Risa Murase, Ph.D. candidate in Sociology

The Phillips Ambassadors Program is thrilled to have Risa Murase serve as the 2022 Graduate Phillips Ambassador. Risa is an international Ph.D student at the Department of Sociology who hails from Tokyo, Japan. She comes to us with several years of teaching assistant experience, having taught at Sophia University and Chuo University in Japan, and now at UNC. Risa also coordinated and led undergraduate students through their research trips to Philippines and Vietnam. Risa will assist our Academic Director, Dr. Michael Tsin, in the administration of the unique Phillips Ambassadors course that flanks each ambassador’s term abroad in Asia.

Our Graduate Ambassador fellowship supports and encourages summer research in Asia in the student’s area of focus. Risa embarked on a research trip to Japan this summer to continue her study of immigration policies. She summarizes her research here: “The aim of this study is to identify whether the liberalization of immigration policies is associated with a more positive media framing of immigrants. Immigration policies are a contested terrain over how society perceives the “immigrant”. In the last decade, as nation states have taken further restrictive stances toward immigration issues, scholars have noted an increasingly negative image of immigrants to arouse as well. Although many studies have focused on restrictive policies leading to a diffusion of negative discourse concerning immigrants or vice versa, focusing on the case of Japan, I ask how the liberalization of immigration policies affect the framing of immigrants in the media. A content analysis of two major newspapers (Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun) comparing the period of 1987-1990 and 2016-2019 is conducted. Results show that expanding of visa categories may be associated with a more positive media framing of immigrants.”

Welcome Risa!