Varvara Mukhina

This study draws on the findings of a 2015–2017 research project that involved 54 Russian-speaking women from post-Soviet countries who lived in Japan. The main aim of the research was to identify the working status and conditions of these women. When sharing their work narratives with the researchers, many respondents tended to focus on experiences that they viewed as traumatic, thus portraying themselves as victims both individually and as members of a migrant community. This chapter examines how the notion of victimhood is reflected in the respondents’ use of the Russian language. The study explores both the linguistic resources utilized by the respondents to convey their perceptions and a narrated construction of victimhood. The aim of the chapter is to uncover the discursive mechanisms involved in these processes in the context of broader issues of migration, labor, identity, and gender as evidenced by the diasporic use of Russian. The Russian language emerged not only as a shared tool of intracommunal and transnational communication but also as an avenue for the construction of narratives of victimhood and the formation of a moral community.