Dr. Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer (Yale University): "Bolsonaro Wins Japan: Japanese Brazilian Labor Migrants and the Rise of the Right"

Today, Brazilians in Japan constitute one of the largest groups of overseas Brazilians eligible to vote in presidential elections – second only to Brazilians residing in the United States. Of the Brazilian nationals in Japan – most of whom are labor migrants of Japanese descent – who voted for president in 2018, an overwhelming 90% or more elected Jair Bolsonaro in the second term. How is it that Bolsonaro – a vocally racist and anti-minority candidate – won over so many ethnically Japanese voters? In tackling this question, this talk draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Japanese Brazilian labor migrants and their families in both Japan and Brazil between the years 2009-2019. It contextualizes their political attitudes in terms of the broader frameworks of precarity and transnational migration, as well as the aspirations and barriers in mobility that they experience.

In order to understand the rise of the right among Japanese-Brazilian labor migrants, I argue, one must first examine the ongoing double precarity of recessionary Japan and Brazil in recent years. In doing so, I demonstrate how, to labor migrants moving between Japan and Brazil, the figure of Bolsonaro has come to represent ideals of safety, order, and transparency – ideals that are equated with life in Japan, but not Brazil under PT leadership. To many Japanese-Brazilian labor migrants, then, an eventual return to Brazil is only imaginable should the country “clean itself up” and join the same “civilized,” First World ranks as Japan – something only Bolsonaro and his party are deemed capable of achieving.

Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer received her Ph. D. in sociocultural anthropo­logy from Yale University and a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Oberlin College. Her multi-sited research explores experiences of ethnicity, gender, and class among different generations of Japanese-Brazilian labor migrants moving between Japan and Brazil over the last three decades. Specifically, she looks at the role of schools, family, workplaces, and religious institutions in shaping identity and transmigrant lifeways across national borders. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her doctoral dissertation titled “National Worlds, Transnational Lives: Nikkei-Brazilian Migrants in and of Japan and Brazil.”

Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer’s teaching focuses on contemporary Japanese society and culture, transnational migration, global cities, the construction of minorities and majorities, and anthropological field methods and theory.

Ort: Campus Bockenheim, Juridicum, Raum 604
Datum: 13. Juni, 18 Uhr c.t.