KGRI Grant 2026: External Voting and Home-Country Political Engagement among Brazilians in Japan
Summary
This project empirically examines how Brazilian nationals and Nikkei Brazilians living in Japan engage with home-country electoral politics and how they form decisions regarding external voting, abstention, candidate and party preferences, and psychological distance from Brazilian politics.
Although Brazil has compulsory voting, the voting behavior and abstention mechanisms of citizens abroad, particularly those living in Japan, remain insufficiently understood in relation to everyday life, information environments, religious, family and community networks, generational differences, and long-term residence.
Focusing on the 2026 Brazilian presidential election, the project combines focus groups, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and survey research in Oizumi, Hamamatsu, Toyota, and related communities. It treats external voting not merely as the exercise of an institutional right but as a form of transnational political participation reconstructed through experiences in the receiving society.
The analysis examines how social media and messaging apps, family and friendship ties, churches and religious networks, workplaces, schools, hometown associations, language environments, institutional access, and experiences of exclusion in Japan shape political interest, political efficacy, belonging to Brazilian society, and voting participation.
In FY2026, the project will refine the questionnaire and interview guide through focus groups and interviews in three regions and prepare primary data and analytical hypotheses for the post-election survey.
The findings will connect studies of external voting, migration and diaspora politics, and multicultural inclusion in Japan, providing a foundation for future Japan-Brazil comparative research and larger external grant applications.
FY2026 Project Plan
In FY2026, the project will build a research design that captures the period before, during, and after the 2026 Brazilian presidential election.
In the first half of the year, it will use pilot research and focus groups supported by the Sakurada-kai political research grant to confirm recruitment routes in Oizumi, Hamamatsu, and Toyota through community partners, churches, schools, workplaces, hometown associations, local shops, and SNS networks.
It will finalize the Japanese-Portuguese questionnaire, explanatory documents, consent procedures, anonymization rules, and data management protocol.
Before the election, the project will conduct interviews and preliminary research on political information sources, candidate and party recognition, external voting registration, polling-place access, and religious, family, workplace, and community networks.
During and immediately after the election, it will record voting behavior, reasons for participation or abstention, information circulation, and regional differences, then conduct a post-election survey, semi-structured interviews, and additional focus groups while memories of the election remain fresh.
Audio recordings and meeting notes will be transcribed, summarized, and initially coded using Rimo or equivalent tools, enabling research assistants to organize the data efficiently.
The project will also examine estimates and survey designs with GMO Research & AI and related providers, and assess the feasibility of combining online survey delivery with RDS or network-based recruitment.
By the end of the year, it will construct a provisional dataset covering candidate support, party support, information sources, religious background, generation, return orientation, and institutional access in Japan, and prepare an interim report integrating initial quantitative tabulations with qualitative findings.
Members
Principal Investigator