From a coveted workforce to “subjects of the Axis”. Class relations and ethnical conflicts
in Belo Horizonte during the Second World War.
World War II, Labor, Nationalism, Ethnicity.
This research analyses the status changes of Japanese, Italian and German immigrant workers
in Belo Horizonte and the local workforce during the World War II. It also describes who those
Italian, Japanese and German immigrant residents in Belo Horizonte were; laws and decrees
written to rule the work, admission and dismissal of foreigners during the conflict; how the
nationalism, the war effort and the immigrant worker issue were treated by legal experts and by
the Brazilian Consolidation of Labor Laws writers; the transformations in the relationship
between employers and employees from Italian, German and Japanese nationalities during the
Brazilian participation in the conflict; how those immigrants were perceived, how they
perceived themselves, and the transformations within the identity bonds and the representation
along the conflict. The main sources are the judicial processes, which were filed at the
Conciliation and Judgment Boards of Belo Horizonte between 1939 and 1945, and articles
published in the Labor Journal published in the same time.