| Chapter 1: | Reconsiderations of Race, Ethnicity, and Identity: Transnational Migrants in Post–World War II Global Society |
interactions among themselves and others. Although both race and ethnicity are relations that emerge in people's interactions—and both could be used for discrimination, identity, solidarity, cohesion, and so on—they are not the same kinds of relations. Race emerges in people's interactions when they perceive a physical affinity. Ethnicity emerges in social relations where people interact because each feels they have cultural or historical similarities in common. These similarities are acquired through birth and upbringing (including language, cultural values, and historical memories). Such similarities could be imaginary or invented. As mentioned, currently Latin American transnational migrants are attempting to form a Pan–Latin American ethnicity through “shared cultural elements” in Japan, even though they do not eat the same food or speak the same language. And people's relationships are in flux; depending on the social circumstances, they change. In other words, ethnicity is not static but dynamic.
The chapters in this book examine relationships among people, in particular the relationships of ethnicity and ethnic identity. People become categorized as members of minorities through social, cultural, economic, and political environments. People in such situations also create relationships of “us” versus “them” in an attempt to obtain power in environments where they feel they are less powerful. Both race and ethnicity are often influenced by economic and political conditions imposed on “us.” Thus, before we go any further in our discussion of ethnicity and ethnic identity, we need to consider the differences between ethnicity and social class.
Race, Social Class, Ethnicity,
and Transnational Migrant Workers
Considering the cases of transnational migrants arriving in their host nations, immigrants of the same ethnic background often are seen as belonging to the same social class in the eyes of the mainstream. For example, when massive Japanese migration occurred in the early 1900s in North America, most people in the United States and Canada saw them as poor working-class menial laborers desperately seeking jobs, even though many Japanese