Jeffrey Lesser. Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present.

Abstract

Immigration studies are especially challenging for scholars, who frequently deal with “both sides” of the migration equation and the dissimilarities between sending and receiving societies. Consequently, such undertakings often focus on just one migrating population or event for in-depth, monographic examination. Rarely does a work assess the impact of diverse migrating populations in the aggregate on a host country. Yet, this is what Jeffrey Lesser's very readable Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil,1808 to the Present does with respect to the ongoing process of crafting a Brazilian national identity. The work is calibrated to be an undergraduate survey as part of Cambridge's “New Approaches to the Americas” series, which provides broad yet succinct coverage of important themes in Latin American history. The overarching question examined herein is simply what does it mean to be a Brazilian? The answer, if there is one, is far more complicated. Over the past two or so centuries, Brazil, along with the United States, Canada, and Argentina, has attracted the lion's share of migrants to and within the Americas. An established scholar of twentieth-century Japanese, Jewish, Arab, and other ethnic groups' immigration to Brazil, Lesser is well qualified to bring the histories of the many sets of Brazil-bound migrants under one trim roof and assess their contributions to the evolving definition of national identity. To achieve conciseness, some glossing of Brazilian history inevitably occurs and may occasionally produce a furrowed brow among specialists. Nevertheless, at this order of magnification, the loss in resolution of finer points is acceptable.