Multiculturalism between ideology and practice: Immigrant self-narrations of community activism in Toyota, Japan

From 1990, a revised immigration law offered foreigners of Japanese descent (nikkei) the right to work for unlimited duration in Japan. Many nikkei came from Latin America to take on blue-collar jobs in the country’s factories. Homi Danchi, a working-class housing complex in Toyota, Japan, has since become known for its Brazilian immigrant community. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study analyzes the self-narrated biographies of three Brazilian immigrants who actively participate in community activism in Homi. Applying Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his critique of the “biographical illusion,” this article examines how the abstract ideology of Japanese-style multiculturalism (tabunka kyōsei) is understood and practiced at a local level. It argues that our narrators’ practical desires to recreate multicultural community in Homi reapply abstract multicultural values to a local context, thereby implicitly acknowledging multiculturalism’s symbolic capital and limiting the extent of activism to Homi. Applying the symbolic capital of multiculturalism to everyday practice, in turn, makes activism meaningful and imagines a community of fellow actors, albeit to the exclusion of outsiders. Multiculturalism thereby becomes a question not primarily of coexistence, but of community-building. We also underline the role that narration of one’s own history plays in mediating between individual experience and community belonging, contributing to methodological debates about Bourdieu’s biographical method.