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Entrepreneurial selves, governmentality and lifestyle migrants in rural Japan

Abstract Since the 2008 Lehman shock, the number of individuals who have decided to move to rural areas in order to pursue more individualized modes of working and living has increased in Japan. This ethnographic article explores how urbanite newcomers grapple between their ambitions of engaging in self-created work and the pressures of making their dreams come true. The study draws on participant observation and interviews conducted in Tokushima Prefecture and Hokkaido in 2016–2017. Narratives and quotidian practices of lifestyle migrants across Japan indicate that the pursuit of entrepreneurial subjectivity often concurs with a high degree of self-government and senses of mental pressure. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of governmentality studies, the article examines how individuals with entrepreneurial aspirations negotiate their fragile subjectivities between self-management and coercion in neoliberal contexts.