Freie Universität Berlin

I have always found this article insightful, even more so now, more than when Huntington was alive. With the recent elections in the US and Trump spreading fear, the so called “Hispanic Challenge” has made it to the White House.

This article, unlike many, give a short, but I would say well thought out introduction into Latin American migrations to the US. This is not the main goal of the article, but we get some context into the nature of immigrants, and now second and third generations (citizens).

I think the article made some interesting comments on ethnicity, education, the rise of transnational communities, and also on downward assimilation.

The line from a bureaucratic box to conceptualizing Hispanic as a ‘race’ is very disturbing, although not new since all “races” are social products. Yet, it is very interesting how things such as these evolve through time, and just as interesting, how they are adopted by the target population, which had nothing to do with coining the term (other names such as ‘Indian’ and ‘African-American’ come to mind).

As far as divisions into how second generations grow-up, much has to do with legal status as much as it does with a parent’s education. As the author notes, second and third generation Cuban-Americans have the highest success rate of the Latino populations in the US. This has to do with how much their parents excelled both in education and the workforce, but just as much, I would say it is the fact that Cubans can become permanent residents, and later citizens much easier than other migrant groups. Mexican migrants on the other hand, have the most difficulty in accessing a legal status that would make opportunities such as access to different educational avenues and/or employment opportunities available.

The most important thing that I took from this article however, was a fact-based analysis that demonstrates that pigeonholing populations based on prejudice does not hold-up to reality. Whether it is Huntington, or now Trump, Latino/a populations for the most part positively contribute to a society, which at many times acts as if it did not need them.

What do you guys think?

It seems this was the wrong article. Having said that, it was still a very interesting one.

The authors pick up on a theme discussed a few weeks back, and that is on the diversity of locations when it comes to Peruvian migration.

What the article does well, and at the same time, is what makes it somewhat difficult, is the use of the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP). The LAMP is an extension of the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), which is a great tool when analyzing migration, mostly to the United States. The LAMP is a great offshoot since it attempts to capture the same thing done for the MMP into the LAMP. The authors do a good job in describing the shortcomings of the data available to them, while at the same time developing an analysis that concurs with Peruvian international migration as a whole, which is that it is mostly a middle-class phenomenon, while internal migration is mostly done by the working classes and the rural poor.

I found it useful since it broke down different aspects of Peruvian migration such as educational level, geographical location, and sex. However, since it was mostly gathered with Lima province, and even though 1/3 of the country resides in Lima, it can still be misleading. At the same time, though, it provided some good empirical data.

I did find their double translation of salir adelante peculiar since it need not necessarily mean going abroad. And since it is a play on words, I’m wondering if it was used by those interviewed, or was it taken by the authors. Just wondering.

As far as a culture of emigration is concerned. I always wondered what this really means. In this case, it relates to a 30+ year period where Peru, and Latin America experienced violence and economic hardship through both internal and external forces. These forces created an environment where migration became as aspect of life. Is 30 years enough to state that a culture of emigration is in place? Take out external factors, and do people still want to leave?

What do you guys think?

Even though this article is dated in some ways, I always find it interesting and relevant when thinking about identity. Tsuda manages to explore and analyze identity without catching himself essentializing it as other authors do. At the same time, he managed to delve deep into a community through what I found to be a thorough description and analysis of what Japanese-Brazilians experience in their daily lives in Japan.

What I found very interesting was his ability to discuss identity without necessarily having to pinpoint it. He mentions the centering and decentering process that an individual goes through whenever they move from one country to another; but this could also take place from city to city and neighbourhood to neighbourhood. I think explaining this at the outset of the article provided good insight into not necessarily looking at Japanese-Brazilians looking for some for of identity, but realizing that it is a relative thing that depends as much on time as it does on space.

The author also moves from different spaces such as the workplace, city streets, and neighbourhoods trying to explain how is it that someone that looks Japanese actually is not really considered one. And at the same time, how a person that has their whole life considered himself or herself to be Japanese deals with the refusal of those co-ethnics, and become a foreigner in their ancestral home. This begs the question as to why governments would assume that just because one has ancestors in a specific land, that they would be able to assimilate better than others that do not.

