The relationship of immigration to national identity is as politically controversial in Latin America today as it was during the 19th century. At that time, as Brazilian elites were forced to eliminate slavery, they sought to replace their African-descended labor force with European workers. Just as millions of African descendants became citizens of Brazil, hundreds of thousands of immigrants entered in a hierarchically advantaged position. As a result, an enormous group of Brazilian citizens suffered intense discrimination and prejudice, while newcomers often advanced up the social and economic ladder. The disconnect between ethnic origin and Brazilian nationality became ever more apparent, and concepts of race and nation became metaphorically linked in defining Brazilian identity.

Immigration was a crucial step in both the expansion of the economy and the creation of a post-colonial Brazilian national identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The largest groups of immigrants came from Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Elites hoped they would “whiten” Brazil racially and emulate the industrial achievements of Central Europe and the United States. Yet hundreds of thousands of non-European immigrants also settled in Brazil. Most were from the Middle East and Japan; today Brazil has the largest population of people of Japanese descent in the world—more citizens of Japanese origin, in fact, than the rest of the world combined—and one of the largest populations of people of Middle Eastern descent.

With the entry of such large numbers of immigrants from around the globe, national identity construction in Brazil took a unique path. Elites created a discourse of branqueamento (“whitening”). At the same time, 19th century Middle Eastern immigrants and 20th century Japanese immigrants became critical actors in the agricultural and industrial growth of the country. The children of these immigrants sought to establish ethnic spaces for themselves so that their national loyalty to Brazil would not conflict with their ethnic heritage.

In the 1950s, as Brazilians of Arab and Japanese descent established themselves in the middle and upper classes, additional waves of immigrants from the Middle East and Asia entered in significant numbers. The United States' occupation of Okinawa following World War II led almost 54,000 small land owners and farmers to immigrate to Brazil between 1952 and 1988, 43 percent of whom were following relatives who had migrated prior to the war. Palestinians, many of Muslim faith, began to settle in Brazil during the 1960s. The influx of both groups caused internal ethnic stress. Older Japanese residents were shocked by the new immigrants’ attitudes towards everything from the emperor to sexual relations. The newcomers were equally aghast: they had trouble understanding old dialects filled with “Japanized” Portuguese words and wondered if earlier immigrants had become Brasil-bokê (roughly “made nuts by Brazil”). Palestinians faced many of the same problems as leaders of the traditional Syrian-Lebanese community and worked hard to make clear distinctions between old and new immigrants. Negative images became particularly prevalent after the September 11 attacks in the United States, leading to a new focus on Brazil's tri-border area (Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina), home to large numbers of Palestinians.

Banners fly in the busy Japanese district of Sao Paulo. More people of Japanese descent live in Brazil than in the rest of the countries of the world combined, with the exception of Japan itself.

Along with Palestinians and Okinawans, tens of thousands of Chinese and Koreans also immigrated to Brazil, especially after 1965. People in these communities worked in the low-end clothing industry as producers, retailers, or both. As Korean and Chinese immigrants ascended the economic ladder between the 1960s and the turn of the century—often by socially integrating their children through university educations— competitive pressures between old Japanese immigrants and newer Korean and Chinese immigrants heightened substantially. However, an unexpected twist on national identity formation in Brazil occurred, as Korean and Chinese immigrants were surprised to find that they were actually becoming “Japanese.” Nowhere was this misnomer more apparent than on São Paulo's Avenida Paulista—the “Wall Street of Brazil”—where new Chinese immigrants learned that redefining the noodle dish “lo mein” as “yakisoba” led to greater sales of this popular food.

Today, the tension between immigration and national identity exists in a number of interrelated areas. If the new waves of Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants have challenged Brazilian national identity, the migration of millions of Brazilians from the impoverished northeast of the country to cities in the south has frightened members of the elite and middle classes. In São Paulo, northeasterners have been transformed from Brazilians into foreigners. The transformation is visible in, for example, the name of a bridge on the highway to and from the Central Bus Terminal in São Paulo: the “Northeastern Immigrants Bridge.” The language of exclusion is also linked to Brazilians descended from immigrants. Third or fourth generation Brazilians of Japanese descent are still referred to as “Japanese,” not “Japanese-Brazilian,” and the same is true for those whose ancestors hail from Portugal, Italy, Syria, or Poland. Popular language thus presumes competing national identities rather than assimilation into an undifferentiated Brazilian-ness.

The cultural norm that certain Brazilians remain “foreign” has become particularly popular as Brazil has become a net exporter of people. This trend is particularly noticeable among so called dekasegui—the 250,000 Brazilians of mainly Japanese descent who currently live and work in Japan. Since cultural identity is intimately tied to class status, wage differentials play an important role in this migration. But, conversations with Brazilian residents of Japan indicate that questions of identity are critical to their decision to emigrate. One university professor commented, “In Brazil I am a stranger even though I like Brazil. I feel like I do not have Brazilian nationality and I feel like a gypsy. I wanted to make myself the perfect Brazilian but this is impossible. But here in Japan I also feel like a foreigner.”

The relationship between immigration and national identity remains as conflicted today as it was in the late 19th century. New immigrants continue to arrive in Brazil, noticeably from Korea, Bolivia, and Palestine, while Brazilians depart in significant numbers to Europe, the United States, and Japan. Those entering and those departing do not go unnoticed as the media, politicians, and academics ponder how or if Brazilian national identity changes with the shifting demographics. Furthermore, as the question of Africanness and racial discrimination has become more openly discussed via federal anti-discrimination policies and the resurfacing Movimiento Negro (Black Movement), the role of immigrants and their descendants has become contested in new ways. What is certain is that Brazil remains a multi-cultural nation laboring under the heritage of the myth of “racial democracy.”