Diaspora and Identity: Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and JapanSão Paulo, Brazil, holds the largest number of Japanese descendants outside Japan, and they have been there for six generations. Japanese immigration to Brazil started in 1908 to replace European immigrants to work in São Paulo’s expanding coffee industry. It peaked in the late 1920s and early 1930s as anti-Japanese sentiment grew in Brazil. Approximately 189,000 Japanese entered Brazil by 1942 in mandatory family units. After the war, prewar immigrants and their descendants became quickly concentrated in São Paulo City. Immigration from Japan resumed in 1952, and by 1993 some 54,000 immigrants arrived in Brazil. By 1980, the majority of Japanese Brazilians had joined the urban middle class and many had been mixed racially. In the mid-1980s, Japanese Brazilians’ “return” labor migrations to Japan began on a large scale. More than 310,000 Brazilian citizens were residing in Japan in June 2008, when the centenary of Japanese immigration was widely celebrated in Brazil. The story does not end there. The global recession that started in 2008 soon forced unemployed Brazilians in Japan and their Japanese-born children to return to Brazil. |
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Diaspora and Identity: Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan Mieko Nishida No preview available - 2019 |