An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants: Childhood, Family, and Work

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Description

In this book, Ethel Kosminsky studies the Japanese emigration to the planned colony of Bastos in So Paulo, Brazil in the early twentieth century. She explores the stories of Japanese immigrants who replaced the labor of recently-freed slaves on coffee plantations, and their descendants return migration to Japan when the Bastos economy began to suffer in the late twentieth century. Using interviews and fieldwork done in both Bastos and Japan, Kosminsky integrates sociological, historical, political, economic, and ethnographic knowledge to analyze the consequences of these temporary labor migrations on the immigrants and their families.

Reviews

This interdisciplinary monograph is the culmination of long-term theoretical and ethnographic research and is an important contribution both to the history of migration of Japanese labourers families to Brazil, their adaptation to the new conditions, and to socio-ethnographic studies on childhood, coming of age and the formation of family bonds. At the same time, it is an interesting study on the life of international economic migrants from Japan to Brazil, whose children and grandchildren (the next generations of migrants) decided to return to the country of their grandparents origin. The author points to the usefulness of ethnographic research in studying the migration of families with children. This type of research enables a more in-depth understanding of the daily lives of the research participants in the conditions of migration and their socio-cultural and geographical identity. Importantly, it also indicates paths for the exploration of interdependencies between history and childhood biographies in societies with the second and third generation of migrating migrants.

* Children's Geographies *
This fascinating book documents the transnational experience of Japanese Brazilians, a group bearing links to Asia and South America but fully recognized in neither setting. Sociologist Ethel V. Kosminsky devotes a tour de force of sociological proficienciestheoretical, historical, and descriptiveto her analysis. An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants: Childhood, Family, and Work is a compelling addition to our comprehension of migration and nationality. -- Steven J. Gold, professor of sociology, Michigan State University
In this book, Ethel Kosminsky recounts Japanese workers sojourning migration to Brazil in the early twentieth century, their economic adaptation, social relationships, and retention of ethnic cultural and religious traditions vividly, mainly using ethnographic stories. She also examines second- and third-generation Japanese Brazilians transnational return migration to Japan for lower-level jobs since the early 1980s and their downward mobility and social isolation in the homeland. This book makes a significant contribution to both the history of Japanese workers migration to Brazil and their adaptations there, and to the social-science studies of transnational return migration. -- Pyong Gap Min, CUNY/Queens College
This book is different from other studies of Japanese Brazilians in a number of ways. It focuses on the Japanese colony of Bastos in Brazil and places it in wider historical and national context. While examining the contemporary lives of Japanese Brazilians in Bastos, it also examines their ethnic return migration to their ancestral homeland of Japan. Even specialists who are familiar with this topic will find the lived experiences of Japanese Brazilians in both Brazil and Japan to be quite interesting. -- Takeyuki Tsuda, Arizona State University

Author Bio

Ethel V. Kosminsky has her PhD in sociology from So Paulo University and is an independent researcher.