Return Migration of Japanese-Brazilians to Japan: The Nikkeijin as Ethnic Minority and Political Construct

Abstract

Diaspora 5:1 1996 Return Migration of JapaneseBrazilians to Japan: The Nikkeijin as Ethnic Minority and Political Construct Keiko Yamanaka University of California, Berkeley Introduction In June 1990, Japan implemented a new immigration policy. The new policy, while making it illegal to hire undocumented foreigners, grants to second generation (Nisei) and third generation (Sansei) people of Japanese ancestry (Nikkeijin) a stay of up to three years and unlimited access to the labor market. Other unskilled foreign workers, most of whom are Asians without Japanese ancestry, are “undocumented” and therefore subject to deportation. As a result of this policy change, the yearly admission of Nikkeijin, mostly from Brazil and Peru, increased four-fold, from 19,000 in 1988 to 79,000 in 1990, while the legal status and demographic profile of immigrants have diversified. Consequently the issue of foreign workers in Japan has become increasingly complex, prominent and problematic.1 A trickle of Nikkeijin had flowed into Japan earlier, but these were holders of Japanese or dual citizenship. Nisei and Sansei Nikkeijin flooded into Japan after 1990, drawn by an explosive demand for labor in manufacturing industries in jobs shunned by Japanese. Legitimized as residents and workers by the new policy, they constituted the overwhelming majority of immigrants. In 1991 the annual influx of Brazilian and Peruvian nationals reached a peak of 120,000, (96,000 and 24,000, respectively). The following year the Japanese economy plunged into a serious recession. The number of annual arrivals dropped by approximately 15% in 1992 and 1993. Nevertheless, by 1994 more than 200,000 Nikkeijin (160,000 Brazilians, 35,000 Peruvians and 6,800 other South American nationalities) remained as residents and workers in the major Japanese manufacturing towns. These figures exclude the small numbers of those Nikkeijin who entered Japan with Japanese passports. This article is based on field research, conducted in 1994, comprising interviews in Hamamatsu, a city of half a million in Shizuoka Prefecture of the Tokai region on the Pacific Coast of Central Japan. More than 7,000 Nikkeijin and their families from xxxxxxxxxx 65 Diaspora 5:1 1996 Brazil and Peru live in that city, working in the automobile parts industry which dominates its economy. My research addresses two major questions regarding this recent migration of Nikkeijin, primarily Japanese-Brazilians. I refer to this process as “return migration” because the immigrants have returned from their own homeland in Latin America, to their ancestral homeland, Japan, from which their parents or grandparents emigrated in the period between 1908 and 1973. First, I ask why Nikkeijin, among all possible groups, have been invited to complement the shrinking low-skill labor force. This question is ultimately concerned with the political (and not merely economic) decision of the Japanese government to create a special residence visa (“long-term resident visa”) for second and third generation Nikkeijin without Japanese citizenship when the revised immigration law took effect in June 1990. Second, I examine the possibility that the recent Nikkeijin immigrants to Japan may transform themselves from short-term sojourners to long-term settlers. As will be demonstrated below, by 1994 ample evidence had accrued to suggest that they are now collectively interested in permanent settlement in their ancestral country. Factors associated with this rapid transformation of Nikkeijin’s migration process are complex, originating in both sending and receiving countries. In addressing these two questions, I will employ a “migration systems” approach (Kritz, Lim and Zlotnik; Castles and Miller) that emphasizes connections between the two countries at both macro- and micro-levels. Migration Systems Theory Two dominant theories in international labor migration studies are relevant to this study. The “push-pull” theory, which originates from neoclassical economics, emphasizes changes in macro-structural , economic and demographic factors as the main causes of labor migration. According to this theory, economic inequality between a more prosperous country and a less prosperous one creates a gradient of difference that explains emigration from the latter to the former. Migration is seen as a consequence of individualistic, tacit calculations by migrants in search of better economic opportunities elsewhere (Borjas). The second major theory, “historical-structural,” has emerged from the Marxist tradition of thought as a critique of the simplistic assumptions built...