Between 1908 and the 1950s, about 240,000 Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil. Although most started out in agriculture, over time Japanese immigrants and their descendants moved to urban areas and built a solid presence among Brazil’s middle sectors. By the 1990s, Japanese Brazilians were estimated at 1.2 million. In 1990, in the midst of economic uncertainties in Brazil and labor shortages in Japan, new opportunities emerged for Japanese Brazilians abroad when the Japanese government opened its labor market to people of Japanese descent. By 2000, an estimated 250,000 Brazilians of Japanese ancestry were living in Japan, the majority working in unskilled factory jobs. The essays in this volume explore the varied ways people from these transnational communities have built their lives, made sense of their experiences, and negotiated their roles and identities.
This volume proposes a multidisciplinary examination of the changing notions of ethnic, national, and transnational identities. The authors...
