In the city of god?: The Roman Catholic Church and Japanese Brazilian migrants in Japan

Since 1990 Japan has witnessed the increasing flow of immigrants in order to work at the industrial sector. Among those immigrants, Japanese Brazilians constitute the third largest foreign population in Japan after Chinese and Korean descendants respectively. This paper analyzes the experience of Japanese Brazilian migrants by focusing on the role that the Roman Catholic Church has played in their adaptation to the Japanese society. In the first part of this paper, I will describe how the Roman Catholic Church offers to the newcomers an ethnic space where they can speak their language, reproduce their culture, and receive moral support in the midst of their dialy-lived situations as immigrants. I will then interrogate how this ethnic space becomes a bridge to fostering connections with the broader social networks such as international programs at the city or town level, legal and immigration information, counseling or contact with health organizations, among many other services. This constitutes an important step into the process of adjusting to life in Japan. Although immigrants in Japan are perceived as temporary workers, some of them have been granted long-term residency. However, the constant reforms to the immigration law in favor of further controlling make evident that immigrants do not enjoy the same level of rights than citizens, leading to social conflicts and the deepening of symmetrical schismosis. I conclude that religious organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church have the potential to ally with the immigrants in order to enhance their local citizenship, which is uneven throughout the country. For example, while in some cities Japanese Brazilian migrants barely receive the services offered by the state, in other cities they have even obtained the right to vote at the local level. This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in Japan between 2006 and 2011.