What I found interesting also was how a number of Japanese-Brazilians came to terms with being Japanese in Brazil, but not so in Japan. Usually, in articles of this kind that I read, there is a focus on the negative effects of identity formation when migration takes place. This however, need not be so; as we see there are multiple ways to deal with rejection. Coming to terms with their Brazilian-ness can be seen as a positive aspect of migration and return.

What do you guys think?

In reading and thinking about this article, it always amazes me how ‘racial hierarchies’ continue to hold sway within some migrant populations. It’s obvious that what the author explores does not hold true for all Nikkei, be them Peruvian or Brazilian; but I wonder how long it takes for it to become ‘true’? Apparently, not long at all since the author mentions the racial hierarchy based on some level or ‘purity’ depending on the generation you belong to, combined, in this case with the hierarchy of nations that exists, even if these hierarchies are mostly based on stereotypes. It takes along time to get to know a neighbourhood, let alone a country, but I always find it interesting how assumptions of the ‘Other’, more often than not win the day.

I found the author’s finding on the self-segregation by Japanese-Brazilians and Peruvians to be interesting. It reminded me of my work on how Peruvians in Madrid separate themselves from other Peruvians because they maybe too indigenous, and do have enough Spanish blood in them.

The issue of becoming the ‘Other’ in a place where you think you ought to belong is a very prominent one. Even if by descent you may belong to an ethnic group, by growing up in a different area of the world, your cultural baggage is extremely different, even if you physically ‘look’ like one of them. This never ceases to amaze, when second generations go back to their parents’ homeland, a gap opens between what one perceived themselves to be (insert ethnicity or nationality) versus how these groups actually reside in a specific geography.

I found the article as a whole a good introduction Latin American migrations to Asia. It provided a shift in geographies, but also informed us on topics that do not seem to change much throughout different continents, which is the idea of the ‘Other’ and how they are not only perceived by majority populations, but also by other minority populations that supposedly have the same ethnic heritage.

We will continue next week on this subject with the case of Japanese-Brazilians in Japan.

This article touched on a couple forms of migration that are usually not integrated within migration studies since they are either not included as migration (adoption) or are seen mostly through a security lens (getting papers for others through a work ‘contract’) and talked about from that perspective.

I found it interesting how adoption, at least legally is not viewed as a form of migration. On one hand, I can see the argument for not placing it under that rubric, since the idea, at least legally is that of a child becomes part of a different nation. On the other hand, the exclusion of child having the ability to have access to two or more cultural, social, and political histories is difficult to comprehend. This however, is not outside the norm since we are all taught from an early age a sanitized ‘national’ of heroes and villains.

It is also interesting how legality also follows social and cultural norms. In this case, the social and cultural norm of the ‘nuclear’ family is where the law rests upon, which makes the case perhaps for those that fight against universal rights since the nuclear family is not the only way to look at family. This difference makes people break or go-around the law when one decides to help another person to migrate. The work ‘contracts’ in this article present a case in point, where people that do not fit within the definition of ‘family’ are helped to migrate to Spain by people that see circumventing the law as necessary in order to help those they see as family.

As we continue, we often see that the line between legal/illegal depends on the prism. Although unlawful to bring people not directly related to a person, many times, a split takes place between what is legal and what is considered to be ‘right’ regardless of what others may think.

I also found the idea of return interesting. I wondered what does a person return to? One does try to find where they were adopted, but what happens after. The case of the girl that began an NGO is an anomaly. How does a person return to place they have no memory of?

The article could have gone deeper into the analysis of the people interviewed. It did not go deep enough either into how this form of migration is transnational, nor did it go far enough at the individual level as to see how it is that people that are adopted, or migrate through false work contracts are interrelated. From what I read, the links were tenuous at best.

What do you think?

This article takes us back down to the local; it presents us what is referred to as a ‘slice of life’. I think these types of articles are important for at least two reasons. First, they usually (like this one) provide the reader with specific information on the sample of participants; and second, some type of insight into how this population goes about their lives. Having said that, the article concentrates on mobilities from Latin America to Europe, and specifically to the UK, but what I found a little lacking was a more precise view of how the people in London lived. For example, labor insertion is important, but just as important is where they reside, how they reside within the city itself; the article made it seem as if these people constantly lived outside their own local geographies. What I mean is that as much as remittances are important, many of us often forget that the people sending these remittances also have to live a daily life. We instead take them out of their daily successes, failures, and struggles, and only view them as cogs in the remittance machine, the faceless migrants sending money home without given them a second thought.

