Hope, home and insecurity: Gendered labours of resilience among the urban poor of Metro Cebu, the Philippines

Abstract

This article traces the labours of hope embedded in the everyday social reproductive practices of urban poor homeowner association members in Metro Cebu, the Philippines. It explores how aspirations for housing and land tenure security and the (failed) promises of opportunity bound in the urban materialise in the narratives and activities of women and men living in informal settlements. I argue that the sociality of hope, which propels and sustains homeowner associations, produces gendered labours of resilience amidst everyday circumstances of poverty, uncertainty, risk and displacement. As I reveal, these care-based practices constitute expressions of hope that are driven by moral codes associated with the family, industriousness and service to others. These findings reinforce the utility of hope as an analytical lens in geographical studies; one which broadens conceptualisations of labour beyond economic production to include, in this case, the emotional embodiments and reproductive activities that underpin people’s everyday resilience.

Engendering disaster risk management and resilience-building: The significance of the everyday in evaluations of the exceptional

“…Ramalho -Engendering disaster risk management and resilience-building: the significance of the everyday in evaluations of the exceptional [78] notion of the 'materiality of the social' 1 , the experiences articulated by respondents highlight what I call the 'materiality of the political', denoting the micropolitics of structural violence afflicting urban poor informal settlers, and specifically the material and spatial embodiments of risks that are produced and reinforced through sustained infrastructural and political neglect. Furthermore, these infrastructural exclusions relating to roads and transportation, water, sanitation, and garbage materialise in distinct classed and gendered riskscapes that are intimately connected with gendered roles and identify, and specifically with an intensification of everyday social reproductive labours that are fundamental to maintaining and building to individual and collective resilience (see also [18,19]). My findings on the significance of everyday risk over more exceptional catastrophic events mirror those of Cannon and Müller-Mahn [79], who noted a general absence of 'disasters' in discussions about risk at a community level, and the higher priority awarded 'to problems like illness, water supply, security, unemployment or traffic accidents.'…”

“…It also simultaneously (and problematically) places the onus on individuals, more than governments it would seem, to prepare for the unexpected, and to assume responsibility for response, recovery and resilience in the aftermath of such events, in addition to surviving under the circumstances of precarity that characterise their everyday. As I have argued, these responsibilities are not shared uniformly across society, or within households, but instead are deeply classed and gendered, bound by existing structures of inequality and divisions of social reproductive practices of care (see also [18,19]).…”

“…Attention and resources prioritise emergency response and mitigation, rather than investing in development and capacity-building programmes to address Ramalho -Engendering disaster risk management and resilience-building: the significance of the everyday in evaluations of the exceptional the pre-existing inequalities and exclusions that create conditions of vulnerability and limit the ability of some more than others to 'bounce back better'. Traditional epistemologies of disasters and associated masculinist preoccupations with economic rather than social recovery also inhibit efforts to engender DRRM, by neglecting the multiple affective and material embodiments of risk [3,[13][14][15] and the extensive (feminised) labours that contribute to local resilience [16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

“…To introduce this interdisciplinary theoretical approach, I begin with a brief overview of contemporary debates in critical disaster studies and gender and development, bringing them into conversation with one another under a rubric of feminist political ecology. Herein, I also build on the work of established and emerging feminist scholars interested in 'the mundane' practices of everyday life and of social reproduction, and the insights they offer us into gendered political economies [18][19][20][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. I then present findings from ethnographic research conducted in disaster-prone informal settlements in Metro Cebu, the Philippines, to showcase the relationship between 'the everyday' and 'the exceptional' in the context of risk management and resilience-building.…”

“…Indeed, labours of social reproduction, both material and affective, are intrinsically linked to the operationalisation of resilience in people's everyday lives [18,19]. Given that there is no 'consensus on what resilience means in practice for different stakeholders, how it is best achieved, and who is, and/or should be responsible for it' [19], particular attention must be paid to the nature and terms of gendered participation in CBDRRM, to ensure that women are not left shouldering the bulk of the burden for building-back better, bound by portrayals of vulnerability and virtuousness.…”