Pacific Rim Research Program

This article presents a case study of relations between Japanese teachers and Peruvian parents at a public elementary school in central Japan. Using interviews and participant observation, this critical account reveals how some teachers, frustrated by the challenges of teaching an increasingly foreign student body, blame problems at the school on Peruvian parents’ limited language skills and cultural differences. Amid these complaints, various structural factors hinder the efforts of Peruvian parents and children, including poor language support and ineffective remedial language instruction. This account also examines the ways parents’ class position and immigrant status influence their acquisition of the social and cultural capital necessary for the parents to more effectively participate in their children’s education in Japan.