Brazil, Foreign Land

São Paulo is the Brazilian state that received the most migratory flows in the country. A hub that attracted various groups, ethnicities, and nationalities who left their home countries seeking a better life in a foreign land.

Wars, sociocultural conflicts, epidemics, political, ethnic, or religious persecution, and unemployment: countless reasons drove the exodus. 

Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Japanese, Portuguese, Syrians, and Turks arrived here between the 1880s and 1930s, years that coincided with the end of conflicts in Europe, especially the First World War.

In the post-war period between 1945 and 1959, the Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese accounted for most of the new arrivals in the country. Galician Spaniards, more than Castilians, chose urban centers – mainly Santos, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador. 

The Portuguese were the main nationality that landed here over the centuries, from the colonization of the invaders in the 16th century up to the mid-1990s. The period of greatest flow was in the post-war era between 1901 and 1930. 

Germans arrived here attracted by the colonization policy of Emperor Pedro I, who allocated plots of land in the southern region, as well as financial benefits and official aid for these families to settle and populate the lands.

The Italians headed to the interior of São Paulo, to the colonies of the southern states and Espírito Santo, between the 19th and 20th centuries. Urban centers of the capitals of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo were the destinations for those who would not adapt.

Japanese immigrants and their descendants introduced foods and were among those responsible for intensive cultivation and breeding techniques that took certain crops from backyards to large-scale production, positively impacting the Brazilian economy.

Brazil is currently home to a Chinese population of about 200,000, out of the 35 million who left their country, mostly between 1930 and 1970, due to a series of conflicts such as the civil war, Japanese occupation, and the Maoist Cultural Revolution.

The year 2023 marks the 60th anniversary of Korean immigration to Brazil. The city of São Paulo has the largest Korean population, of about 50,000 people. The first group of 109 people left Busan and landed in Santos in 1963.