisciplinary panel present micro-level accounts diverse social roles that migrant women play, mainly in Japan as the host society while engaging in social, cultural and economic practices in their homelands.

 This panel looks into the complimenting (rather than contrasting) significance of transnationalism and integration in the lives of immigrant women through the following cases: Filipino migrant mothers' shifting aspirations and ideals of social mobility between Japan and the Philippines, newcomer Korean marriage migrants' (lack of) participation in and belonging to either Japanese or Korean community, newcomer Chinese women migrants' life trajectories in comparison to their lives in mainland China, and Indian women's efforts to negotiation of socio-cultural differences between Japan and India.

 Using transnational perspectives, the four papers in this panel draw on life histories, interviews and mixed methods to reaffirm the significance of gender in analyzing the views and experiences of these women about themselves in relation to “others” in the inseparable private-public spheres of the economic, social and cultural systems in home and host societies. Whereas their experiences denote their vulnerabilities attributed to conditions of social distance, ethnic diversity, political invisibility as well as migrancy, these papers underscore the active agency of women as a gendered subject – whether in the creation of identities, or in the performance of their social roles as family and community member, or worker.