Overseas Filipino Workers: The Making of an Asian-Pacific Diaspora

Juan, E. San

doi:10.2979/gso.2009.3.2.99

Cited by 29 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Additionally, the deployment of neoliberal policies such as the Washington consensus has paved the way for social stratification across national economies (Rodriguez 2010;Aguilar 2014). To address a growing socioeconomic crisis, former president Ferdinand Marcos promoted and institutionalised Philippine migration through the signing of the Labor Code in 1974 (Parreñas 2001b;San Juan 2009;Aguilar 2014). From being a temporary solution to address a ballooning economic instability, it then became permanent, with dollars sent by overseas workers being used to repay foreign debt to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and private banks (Rodriguez 2010).…”

Section: Familial Ties Digital Devices and Disruptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Ties, Disrupted Togetherness: Locating Uneven Communicative Mobilities in Transnational Family Life

Cabalquinto

2019

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Ubiquitous digital communication technologies play a crucial role in shaping the nature of family life at a distance. Paradoxically, mobile device use has not only brought dispersed family members together, it also sometimes stirs communicative tensions in transnational households. These tensions are often produced by uneven access to a wide range of re-sources in mediated communication. Employing the mobilities lens, this paper examines the role of smartphones and networked communications platforms in binding ties and relationships among twenty-one overseas Filipino workers in Melbourne, Australia, and their left-behind family members in the Philippines. Based on data drawn from in-depth interviews and photo elicitation, the research study uncovers the performance, embodiment, and negotiation of transnational relationships through mobile device use. Signifcantly, it also demonstrates the impact of structural and infrastructural forces in enabling differential mediated mobilities. In illuminating asymmetrical mobile communication, I propose six categories: access, socio-technical competency, quality of connectivity, rhythms, affective experience, and communicative space. Ultimately, this paper offers a critical lens on investigating mobile practices in the conduct of transnational family life.

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Section: Familial Ties Digital Devices and Disruptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Ties, Disrupted Togetherness: Locating Uneven Communicative Mobilities in Transnational Family Life

Cabalquinto

2019

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“…However, I would like to emphasise the need to pay close attention to the broader forces that perpetuate the marginalisation of those who are already in a vulnerable position in the global economy (Parreñas, 2001b, 2001c, 2003; San Juan, 2009). First, an unreliable broadband connection produces the kind of “mobile lives” (Urry, 2007) that are filled with frustrations and constant negotiations.…”

Section: Conclusion: a Mobile Life On A Bumpy Lanementioning

confidence: 99%

“We’re not only here but we’re there in spirit”: Asymmetrical mobile intimacy and the transnational Filipino family

Cabalquinto

2017

Mobile Media & Communication

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Organising, performing, and experiencing festive family rituals sustain relationships among family members. However, in recent times, high levels of human migration alongside the rapid development of digital communication technologies are reconfiguring family traditions. This paper investigates the ways in which 21 overseas Filipino workers in Melbourne, Australia, and their left-behind family members in the Philippines use mobile devices and communications platforms to restage festive family rituals. Employing a visual method and drawing on in-depth interviews, the empirical study uncovers the personalised and heterogenous practices of the transnational Filipino family in performing intimacy at a distance, paving the way for constructing copresence during festivities. Importantly, using the mobilities lens (Urry, 2007) as a framework for critical investigation, the findings show that a disproportionate level of network capital as informed by age, gender, and social class produces “asymmetrical mobile intimacy.” The present study also reveals how ambivalent feelings emerge due to technological asymmetries and parameters. Importantly, transnational families often negotiate such contradictory experiences through mobile device use. By comparing and contrasting the mobile practices of dispersed family members, the present study uncovers the hidden social inequalities perpetuated in a networked family life.

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“…He further stresses that “[t]he more revolting fact is that even after the death of Flor Contemplacion, the government unabatedly continued deploying the most vulnerable section of OFWs, the domestic helpers … ” (Migrante International 2017b). Here, the high vulnerability, dependency, and precarity of Filipina migrant workers is underscored, leading E. San Juan, Jr. (2009: 109) to point to a kind of “profit-making industry” in which “[t]he buying and selling of ‘third world’ bodies is a legacy of the unjust and unequal division of international labor in both productive and reproductive spheres” and across what Arlie Hochschild (2000) calls the “global care chain”.…”

Section: The Heralding Of Heroes and The Making Of Martyrsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lives Lived in “Someone Else's Hands”: Precarity and Profit-making of Migrants and Left-behind Children in the Philippines

Alipio

2019

TRaNS

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In the labour brokerage state of systematic recruitment and export for the maximisation of labour, development, and profit, the Philippines continues to simultaneously fashion migrant workers as temporary, yet heroic and sacrificial. As the largest migrant-sending country in Southeast Asia and the third largest remittance recipient in Asia, the Philippines’ discourse of migrants as modern-day heroes and martyrs reveals the interplay of nationalist myths and cultural values, alongside the neoliberal favouring of finance and flexible labour, to craft filial migrants and celebrate mobile, capitalist subjects over migrants’ welfare and well-being. The article explores the contemporaneous institutionalisation of migrant labour and migrants’ institutionalised uncertainty lived every day to investigate how this profound precariousness in the Philippines is perpetuated historically to shape the resilience and realities of migrants and their left-behind children today. Drawing from news reports and films on migrant lives and ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines, this article considers how the formation and deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) turns from a focus on sustaining the nation to supporting migrant families and developing translocal communities. Through this examination, the paper seeks to uncover who profits and is indebted from the precarity created and sustained by the larger economic system built on transnational labour migration.

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Overseas Filipino Workers: The Making of an Asian-Pacific Diaspora

Cited by 29 publications

References 8 publications

Digital Ties, Disrupted Togetherness: Locating Uneven Communicative Mobilities in Transnational Family Life

Digital Ties, Disrupted Togetherness: Locating Uneven Communicative Mobilities in Transnational Family Life

“We’re not only here but we’re there in spirit”: Asymmetrical mobile intimacy and the transnational Filipino family

Lives Lived in “Someone Else's Hands”: Precarity and Profit-making of Migrants and Left-behind Children in the Philippines

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