Transnational Relationships, Transforming Selves: Filipinas Seeking Husbands Abroad

Abstract

The desire of Filipinas to find husbands abroad, particularly of European extraction, is difficult to ignore for the anthropologist who continually finds him/herself positioned as a potential transnational dating agent, chat-room tutor or even highly eligible marriage prospect. Extending analyses that view this phenomenon as multifaceted and irreducible to economics, we situate the search for transnational marriages in the context of imaginings of self and other. Drawing on ethnographic research in two areas of the Philippines, we consider some of the ways in which Western men are constructed as desirable marriage partners, relating this to broader imaginings of national difference. We then argue that finding a foreign husband may be about more than changing personal and familial circumstances, more even than a desire for the romanticised other. The desire for transnational marriage can be seen as part of a process of selfactualisation: a quest for knowledge and experience of the world through which a paradox of self and other can be reconciled and the self remade.

Positionality, subjectivity, and race in transnational and transcultural geographical research

“…Colonization by the Spanish and the USA (Spanish era 1521-1898and US era 1898-1946 has had profound effects on society in the Philippines with Kelly (2000) suggesting Filipinos have been subtly inculcated into seeing things and people that are foreign as superior. Bulloch and Fabinyi (2009) similarly note how ambivalent portrayals and understandings in the Philippines of the West position Filipinos as deficient self and the West/USA as sufficient other. In light of this, it is understandable why Filipinos could conflate my Western-ness with 'whiteness' and colonialism.…”

“…Many Filipinos seemingly conceptualized white as an ontological racial category where complexion and physical features initially distinguished me as white (Nayak 2011). But 'white' for Filipinos seemingly encompassed more than my milkycoffee-colored complexion and 'long nose,' my physical markers of whiteness; white was symbolic of Western progress, privilege, and wealth (Bulloch and Fabinyi 2009). I found this troubling because the reality of my family circumstances -farm laborer father who eventually became a truck driver then factory worker, and housewife mother who worked outside of the home as a factory worker and hospital caregiver -seemed unimaginable in this conception of white-as-Western, not to mention the lack of recognition of my 'other' colonized heritage.…”

“…This understanding and acceptance of how I came to be positioned and, more importantly, constituted as white assuaged my anxieties (Bondi 2005) when interacting with research participants. At the same time, the discussions of my whiteness and my self-identification as a hybrid worked to destabilize monolithic constructions of whiteness (Leonard 2010) and conflation of white-as-America (Bulloch and Fabinyi 2009), albeit at the microlevel; that is, among those living in my family's compound and their close friends and neighbors.…”

Fishing for Fairness : Poverty, Morality and Marine Resource Regulation in the Philippines

“…As is argued elsewhere (Bulloch and Fabinyi 2009), the idea of an attractive male partner for marriage in the rural Philippines tends to be based around a range of preconceptions and ideals. An unofficial continuum of beauty widely exists among residents in Esperanza and elsewhere in the rural Philippines that strongly correlates with class and race.…”

“…Since 2007, a number of articles based on doctoral research have been published in academic journals: information from Chapter 5 was published in Marine Policy (Fabinyi 2008); sections of Chapter 6 were published in Philippine Studies (Fabinyi 2007) and Coastal Management ; and an earlier version of Chapter 7 was published in Human Organization (Fabinyi 2009). …”