The class-oriented inheritance of ethnicity: analysis of the symbolic capital of Japanese-ness among Japanese Brazilians in Recife and Ivoti

Journal article

The early experiences of immigrants may create different trajectories for the ethnicities of their descendants. Second-generation Japanese Brazilians in Recife and Ivoti express their ethnic subjectivity on a different individual basis: some emphasize Brazilian-ness, while others highlight Japanese-ness. The difference lies in whether memories of the early experiences of their families give them an incentive to inherit Japanese-ness in order to make sense of their current class situations and the transitions in their lives. By dealing with three different individual narratives of second-generation Japanese descendants I recorded in Brazil, this article aims to shed light on the occurrence of class-oriented ethnic divisions within the ethnic subjectivities of the descendants of Japanese migrants in Brazil.

Authors: Yokoyama, Y

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 180-192
• Publication date: 2018-01-01
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-azxkrjobd
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: ethnicity; class; Brazil; symbolic capital; JASO; ancestry; immigration; divided ethnic subjectivity