You can't go home again: Japanese Peruvian immigrants and the struggle for integration and identity in the Japanese homeland

Abstract

This dissertation explores the social and economic marginalization of Japanese Peruvian immigrants to Japan, and the impact of that marginalization on their incorporation into, and their sense of identity with, Japanese society. I draw on the complex and contradictory nature of Japanese Peruvians’ ties to Japan and Peru, including their historical relationship with the Japanese state, and their racialization as foreigners in both Peru and Japan, as I analyze Peruvian parents’ efforts to both permanently settle in Japan and to instill a Peruvian ethnic identity in their children. Through ethnographic study, I focus on a public elementary school in central Japan as an important site for the socialization of the 1.5 and second generation. I analyze how the school reproduces Peruvians’ marginalized status by providing ineffective remedial language assistance for children, stereotyping Peruvian children and parents, questioning the parents’ commitment to living in Japan, and challenging the parents to acculturate. I also examine Peruvians’ efforts at incorporation into the local community, including their attempts to distance themselves from other foreigners as a way to deflect negative stereotypes of their group.