Ancestry without identity? Generational identity change among Chinese descendants in Peru: A life-course perspective
Peru hosts one of the oldest Chinese-descended populations in the Americas and presents a striking numerical puzzle. Popular and community sources routinely claim that as many as one in ten Peruvians has some Chinese ancestry, yet in the 2017 census only 14,307 people described themselves as tusán, the Peruvian term for a locally born person of Chinese descent, and in 2025, the first census in which tusán was a printed response option rather than a write-in, the share remained near 0.06%. We argue that this gap is not evidence that a Chinese identity quietly survived beneath the surface of Peruvian society. We accept that assimilation was extensive and, in most family lines, close to complete: Chinese languages were lost within one or two generations, many early mixed households were formed through unions with non-Chinese women, who often served as primary socializers, Catholic institutions supplied the dominant framework of socialization, and residential concentration dissolved. Our narrower claim is that what persisted was not a transmitted cultural repertoire but a category, a nameable and socially legible position sustained by genealogical memory, surnames, phenotypic ascription, and a thin institutional infrastructure, and claimable long after its cultural content had gone. Drawing on Elder’s life-course paradigm, we specify when such a category becomes salient, dormant, or reactivated, and show that categorical salience and cultural repertoire follow different generational trajectories: the latter declines monotonically, the former does not. The reactivation we describe is narrow, symbolic, urban, and socially selective rather than a broad demographic shift. Integrating segmented assimilation, symbolic ethnicity, and boundary-making approaches, the framework yields six falsifiable propositions, most advanced as hypotheses for future testing; the 2025 census, in which an explicit tusán option produced no surge in identification, is treated as a first and largely negative test.
Alba, R., & Nee, V. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary immigration. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674020115
Armony, A. C., & Hassan De Ferrari, R. (2024). Chinese migrants and their organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean. In E. Dussel Peters, J. A. Cook, & J. Alter (Eds.), Connecting China, Latin America, and the Caribbean: Infrastructure and everyday life (pp. 13–35). University of Pittsburgh Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.13944248.4
Barth, F. (1996). Ethnic groups and boundaries. In W. Sollors (Ed.), Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader (pp. 294–324). New York University Press. (Original work published 1969)
Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity without groups. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674258143-003
Chan, C. (2024). Diverse and shifting everyday experiences of “China in Chile.” In E. Dussel Peters, J. A. Cook, & J. S. Alter (Eds.), Connecting China, Latin America, and the Caribbean: Infrastructure and everyday life (pp. 36–64). University of Pittsburgh Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.13944248.5
Cifci, F. (2024). Life-course perspective on immigrant loneliness: A conceptual framework for intergenerational loneliness trajectories. The Family Journal, 32(3), 371–381. https://doi.org/10.1177/10664807241235324
de la Cadena, M. (2000). Indigenous mestizos: The politics of race and culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822397021
Ding, S. (2025). Changing diasporic identity and increasing global backlash: The Xi government’s tactics and challenges of engaging new-generation overseas Chinese. Globalizations, 22(1), 151–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2024.2373055
Dussel Peters, E., Cook, J. A., & Alter, J. (Eds.). (2024). Connecting China, Latin America, and the Caribbean: Infrastructure and everyday life. University of Pittsburgh Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.13944248
Elder, G. H., Jr. (1994). Time, human agency, and social change: Perspectives on the life course. Social Psychology Quarterly, 57(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.2307/2786971
Flores, R. D., Vignau Loría, M., & Martínez Casas, R. (2023). Transitory versus Durable Boundary Crossing: What Explains the Indigenous Population Boom in Mexico? American Journal of Sociology, 129(1), 123–161. https://doi.org/10.1086/725337
Gans, H. J. (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.1979.9993248
Guo, S. (2022). Reimagining Chinese diasporas in a transnational world: Toward a new research agenda. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(4), 781–797. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2021.1983958
Hansen, M. L. (1938). The problem of the third-generation immigrant. Augustana Historical Society.
Herda, D. (2025). Reactive ethnicity and the ascent of the Trump administration. International Migration, 63, Article e70009. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.70009
Higashide, S. (2000). Adios to tears: The memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian internee in U.S. concentration camps. University of Washington Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvct01sp
Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática. (2018). Perú: Perfil sociodemográfico. Informe nacional. Censos Nacionales 2017: XII de Población, VII de Vivienda y III de Comunidades Indígenas. https://www.inei.gob.pe/media/MenuRecursivo/publicaciones_digitales/Est/Lib1539/libro.pdf
Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática. (2026). Censos Nacionales 2025: XIII de Población, VIII de Vivienda y IV de Comunidades Indígenas. Resultados. https://censos2025.inei.gob.pe/
Jiménez, T. R. (2009). Replenished ethnicity: Mexican Americans, immigration, and identity. University of California Press
Kertzer, D. I., & Arel, D. (Eds.). (2002). Census and identity: The politics of race, ethnicity, and language in national censuses. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606045
Lei, C. (2021). Las influencias y huellas de la cultura china en Cuba: 1847–1959. Letras, 92(135), 160–176. https://doi.org/10.30920/letras.92.135.12
López-Calvo, I. (Ed.). (2022). Lachinoamérica: Antología de autores sinolatinoamericanos. Palabra de Clío.
