Acting Brazilian in Japan: Ethnic Resistance among Return Migrants

Flashcards related to ethnic identity and resistance among Japanese-Brazilian migrants in Japan.

Belief and Knowledge

A set of convictions, values, and viewpoints regarded as “the truth”.

Nikkeijin

Japanese descendants born and living abroad

Migrant nationalism

A form of deterritorialized nationalism where national loyalties are articulated outside the territorial boundaries of the nation-state.

Resistance identities

Generated by those actors that are in positions/conditions devalued and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination thus building trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society.

Ethnic resistance

Behavior that demonstrates a refusal or unwillingness to assimilate to the culture of the majority group, motivated by a conscious intent to oppose majority cultural norms.

Autonomous social groups

Social groups which have not yet been subjugated and symbolically incorporated into the dominant ideological system, retaining their own cultural systems and generally resist and oppose dominant hegemony from an independent cultural base by asserting their own system of values and defending their cultural autonomy.

Culturalist movement

The conscious mobilization of cultural differences in the service of a larger national politics, frequently associated with struggles for stronger recognition from existing nation-states.

Hegemonic Japanese ethnic demands

Expectations for nikkeijin to comply with Japanese cultural standards due to assumptions that those of Japanese descent should possess cultural facility.

Brazilian ethnic counter-identity

A strong self-consciousness that they are not Japanese but Brazilian foreigners, allowing them to effectively resist the cultural pressures placed on Japanese descendants.

Habitus

A system of habitual, unconscious, and collectively held dispositions that are learned and deeply internalized by individuals and that structure their behavior.

Schemas

Flexible cognitive processes and implicit procedures of recognition and interpretation of actual experience that are learned and internalized to various degrees and that motivate behavior without always being consciously known by individuals.

Nikkeijin samba

Samba parades organized by Japanese-Brazilians in Japan, representing a creative production of cultural forms in ethnic resistance and a deterritorialized context.