Strangers In The Ethnic Homeland

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 were born in Brazil and are culturally Brazilian. As a result, they have become Japan's newest ethnic minority. Drawing upon close to two years of multisite fieldwork in Brazil and Japan, Takeyuki Tsuda has written a comprehensive ethnography that examines the ethnic experiences and reactions of both Japanese Brazilian immigrants and their native Japanese hosts.

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 were born in Brazil and are culturally Brazilian. As a result, they have become Japan's newest ethnic minority. Drawing upon close to two years of multisite fieldwork in Brazil and Japan, Takeyuki Tsuda has written a comprehensive ethnography that examines the ethnic experiences and reactions of both Japanese Brazilian immigrants and their native Japanese hosts.

This book examines Korean cases of return migrations and diasporic engagement policy. The study concentrates on the effects of this migration on citizens who have returned to their ancestral homeland for the first time and examines how these experiences vary based on nationality, social class, and generational status. The project’s primary audience includes academics and policy makers with an interest in regional politics, migration, diaspora, citizenship, and Korean studies.

In recent decades, increasing numbers of diasporic peoples have returned to their ethnic homelands, whether because of economic pressures, a desire to rediscover ancestral roots, or the homeland government's preferential immigration and nationality policies. Although the returnees may initially be welcomed back, their homecomings often prove to be ambivalent or negative experiences. Despite their ethnic affinity to the host populace, they are frequently excluded as cultural foreigners and relegated to low-status jobs shunned by the host society's populace. Diasporic Homecomings, the first book to provide a comparative overview of the major ethnic return groups in Europe and East Asia, reveals how the sociocultural characteristics and national origins of the migrants influence their levels of marginalization in their ethnic homelands, forcing many of them to redefine the meanings of home and homeland.

Faced with an aging workforce, Japanese firms are hiring foreign workers in ever-increasing numbers. In 1990 Japan's government began encouraging the migration of Nikkeijin (overseas Japanese) who are presumed to assimilate more easily than are foreign nationals without a Japanese connection. More than 250,000 Nikkeijin, mainly from Brazil, now work in Japan. The interactions between Nikkeijin and natives, says Joshua Hotaka Roth, play a significant role in the emergence of an increasingly multicultural Japan. He uses the experiences of Japanese Brazilians in Japan to illuminate the racial, cultural, linguistic, and other criteria groups use to distinguish themselves from one another. Roth's analysis is enriched by on-site observations at festivals, in factories, and in community centers, as well as by interviews with workers, managers, employment brokers, and government officials.Considered both "essentially Japanese" and "foreign," nikkeijin benefit from preferential immigration policy, yet face economic and political strictures that marginalize them socially and deny them membership in local communities. Although the literature on immigration tends to blame native blue-collar workers for tense relations with migrants, Roth makes a compelling case for a more complex definition of the relationships among class, nativism, and foreign labor. Brokered Homeland is enlivened by Roth's own experience: in Japan, he came to think of himself as nikkeijin, rather than as Japanese-American.

Croatia gained the world's attention during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In this context its image has been overshadowed by visions of ethnic conflict and cleansing, war crimes, virulent nationalism, and occasionally even emergent regionalism. Instead of the norm, this book offers a diverse insight into Croatia in the 1990s by dealing with one of the consequences of the war: the more or less forcible migration of Croats from Serbia and their settlement in Croatia, their "ethnic homeland." This important study shows that at a time in which Croatia was perceived as a homogenized nation-in-the-making, there were tensions and ruptures within Croatian society caused by newly arrived refugees and displaced persons from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Refugees who, in spite of their common ethnicity with the homeland population, were treated as foreigners; indeed, as unwanted aliens.

Strangers in New Homelands is a collection of papers emanating from Annual International Conferences on the Social Reconstruction of the concept of “home” among immigrants in the diaspora. For many immigrants in the diaspora, the concept of “home”, around which this conference has revolved, evokes confusion, fear, hopes, and aspirations. The presentations in this book therefore seek to throw light on what this concept means for many people who have uprooted themselves from their familiar environments and settled or seek to make new homes out of strange and unfamiliar environments. The contributors in this publication were drawn from the field of researchers on immigrant and refugee movements and settlements, education, community development and front-line immigrant and refugee settlement workers. They draw on experiences from their research, field practice vignettes, personal experiences and case work examples to highlight and explore the critical issues involved in the field of forced and voluntary migration and resettlement around the world, and the settlement of migrants and refugees in new societies. Cumulatively, the contributors examine the challenges of settlement, integration and adaptation that new comers face in host societies. The critical approaches and strong balance of research with applications show the implications of the issues for the profession of social work and allied fields. The scholarship presented here also highlights the implications of the issues discussed for further research and social policy development. Anyone interested in learning about the challenges and intricacies of the migration process around the world must read this book. It is highly recommended for politicians, policy makers, social work professionals, educators and organizations dealing with immigrants and refugees.

Since the late 1980s, Brazilians of Japanese descent have been return migrating to Japan as unskilled foreign workers. 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 were born in Brazil and are culturally Brazilian. As a result, they have become Japan's newest ethnic minority.Drawing upon close to two years of multisite fieldwork in Brazil and Japan, Takeyuki Tsuda has written a comprehensive ethnography that examines the ethnic experiences and reactions of both Japanese Brazilian immigrants and their native Japanese hosts. In response to their socioeconomic marginalization in their ethnic homeland, Japanese Brazilians have strengthened their Brazilian nationalist sentiments despite becoming members of an increasingly well-integrated transnational migrant community. Although such migrant nationalism enables them to resist assimilationist Japanese cultural pressures, its challenge to Japanese ethnic attitudes and ethnonational identity remains inherently contradictory.Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland illuminates how cultural encounters caused by transnational migration can reinforce local ethnic identities and nationalist discourses.