The latino culturescape in Japan

Rafael Reyes-Ruiz, Zayed University

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Diaspora

Publication Date

1-1-2005

Abstract

Reyes-Ruiz discusses the community-building strategies of Spanish-speaking Latin American immigrants in Japan, arguing that a combination of processes—social exclusion; the pragmatic demands of socializing and survival in a multinational context; and the availability of transnational Latin American cultural products, images, and spaces in Japan—have led these immigrants to (re-)create a transnational Latino culture. Inspired by Arjun Appadurai’s conceptualizations of globalization and the different transnational flows integral to it, Reyes-Ruiz names this phenomenon the Latino Culturescape. The concept of the culturescape, he argues, “overcomes the limitations of traditional immigration research that focuses only on population flows. By paying attention to the impact of the transnational media and of transnational discourses, it also moves beyond the questions of nationality and ethnicity that have so far characterized the study of immigrants in Japan.”

ISSN

1044-2057

Publisher

University of Toronto Press Inc.

Volume

14

Issue

1

First Page

137

Last Page

155

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Scopus ID

57749124550

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

Link to Full Text

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