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With nearly 10% of its population abroad, the Philippines is widely known as a country profoundly shaped by its overseas migrants. Filipinos are employed in a whole range of sectors from the medical professions to domestic and care work, seafaring and the service sector, contributing to economies and societies across the world, while also sending home billions of dollars in remittances. Yet the makings of this global labour diaspora reflects a complex and layered story involving global histories of colonialism, political-economic inequalities, and the everyday aspirations of individuals, families and communities for new opportunities and identities that transcend the boundaries of the nation-state. In this course, we will look deeper into these diverse processes that have made Philippine migration such a prominent and ambivalent reality in the contemporary age. Among the themes that we will study are: the state’s labour export policy and the production of the migrant subject; labour conditions abroad, resistance and transformations; gender and migration; transnational families and networks; faith, subjectivity and belonging; and discourses on migration, return and development. Alongside studying key scholarly works on Philippine migration, we will analyse and discuss films and other cultural texts that represent these themes.
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