Filipino Diaspora

This book includes essays of the narrative of Filipino lives in the United States to provoke interrogation of the conventional wisdom and a critique of the global system of capital. It helps in constituting the Filipino community as an agent of historic change in a racist society.

15. Diasporic and Liminal Subjectivities in the Age of Empire: "Beyond Biculturalism" in the Case of the Two Ongs -- 16. The Legacy of Undesirability: Filipino TNTs, "Irregular Migrants," and "Outlaws" in the US Cultural Imaginary -- 17. "Home" and The Filipino Channel: Stabilizing Economic Security, Migration Patterns, and Diaspora through New Technologies -- 18. "Come Back Home Soon": The Pleasures and Agonies of "Homeland" Visits -- About the Contributors -- Index

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.

First published in 1998. The Philippines play a major role in expanding the international Filipino community through its promotion of international labor migration-Filipinos can currently be found in over 130 countries throughout the world. As the first major work to conceive of Filipino immigration as a diaspora, this study analyses the diasporic nature of Filipino relations, identities, and communities and shows how these transnational phenomena are socially constructed by the everyday actions and activities of Filipino Americans. Instead of focusing on an ethnic minority and its relation to its host society, a diasporic perspective places emphasis on the transnational relations created and maintained among that minority, its homeland, and other diasporic communities. Transnational ties are evident in the movement of people, money, consumer goods, information, and ideas. Diaspora represents a new and fluid conceptual image quite apart from the usual coordinates based on physical location, territory, and distance. Transnational relations and practices will continue to be an increasingly important dimension of the Filipino American community because of the ongoing family-based immigration from the Philippines, further technological advances in communication and transportation, the expansion of transnational capital, and continuing racism and discrimination, all of which have made it necessary for Filipinos in the United States, the Philippines, and throughout the world to create and maintain diasporic lives and culture.

Women make up a majority of the Filipino workforce laboring overseas. Their frequent employment in nurturing, maternal jobs--nanny, maid, caretaker, nurse--has found expression in a significant but understudied body of Filipino and Filipino American literature and cinema. Harrod J. Suarez's innovative readings of this cultural production explores issues of diaspora, gender, and labor. He details the ways literature and cinema play critical roles in encountering, addressing, and problematizing what we think we know about overseas Filipina workers. Though often seen as compliant subjects, the Filipina mother can also destabilize knowledge production that serves the interests of global empire, capitalism, and Philippine nationalism. Suarez examines canonical writers like Nick Joaquín, Carlos Bulosan, and Jessica Hagedorn to explore this disruption and understand the maternal specificity of the construction of overseas Filipina workers. The result is a series of readings that develop new ways of thinking through diasporic maternal labor that engages with the sociological imaginary.

Diaspora Diplomacy: Philippine Migration and its Soft Power Influences is about the remarkable and untapped soft power that international migrants possess and how various sectors-from governments, NGOs, business, and international organizations- could tap this valuable resource to enhance global cooperation and development. With compelling stories from Filipina and Filipino migrants in San Francisco, London, Dubai, Dhaka, and Singapore comprising the large Philippine diaspora, this book illustrates how this widespread community performs numerous acts of public diplomacy, bridging the cultural and economic gap between its homeland and its new home base

"The term "diaspora" is used so commonly that its definition, a community of people living away from their ancestral homeland, seems self-evident. But how do migrants come to form a group, and how do they understand that homeland? In this book, sociologist Sharon Quinsaat sheds new light on the meaning of diaspora through the stories of Filipino migrants who, on first arrival to their new homes in the Netherlands and the US, don't necessarily connect to their Filipino identity or other Filipinos. They maintain ties to the homeland through family, often in the form of remittance payments, but they don't see themselves as part of a Filipino community abroad. After all, how much common ground could there be between a masters student at a private US university and an undocumented domestic worker earning less than minimum wage? Quinsaat shows that these gaps are bridged when Filipinos become engaged in political activism. Quinsaat analyzes three distinct protest movements--against the regime of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, for migrants' rights abroad, and around cultural memory of the Marcos regime--that strengthened Filipino identity among migrants as they gathered collectively to make shared demands in public. These movements bring together very different migrants with a newfound shared goal, requiring them to openly address their different experiences and relationships to their homeland and its history. Social movements thus provide an essential space not just for coming together as diasporic subjects, but for openly negotiating and working through the diversity of migrants' experiences. She also shows that this local engagement with other migrants in a new country of residence quickly ties into a global network of activism. Activist groups forge connections with others living abroad, creating new diasporic identities that crisscross the globe by way of shared political commitments. Spanning five decades, Quinsaat's project helps us understand not just a major migrant group, but how people come to see themselves as part of a collective"--

Emily Noelle Ignacio explores how Filipinos have used the Internet's subtle, cyber, but very real social connections to construct and reinforce a sense of national, ethnic, and racial identity with distant others.

Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries is the first edited volume of its kind, featuring the works of leading scholars, artists, and activists who reflect on the contributions of queer Filipinos to Canadian culture and society. Addressing a wide range of issues beyond the academy, the authors present a rich and under-studied archive of personal reflections, in-depth interviews, creative works, and scholarly essays. Their trandsdisciplinary approach highlights the need for queer, transgressive, and utopian practices that render visible histories of migration, empire building, settler colonialism, and globalization. Timely, urgent, and fascinating, Diasporic Intimacies offers an accessible entry point for readers who seek to pursue critically engaged community work, arts education, curatorial practice, and socially inflected research on sexuality, gender, and race in this ever-changing world.