López-Calvo, I., & Campos, R. P. (Ed.). (2022). Hojas sobre las raíces: Antología literaria de autores tusanes peruanos. Palabra de Clío.
Lulle, A. (2024). Middle-aged migrants: Expanding an understanding of lifecourses and linked lives. Global Networks, 24(4), Article e12483. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12483
Masterson, D. M., & Funada-Classen, S. (2004). The Japanese in Latin America. University of Illinois Press. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p071447
Moriuchi, M.-Y. (2024). Centenary paper: Living hell: The Chinese coolie trade in nineteenth-century Cuba. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 101(7), 649–672. https://doi.org/10.3828/bhs.2024.47
Morning, A. (2008). Ethnic classification in global perspective: A cross-national survey of the 2000 census round. Population Research and Policy Review, 27(2), 239–272. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-007-9062-5
Nagel, J. (1994). Constructing ethnicity: Creating and recreating ethnic identity and culture. Social Problems, 41(1), 152–176. https://doi.org/10.2307/3096847
Narváez, B. N. (2021). Re-envisioning Caribbean Costa Rica: Chinese–West Indian interaction in Limón during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. New West Indian Guide, 95(1–2), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134360-bja10005
Palma, P. (2021). From Asia to the Americas: Chinese medicine in Latin America and the Caribbean (1840–1930). Monde(s), 20(2), 29–48. https://doi.org/10.3917/e.mond1.212.0029
Palma, P. (2022). The Chinese in Peru. In Á. Vergara (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.1023
Palma, P. (2024). Social integration and culinary legacy: Chinese immigration and family restaurants in Peru. In E. Dussel Peters, J. A. Cook, & J. S. Alter (Eds.), Connecting China, Latin America, and the Caribbean (pp. 65–92). University of Pittsburgh Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.13944248.6
Palma, P., Carrasco, J. M., & Monsalve Zanatti, M. (2023). From undesirable immigrants to prosperous merchants: Chinese and Palestinians in southern Peru (1900s–1930s). Immigrants & Minorities, 41(1–3), 65–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619288.2023.2277587
Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation and its variants. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530(1), 74–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716293530001006
Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215-232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005
Ragas, J., & Palma, P. (2022). Covid-19, the Chinese diaspora, and the enduring legacy of racism in Peru. História, Ciências, Saúde–Manguinhos, 29(2), 381–398. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702022000200005
Rumbaut, R. G. (2004). Ages, life stages, and generational cohorts: Decomposing the immigrant first and second generations in the United States. International Migration Review, 38(3), 1160–1205. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00232.x
Saperstein, A., & Penner, A. M. (2012). Racial fluidity and inequality in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 118(3), 676–727. https://doi.org/10.1086/667722
Schaeffer, P. V. (2023). Life course and structural migrations: Refining migration classifications. International Regional Science Review, 46(4), 359–380. https://doi.org/10.1177/01600176221145885
Takenaka, A. (2004). The Japanese in Peru: History of immigration, settlement, and racialization. Latin American Perspectives, 31(3), 77–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X04264745
Trémon, A.-C. (2022). Diaspora space-time: Transformations of a Chinese emigrant community. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501761959.001.0001
Valdivia, N. (2011). El uso de categorías étnico/raciales en censos y encuestas en el Perú: Balance y aportes para una discusión (Documento de Investigación No. 60). Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo. https://repositorio.grade.org.pe/handle/20.500.12820/254
Valdizán Ayala, J., & Chuhue, R. (Eds.). (2021). El Dragón y el Cóndor. La presencia china en el Perú: Pasado y presente. Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola.
Ventura, I., & Flores, R. D. (2025). The “rise” of multiracials? Examining the growth in multiracial identification in the 2020 U.S. census. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 11(1), 44–64. https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2025.11.1.03
Wade, P. (2017). Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373070
Waters, M. C. (1990). Ethnic options: Choosing identities in America. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520354616
Wimmer, A. (2013). Ethnic boundary making: Institutions, power, networks. Oxford University Press.
Xu, J., Saperstein, A., Morning, A., & Iverson, S. (2021). Gender, generation, and multiracial identification in the United States. Demography, 58(5), 1603–1630. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9334366
Zhou, M., & Mahmud, H. (Eds.). (2023). Beyond economic migration: Social, historical, and political factors in US immigration. New York University Press.