Contract workers from the Philippines make up one of the world's largest movements of temporary labor migrants. Deirdre McKay follows Filipino migrants from one rural community to work sites overseas and then home again. Focusing on the experiences of individuals, McKay interrogates current approaches to globalization, multi-sited research, subjectivity, and the village itself. She shows that rather than weakening village ties, temporary labor migration gives the village a new global dimension created in and through the relationships, imaginations, and faith of its members in its potential as a site for a better future.
In this wide-ranging cultural and political history of Filipinos and the Philippines, Vicente L. Rafael examines the period from the onset of U.S. colonialism in 1898 to the emergence of a Filipino diaspora in the 1990s. Self-consciously adopting the essay form as a method with which to disrupt epic conceptions of Filipino history, Rafael treats in a condensed and concise manner clusters of historical detail and reflections that do not easily fit into a larger whole. White Love and Other Events in Filipino History is thus a view of nationalism as an unstable production, as Rafael reveals how, under what circumstances, and with what effects the concept of the nation has been produced and deployed in the Philippines. With a focus on the contradictions and ironies that suffuse Filipino history, Rafael delineates the multiple ways that colonialism has both inhabited and enabled the nationalist discourse of the present. His topics range from the colonial census of 1903-1905, in which a racialized imperial order imposed by the United States came into contact with an emergent revolutionary nationalism, to the pleasures and anxieties of nationalist identification as evinced in the rise of the Marcos regime. Other essays examine aspects of colonial domesticity through the writings of white women during the first decade of U.S. rule; the uses of photography in ethnology, war, and portraiture; the circulation of rumor during the Japanese occupation of Manila; the reproduction of a hierarchy of languages in popular culture; and the spectral presence of diasporic Filipino communities within the nation-state. A critique of both U.S. imperialism and Filipino nationalism, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History creates a sense of epistemological vertigo in the face of former attempts to comprehend and master Filipino identity. This volume should become a valuable work for those interested in Southeast Asian studies, Asian-American studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies.
The author of An Archipelago of Care documents the experiences of Filipino contract workers from the same village, traveling abroad for jobs. Contract workers from the Philippines make up one of the world’s largest movements of temporary labor migrants. Deirdre McKay follows Filipino migrants from one rural community to work sites overseas and then home again. Focusing on the experiences of individuals, McKay interrogates current approaches to globalization, multi-sited research, subjectivity, and the village itself. She shows that rather than weakening village ties, temporary labor migration gives the village a new global dimension created in and through the relationships, imaginations, and faith of its members in its potential as a site for a better future. “A unique and important study that adds a refreshing and necessary reminder that, on the most fundamental level, a village is part of the global world.” —Nicole Constable, author of Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers “A luminous, elegant, and well-argued multi-sited ethnographic study.” —Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora “The problems of overseas Filipino workers with loneliness; long absences from spouses, children, and other relatives; abuse by employers and governments; and efforts to use their time and talent to further individual opportunities are understood easily in McKay’s monograph. The photos of her Filipino informants . . . add a human touch to the topic of overseas workers. . . . Recommended.” —Choice
A vivid ethnography of the global and transnational dimensions of gay identity as lived by Filipino immigrants in New York City, Global Divas challenges beliefs about the progressive development of a gay world and the eventual assimilation of all queer folks into gay modernity. Insisting that gay identity is not teleological but fraught with fissures, Martin Manalansan IV describes how Filipino gay immigrants, like many queers of color, are creating alternative paths to queer modernity and citizenship. He makes a compelling argument for the significance of diaspora and immigration as sites for investigating the complexities of gender, race, and sexuality. Manalansan locates diasporic, transnational, and global dimensions of gay and other queer identities within a framework of quotidian struggles ranging from everyday domesticity to public engagements with racialized and gendered images to life-threatening situations involving AIDS. He reveals the gritty, mundane, and often contradictory deeds and utterances of Filipino gay men as key elements of queer globalization and transnationalism. Through careful and sensitive analysis of these men’s lives and rituals, he demonstrates that transnational gay identity is not merely a consumable product or lifestyle, but rather a pivotal element in the multiple, shifting relationships that queer immigrants of color mobilize as they confront the tribulations of a changing world.
