Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective Book

With an immigrant population currently estimated at roughly 280,000, Japanese Brazilians are now the second largest group of foreigners in Japan. Although they are of Japanese descent, most of them were born in Brazil and have become culturally Brazilianized. As a result, they have become the newest ethnic minority in a very ethnically homogenous culture. Takeyuki Tsudu spent nearly two years living and working among this group, first in Brazil and then in Japan, and he has written a comprehensive ethnography about the social and cultural consequences of the return migration of second and third generation Japanese Brazilians to their ethnic homeland, mostly as unskilled foreign workers. The result of numerous interviews with workers, employers, teachers, and government officials, this book examines ethnic perceptions among both immigrant and native Japanese, and fully engages with theoretical issues bearing on migration, identity, nationalism, resistance, transnationalism, and globalization.Read More