What I found interesting what the author’s focus on mobilities outside the traditional view of bi-national movements. Transnational mobility, in the Latin American context, once again is concentrated on Mexican and Cuban migrations, which have more often than not, followed a sender-receiving country model. This type of migration does hold up with a number of populations, but even those, no longer hold water. Mexicans and Cubans have also begun migrating to Canada and parts of Europe.

The article also brings to light, at least to some extent; smuggling and buying fake passports, and the things that usually brand people as criminals and/or illegals.

What do you guys think?

Although we can go back to the 1600s to view the Chinese in residing and carrying out commerce in Lima, as with the majority of communities from around the globe, it was not until the mid 19^th Century, when the Chinese joined the mass global migrations that Peru became a geography with a considerable concentration of Cantonese communities due to the infamous ‘coolie trade’.

The author to my knowledge is one of a handful of people detailing contemporary Chinese communities in Lima (and elsewhere in Peru). This is of great value because much of the attention on Chinese migration concentrates on the ‘Coolie Trade’.

Lausent-Herrera takes us deep into the heart of today’s Barrio Chino as much as she can. She can do this because she’s been working on the Chinese in Peru since the 1980s, which makes her an invaluable source of information and knowledge on contemporary movement from across the Pacific, and across Lima’s districts.

It’s important to note what Lausent-Herrera points out, the difference between Cantonese and Fujianese. There really was no ‘Chinese’ migration per se. When we talk about ‘Chinese’ migration to the Americas, the populations that we are mostly talking about are Cantonese-speaking communities from Guangdong Province in southern China (where Hong Kong and Macau are located). So when the author mentions the arrival of the Fujianese, it is a big deal since between 95-98% of the Chinese in the Americas are Cantonese from southern China, which also helps to explain the strength of their networks.

The author delves into a continuous history within the Barrio Chino that continues till today. From its early settlers from Hong Kong, to runaway and former coolies to a more even migration between men and women, to a new injection of life brought by Fujianese migrants, who for the most part got ‘stuck’ in Peru on their way to the US and Canada, life in the Barrio Chino continues today as it did over 150 years ago.

The Barrio Chino is also a representation of how neighborhoods shift and change over time. We all know neighborhoods and districts where we grew up, and how they were when we lived there, how they used to be from the stories that older generations tell, and how they have changed since we moved out (gentrification, the good and the bad, comes to my mind when I think of my old neighborhood in Toronto).

For many that I’ve talked to, it is difficult to see Fujianese migrants take over, or at least settle in the alleys and streets of the old Barrio Chino, a nostalgia, in the minds of a number of Cantonese of the way it ‘used to be’ comes to mind when they speak of Capon and Paruro.

What did you guys think of the article?

Since there a couple more articles on Peruvian migration in the coming weeks, what I wanted to give you guys, was to view migration from a somewhat different point of view. When it comes to Latin American migration, for the most part, we take Mexican and Cuban migrations two of the most talked about examples. Mexican migration because of its sheer size and most unidirectional migration, usually from rural Mexico to the US; and Cuban migration because, until now it is regarded as the exception since if a Cuban sets foot on US soil, that person is immediately granted asylum.

Peruvian migration on the other hand is one that has further reaches than even what the article states. It concentration on the US, Southern Europe, and the Southern Cone makes sense since that is where the majority of Peruvians currently reside. However, the mention of Japan, and the omissions of Hong Kong, Macau, Dubai, and other parts of the globe also resound because they have not been looked at in depth, yet.

Peruvian migration, though, is I agree directly tied to historical migration patterns where networks have been kept strong since the mass migrations of the 19^th Century. The authors stated that there are at least 27 countries where Peruvians have migrated to, which in my mind speaks to a very late concentration by researchers on the role and strength of global social networks. These networks, from simple formations as to provide information on where to migrate, to complex familial and historical links that connect investments, information, human and social capital, are finally beginning to be understood by researchers.

The article also shines a light on the diversity of Peru’s population. For the most part, the view of this country is that it is comprised on Criollo, Mestizo, and Native populations. However, we often forget that the population is also made up of descendants from Africa, Asia, and Europe (excluding Spain).

