The separation of transnational domestic workers from their kinship households and their inclusion into new ones is a conflict situation that creates social drama. Contradictions in their positions in these two global households highlight this drama, for example, in their contrasting roles as breadwinners in one household and as domestic workers in the other, as transnational mothers and live‐in caregivers, and as international migrants and domestically confined workers. In this article, I employ Erving Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical approach, particularly “contrived” and “real” performances, to examine the everyday performances of migrant workers across time and space, that is, vis‐à‐vis their contradictory roles as breadwinners in their left‐behind kinship households in the Philippines and as “maids” in their co‐residential global households in Singapore, over a period of time. I offer the time‐performance continuum loop as a context explaining the variations of domestic workers’ performances. This model captures the initial years of employment as overwhelming the migrants with hardships and poor performances whereas long‐term employment as equipping them with mastery in their performances. My research draws from conventional ethnographic fieldwork among Filipina domestic workers in Singapore, supplemented by a virtual ethnography in an online forum among Singapore employers.

This article examines structured inequalities and authors’ positionalities in the academic publishing field. It uses Bourdieu’s insights in explaining the reproduction of publishing inequality and mobility through cultural capital and habitus modification. The article elaborates ‘positionality’ to constitute structure and agency through position and positioning, and situates academics in varying positionalities (insider, outsider, hybrid) in the global publishing field. Focusing on Filipino international migration scholarship, the article examines 392 journal articles from 1989 to 2018, and tracks the first authors’ ethnicity, institutional affiliation, and university where they received their PhD. The findings show that authors institutionally affiliated in the Global North (insiders) dominate the field (publication count and citations), while homeland-based Filipino scholars are in the periphery (outsiders). With their insider-leaning hybrid positionality, overseas Filipino scholars in the Global North accrue network-mediated benefits. They have respectable representation in publication count and are the most frequently cited authors. Positionality is examined as cultural capital accumulation and adoption of the dominant habitus that enable academics to shift positionality from outsider to insider and derive benefits in research and publishing. The article contributes to the literature on positionality-based inequalities in knowledge production and a periphery standpoint in the discourse on academic publishing inequality.

As a response to the Philippine government’s prolonged community quarantine measure to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, educational institutions have shifted their mode of teaching and learning towards distance education despite resistance from various sectors. This paper examines the ways an educational provider taps elements of its social capital such as closure and reputation, to establish enforceable trust from clients and their network to enroll in online learning; in addition, it explores the factors that clients consider in deciding to enroll their children in online distance learning. This study is informed by James Coleman’s and Ronald Burt’s conceptions of closure, trust, and reputation. It employs a case study approach, focusing on a Philippine Catholic parochial high school. Results show that closure is demonstrated through the school’s dense social network with parents, students, and the community through the Catholic church. Closure and the school’s intergenerational and social reputation facilitate the creation of trust, which increased senior high school enrolment, contrary to the pattern of private schools closing down due to insufficient enrolment. This study contributes to the literature in online distance education, by focusing on aspects of the social structure that function as resources for people and organizations to achieve their interests.

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