INTRODUCTION: GLOBAL HIERARCHIES AND ETHNIC RETURN MIGRATION
There has been considerable recent interest in ethnic homecomings, not just by immigrants who have lived abroad for decades, but also by their later generation diasporic descendants (Long and Oxfeld 2004, Markowitz and Stefansson 2004, Münz and Ohliger 2003, Rock and Wolff 2002). In contrast to first generation immigrants who return to their countries of birth, the ethnic homecomings of these later generation diasporic descendants who return to their countries of ethnic origin are fraught with difficulties. Although ethnic return migrants often feel a sense of nostalgic, transnational affinity towards their ancestral homelands, their diasporic homecomings are often quite ambivalent, if not negative experiences as they are socially marginalized as cultural foreigners and unskilled immigrant workers.
Nonetheless, ethnic homecomings vary considerably for different groups of diasporic return migrants, even those who are “returning” to the same ethnic homeland. A case in point are Japanese Brazilians and Japanese Americans who migrate to Japan. Although both have identical ethnic origins as descendants of Japanese who immigrated to the Americas, because of their different nationalities as Brazilians and Americans, they have quite divergent ethnic experiences in their ethnic homeland of Japan.
Whereas the Japanese Brazilians are subject to ethnic and socioeconomic marginalization and come to assert a defensive, nationalist Brazilian counter-identity in response to their negative experiences in Japanese society, the Japanese Americans have much more positive interactions with native Japanese and develop a more accommodating, transnational and cosmopolitan ethnic consciousness in response to their sojourn in Japan. I argue that such disparate ethnic homecomings among Japanese diasporic descendants from the Americas are mainly a product of the very different international position of Brazil and the United States in the global hierarchy of nations.
The relative social integration of various immigrant groups in the host society is determined by two types of factors. One is the external sociopolitical reception of the immigrant group by the host country, which depends on its immigration and citizenship policies, domestic labor markets, educational systems, and levels of ethnic discrimination (Portes and Rumbaut 1996:Chapter 3, Reitz 2003). The social integration of a specific immigrant group tends to be better if it is legally accepted and granted basic sociopolitical rights, has more occupational and educational opportunities in the host society, and suffers less ethnic discrimination and marginalization.
The other general determinant of immigrant integration are the internal characteristics of the immigrants themselves, which includes the amount of human capital (e.g., education, skills, language ability) and social capital (ethnicity, gender, social class background)1 they bring with them to the host society (Borjas 1995, Portes and Rumbaut 2001, Sanders and Nee 1987, Zhou and Logan 1989).
The general assumption is that immigrant groups with greater human capital as well as social capital will be more economically successful, socially accepted, and have more positive immigrant experiences. Ultimately, it is a combination of external host society receptions and the human/social capital that immigrants possess which determines their socioeconomic success and integration.2
However, one important determinant of the incorporation and acceptance of immigrants that is sometimes overlooked is the status of their sending countries in the global hierarchy of nations. Not only does the sending country’s geopolitical and economic position affect the political/legal reception of its emigrants abroad, it also influences their position on the labor market as well as their cultural and social acceptability and can sometimes have a greater impact on the experiences of immigrants than other human/social capital variables such as socio-occupational qualifications and ethnic attributes. Just as global racial hierarchies (based on a continuum from white to black) affect the social reception of immigrants around the world, global national hierarchies also influence perceptions of different immigrant groups and their social status as well (Tsuda 2001).
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of Japanese Brazilian and Japanese American ethnic return migration to Japan. Their disparate ethnic homecomings in Japan cannot simply be explained by their external sociopolitical context of reception in Japan, which is quite similar. Both are legally admitted to Japan as migrants on short-term visas,3 become part of the same Japanese socioeconomic system, and occupy the same privileged status in the Japanese ethnoracial hierarchy as nikkeijin (Japanese descendants born and raised abroad). They are also roughly comparable in terms of human capital (both are relatively well-educated and highly skilled with similar levels of Japanese language competence4) and social capital (both are Japanese-descent nikkeijin who share an equal racial and cultural affinity with the Japanese and have middle class socio-occupational backgrounds).
The Japanese Americans experience a more favorable ethnic homecoming than the Japanese Brazilians primarily because of the much greater international stature of the United States compared to Brazil. America’s status as a rich, economic superpower ensures that the Japanese Americans migrate to Japan as high status professionals and students, whereas the Japanese Brazilians, despite their similar ethnic and socioeconomic background, are in Japan as unskilled factory workers in response to economic uncertainty in Third World Brazil. As a result, not only do the Japanese Americans have a much better workplace experience, they interact with more educated and cosmopolitan, middle class Japanese who are more receptive to foreigners.
In contrast, the Japanese Brazilians must deal primarily with less educated, working class Japanese who have a much more parochial outlook. The much greater international prominence of the United States and its global cultural dominance also means that the Japanese have greater cultural affinity to Japanese Americans and treat them with much more respect, compared to the ethnic prejudice and denigration that the Japanese Brazilians experience.5 Nonetheless, as Takanaka observes in the following chapter, the Japanese Brazilians still enjoy a higher ethnic status in Japan than Japanese Peruvian ethnic return migrants, who are supposedly from a nation that is even lower in the global order. In this manner, the global hierarchy of migrant sending countries translates directly into ethnic hierarchies among immigrant groups in the receiving country.
In this manner, the national origins of immigrants should be considered an important social capital variable which will influence their eventual social incorporation or marginalization as well as their ethnic status. Even for immigrants of the same ethnic ancestry residing in the same host society, those from advanced industrialized First World countries will tend to have more favorable immigrant and ethnic experiences than those from developing Third World countries. In this sense, geography is destiny.
Notes:
1. Human capital is based on individual-level skills and attributes and social capital are the resources available to individuals because of their membership in a social group” (Portes and Rumbaut 2001:353, Portes and Sensenbrenner 1993).
2.Immigrants with greater human/social capital will improve their host society reception and different host society receptions can make certain human/social capital variables more important than others (Tsuda, Valdez, and Cornelius 2003, cf. Portes and Rumbaut 2001:46-48).
3. In fact, the Japanese Brazilians are more legally privileged than the Japanese Americans since they are admitted on preferential visas with no activity restrictions which can be indefinitely renewed, as long as their documents are in order. In contrast, most Japanese Americans go to Japan on short-term work or student visas with activity restrictions and limited durations, although they are technically entitled to the same visas as the Japanese Brazilians.
4. Although neither speak much Japanese, the Japanese Brazilians again have a slight edge since they have done a better job of maintaining the language than their counterparts from the United States.
5. After nine months of fieldwork in two cities with Japanese Brazilian communities in Brazil (1993-1994), I conducted one year of fieldwork in two cities in Japan (1994-1995) with relatively large Japanese Brazilian immigrant communities. I worked for four intensive months as a participant observer in a large electrical appliance factory in Japan with Japanese Brazilian immigrant workers and conducted close to 100 in-depth interviews with Japanese Brazilians and Japanese workers, residents, and employers, as well as local and national government officials. My fieldwork with Japanese Americans is still on-going. In addition to 33 extensive interviews, I conducted participant observation among Japanese American ethnic organizations in San Diego and attended various community events.
* From Diasporic Homecomings: Ethnic Return Migration in comparative Perspective edited by Takeyuki Tsuda. With the permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.
Copyright (c) 2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University
