Abstract
Wanderlust: Young Canadian Professionals’ Movement and Lives Between Canada and Japan

Ravi Jilwah

This M.A. anthropology thesis investigates the movement and transnational lives of young Canadian professionals who have worked and lived in Japan. I address the problem of linear notions of the life course and essentialist categorizations of mobile agents. This problem is largely in line with concepts such as the ‘middle class’ that are no longer tied solely to notions of wealth and associated forms of prestige. I approach this problem in engaging with particular moments in young people’s lives that inspire and propel them to pursue opportunities beyond the confines of longstanding western notions of the life course. In this study, I carried out ethnographic fieldwork in organizational events pertaining to this movement. I also interviewed 15 young Canadian professionals who have or were intending to move between Canada and Japan to explore their aspirations, career goals, and future plans. I apply concepts of mobility, youth, and the life course to generate scholarly interest into the lives of young westerners and to demonstrate that we need not necessarily look far and beyond our borders to discover aspects of ‘foreignness’. I furthermore attempt to convince readers that it is not solely the experiences of travel that changes sojourners, but the way and the means in which they internalize, process, and voice their travel experiences at different points in their lives.