Movements, moments and moods. Generation as unity and strife in Peruvian migration

Abstract

This article discusses the meaning and use of generation in migration studies. It argues that the term is useful to examine how migrants create linkages between their pre- and post-migration lives. The article draws on Mannheim's notions of ‘generational units’ and ‘fresh contact’ to scrutinize how Peruvians engage resources from their previous lives in Peru to achieve social mobility in the USA, Japan, Spain and Argentina. In particular, the article focuses on the role of education, ethnicity and conflict in Peruvians’ efforts to create support networks and form migrant institutions. It suggests that generational units grow out of migrants’ shared experience of mobilizing the same resource to establish fresh contact with their receiving society. The article concludes that while generational belonging can generate a strong sense of solidarity among some groups of migrants, this often happens at the cost of the unity and inclusion of the migrant community at large.

Keywords:

• generation
• migration
• Peru
• education
• ethnicity
• conflict

Notes

1. So far, few studies have tried to combined the two approaches and explore what happens to the latter concept of generation as historical wave or cohort when applied to the second generation in the former concept of generation as assimilation. In Cuban studies, this would imply asking whether it matters if a second-generation Cuban immigrant's parents came during the first or second wave of Cuban immigrants to the USA.

2. Kertzer (1983, 126) points out that Manheim never defined exactly what he meant by generation and his followers have therefore attributed the term different meanings, including: (1) as a kinship-based descent relation between parents and children; (2) as a cohort of people of the same age; (3) as a stage in people's social lives; and (4) as the historical particular circumstances that provide people with a sense of belonging to the same time period.

3. The use of the term ‘death’ in migration studies is not unproblematic. Metaphorically, it indicates migrants’ rupture with the lives that they conducted in the society of origin. Arguably, such a reading ignores that many migrants nowadays are engaged transnationally in several places. However, my use of the term refers explicitly to the individual feeling of sudden change that many migrants experience when starting a new life in the receiving society for the first time.

4. Japanese migration to Peru and other Latin American countries continued throughout the first half of the twentieth century, leading to the establishment of large Japanese communities in Brazil (1.28 million) and Peru (between 80,000 and 90,000) and somewhat smaller communities in Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia (Takenaka 1999, 1460; Yamanaka 1996, 71).

5. The 1940 census showed that there were a total of 17,583 Japanese in Peru. Apart from 1,393 Japanese nationals, 643 Germans and forty-nine Italians were also deported from Peru to the USA during the Second World War (Gardiner 1981, 95). Axis nationals living in other South American countries were also shipped to the USA from Bolivia, Ecuador and Columbia (23).

6. Takenaka (1999, 1466) reports that the ‘ethnic denial’ experienced by Peruvian nikkeijin in Japan has been transmitted to Lima. As a result, Japanese Peruvians in Lima ‘have learned that the image of “good, old Japan” that has served as the principal identity of the community no longer exists. The Japanese simply have ceased to be the reference group for the community.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karsten Paerregaard

KARSTEN PAERREGAARD is Professor of Social Anthropology at University of Gothenburg.