Migrant workers from the Philippines are ubiquitous to global capitalism, with nearly 10 percent of the population employed in almost two hundred countries. In a visit to the United States in 2003, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even referred to herself as not only the head of state but also “the CEO of a global Philippine enterprise of eight million Filipinos who live and work abroad.†Robyn Magalit Rodriguez investigates how and why the Philippine government transformed itself into what she calls a labor brokerage state, which actively prepares, mobilizes, and regulates its citizens for migrant work abroad. Filipino men and women fill a range of jobs around the globe, including domestic work, construction, and engineering, and they have even worked in the Middle East to support U.S. military operations. At the same time, the state redefines nationalism to normalize its citizens to migration while fostering their ties to the Philippines. Those who leave the country to work and send their wages to their families at home are treated as new national heroes. Drawing on ethnographic research of the Philippine government's migration bureaucracy, interviews, and archival work, Rodriguez presents a new analysis of neoliberal globalization and its consequences for nation-state formation.
The Filipino Migration Experience introduces a new dimension to the usual depiction of migrants as disenfranchised workers or marginal ethnic groups. Mina Roces suggests alternative ways of conceptualizing Filipino migrantsas critics of the family and cultural constructions of sexuality, as consumers and investors, as philanthropists, as activists, and, as historians. They have been able to transform fundamental social institutions and well-entrenched traditional norms, as well as alter the business, economic and cultural landscapes of both the homeland and the host countries to which they have migrated. Mina Roces tells the story of the Filipino migration experience from the perspective of the migrants themselves, tapping into hitherto underused primary sources from the "migrant archives" and more than 70 interviews. Bringing the fields of Filipino migration studies and Filipina/o/x American studies together, this book analyzes some of the areas where Filipino migrants have forever changed the status quo.
"Despite all these advancements, Jose de Venecia is still not immune to the turbulence of Philippine politics. In February 2008, he was ousted from the Speakership after refusing to ignore his conscience and opposed with his son, Joey III, a scandal-wracked government deal involving some very prominent members of the Philippine government. Through it all, however, de Venecia has continued to serve the people of his great country. De Venecia continues the fight to improve the lives of his fellow countrymen."--BOOK JACKET.
After years of occupying a vexed position in the American academy, Philippine studies has come into its own, emerging as a trenchant and dynamic space of inquiry. Filipino Studies is a field-defining collection of vibrant voices, critical perspectives, and provocative ideas about the cultural, political, and economic state of the Philippines and its diaspora. Traversing issues of colonialism, neoliberalism, globalization, and nationalism, this volume examines not only the past and present position of the Philippines and its people, but also advances new frameworks for re-conceptualizing this growing field. Written by a prestigious lineup of international scholars grappling with the legacies of colonialism and imperial power, the essays examine both the genealogy of the Philippines’ hyphenated identity as well as the future trajectory of the field. Hailing from multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the contributors revisit and contest traditional renditions of Philippine colonial histories, from racial formations and the Japanese occupation to the Cold War and “independence” from the United States. Whether addressing the contested memories of World War II, the “voyage” of Filipino men and women into the U.S. metropole, or migrant labor and the notion of home, the assembled essays tease out the links between the past and present, with a hopeful longing for various futures. Filipino Studies makes bold declarations about the productive frameworks that open up new archives and innovative landscapes of knowledge for Filipino and Filipino American Studies.
Contemporary popular culture stereotypes Filipina women as sex workers, domestic laborers, mail order brides, and caregivers. These figures embody the gendered and sexual politics of representing the Philippine nation in the Filipina/o diaspora. Gina K. Velasco explores the tensions within Filipina/o American cultural production between feminist and queer critiques of the nation and popular nationalism as a form of resistance to neoimperialism and globalization. Using a queer diasporic analysis, Velasco examines the politics of nationalism within Filipina/o American cultural production to consider an essential question: can a queer and feminist imagining of the diaspora reconcile with gendered tropes of the Philippine nation? Integrating a transnational feminist analysis of globalized gendered labor with a consideration of queer cultural politics, Velasco envisions forms of feminist and queer diasporic belonging, while simultaneously foregrounding nationalist movements as vital instruments of struggle.
