Postcolonial migrations and diasporic linkages between Latin America and Japan and Spain

Abstract

In the late 1980s, both Japan and Spain revised their legislation to confer preferential immigration rights to citizens from former colonies or their own diasporic descendants based on historical, cultural or ethnic belonging to the ancestral homeland. During the economic crisis, Spain, in 2008, and Japan, in 2009, reversed their policies through a government-sponsored voluntary return program for these preferred migrants. When the economy recovered, Japan in 2013 revisited its return migration program, resulting in pendular migrations driven by politics and macro-economic trends. This suggests that historical or cultural ties that favor the citizens of former colonies and diasporic communities have reinforced two-way transoceanic migratory processes, thereby contributing to strengthening ‘old migration geographies.’