South American Workers in Japan: Migration, Inequality, and Global Capitalism

This paper examines one local manifestation of global capitalism and transnational migration, specifically the flow of workers from South America (i.e., Brazil, Peru, and Argentina) to Japan since the late 1980s. While the Japanese economy had previously relied on young workers from the countryside as well as women entering the workforce, from this period it began to experience a serious labor shortage especially in secondary industries as population growth within the country slowed down while the economy continued to expand. Thus, the Japanese government began to accept unskilled workers of Japanese descent from South America, allowing them to engage in any types of work, including manual labor. By 2008, about 310,000 Brazilians and 60,000 Peruvians had migrated and settled in Japan.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. One is to examine this transnational migration within the context of the globalizing economy in the twentieth century. I will explore it not simply as a personal matter but as a phenomenon that epitomizes the extremely unequal distribution of wealth in the world and the almost unbridgeable economic gap between developed and developing countries. The other goal is to analyze the place of workers from South America in Japan’s labor market in particular and society broadly. I will examine how national origin and the economic status of one’s nation in global capitalism—factors over which individuals have little control—helps to determine one’s value in the labor market as well as how one is perceived by society in Japan. Previous studies have described these workers’ experiences ethnographically, but now that it has been quarter a century has passed since their arrival, this paper will historicize this phenomenon within the current of Japanese and world capitalist development.