In the following weeks we’ll dive a little deeper in Chinese and Japanese communities in Peru, and get some further insight in to the diversity of this country.

This week’s reading introduced us to Salvadoran migration to the US, where the vast majority of Salvadorans outside El Salvador reside. The article places geography (social and physical) as an important lens on how to view transnational migration since it places an importance not only on El Salvador and the US, but also the urban centres where many migrants come from, which is also of importance.

Although I think a geographic perspective is vital to understanding migration, I wonder if the article helped with that. I’m trying to convince myself that the word or concept of the transnational, for this article was forced in order to explain how Salvadoran migration could also be regarded within this vein or concept. And although, I don’t disagree that it could be seen through a transnational lens, what the article wrote about was more a static, or traditional (for lack of a better word) form of migration. This form of migration is not difficult to understand given the precarious legal status (temporary protective status or undocumented) that many Salvadorans find themselves in. Both the above-mentioned statuses place a geographic wall in front of many since it makes it virtually impossible to travel back and forth between the US and EL Salvador through channels that will not make them break any laws (e.g. returning via the Mexico-US border), thereby making it almost impossible to gain permanent residency.

What I found interesting (even if the text is about 10 years old) is the important insight on technology. Yes, technology allows many of us to go beyond border, as well as flying faster and cheaper to other countries and continents. Technology, however does not reach everyone, and at the same time, it helps prevent more and more people from moving since they may not have the right tech in their passport for instance (i.e. biometric passports).

The example of remittances brought, in my mind at least, how the transnational in this case exists, yet does not at the same time. On one hand, the transnational aspect of remittances can be thought in how money is wired in a transnational way to families and friends in El Salvador (in this specific case). On the other hand, this same transnationalism, cannot be thought of when in comes to population movement (as it would be in the EU for example) since people (especially those considered low or no skilled labour) are actively prevented from entering a country, or if inside, the loom of constant removal is always present.

Japanese migration to Peru was part and parcel of the mass migrations of the mid to late 19^th Century. As with any other migration during this time, it can’t be taken out of the global context of the time. Global migration to the Americas this time goes far beyond the images of Ellis Island, or the Atlantic crossing; they traverse both Pacific and Atlantic (and Indian in other migrations such as from India to Africa).

Japanese migration to the Americas is mostly concentrated in the US and Canada in the north and Peru and Brazil in the south. And, as I mentioned above, they are intimately connected and interconnected. As the author mentions, it was when the US began to curtail and try to stop migrations from Asia, as well as the need for cheap manual labour (due to the end of slavery) that Peru became an attractive geography.

Since Peruvian landowners kept the same prejudices as they did with the Chinese “Coolie” trade between 1849-1874, the reasons for migration, as Takenaka argues were guided by the Japanese government’s expansionist ideas, along with some form of population control (even though this argument does not hold water as the author notes). Yet, its true intentions of industrialization, Westernization, and profiting from remittances ring true of many of the reasons or arguments for contemporary migration today. Not much has changed it seems.

Another aspect also rings true; a majority of migrants were male. However, unlike Chinese migrants to Latin America, the majority of Japanese migrants practiced endogamy. Part of this, could probably be attributed to the fact that only the eldest son inherited any form of land, while younger brothers, usually had to migrate to urban centres, or other regions to make a livelihood.

Another aspect that the author touches on is the importance of networks. The study on network migration is still in its infancy, we still need to dive deeper into the strength of such networks. Much of the reason for this lack ofinformation is that migration studies since the 1920s has regarded migration as an individual form of mobility, and just like female migration, network building was also ignored when looking at human mobilities.

Peruvian farm owners and governments once again looked east as a possible source of migration since, just as it happened before Chinese migration began, the country could not attract enough Europeans to its shores since it could not compete ith Argentina, Brazil, the US, and Canada.

As with other minority populations, many Japanese became middlemen within different industries around urban centres such as Lima. And just like other minorities that thrived, they became targets because they charged too little, or gave out credit, or simply opened longer than their competitors.

Japanese communities in Peru had to endure a similar fate to that of Chinese migrants a few years earlier. Legal restrictions preventing further migration (unless you were already in the country) were aimed at keeping a European Peru (whatever that may mean).

What do you guys think?