Author: LOPEZ, Mario
Title of paper: And God Walks in the Suburbs: On Affectivity and Dialogue within Japanese-Filipino Marriages
From an anthropological perspective, ‘affect’ can be said to be the actualization of various potentials. However, what is ‘affect’ when we deal with International Marriages in Japan? Is the production of a transformation which is responding to certain transnational and postcolonial conditions whereby gendered ‘bodies’ meet? Or is it something more than this? This presentation probes the meanings of 'affect' within the context of Japanese/Filipino marriages, and how they deployed, shared and used within long term marriages. As part of transnational relations between Japan and the Philippines, international marriages have continued to rise. In the context of this presentation I will question what ‘affects’ are produced or discarded between individuals who have met through such conditions. This presentation shares some narratives of couples who are neighbours and whose stories are very much intertwined. It is through the 'affects' of these individuals that I would like to comment on what binds them together. These ‘affects’ are the sovereignty of a ‘masculine’ God and Christian Dogma that resides within couples’ narratives. This presentation will tentatively suggest that Christian faith and a transcendental God who walks the Japanese suburbs play substantial roles in maintaining and creating dialogues between some couples.
Author: CHOY, Catherine Ceniza
Title of paper: Caring Unbound: A Diasporic Perspective of Filipino Nurse Migration to the United States
Since the late 1960s, the Philippines has been the world’s leading exporter of professional nurses. Although the leading destination for Filipino nurse migrants has been the United States, in more recent decades, hospitals in the Middle East, United Kingdom, Canada, and Singapore have also recruited nurses from the Philippines. A new agreement between Japan and the Philippines, for example, will enable several hundred nurses from the Philippines to work in Japan. Although the historical origins of Filipino nurse migration overseas can be traced to the early twentieth century during the U.S. colonial period in the Philippines, media reports throughout the world portray their migration as a contemporary phenomenon devoid of any history. This paper explores how and why the Philippines became the world’s leading exporter of nurses in the second half of the twentieth century, and the challenges faced by sending and receiving hospitals of Filipino nurse migrants as well as the migrants themselves. It will focus on the changing dynamics of Filipino nurse migration overseas from the 1960s to the present, specifically the change from U.S.-bound professional immigrant to global contract worker and the shifting gendered and class composition of the Philippine professional nurse labor force.
Author: ASATO, Wako
Title of paper: Globalization of Care and the Position of the Filipino Workers: Reconfiguration of Care Work and Migration
The purposes of this presentation are to clarify the mechanism of globalization of care and to clarify the strategic position of Philippines among competing sending nations, taking up cases of East Asian Economies in Asian countries: namely, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan as receiving societies and Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam as sending nations. Accordingly to the advent of aging, the demand for care work has been increasing while the care has not been supplied enough due to decreasing labor force and negative preference toward the job and lower wages for locals. This is the rational of the introduction of foreign workers. From the standpoint of working conditions and benefits given to foreign domestic/care workers, two sets of hierarchy are observed. One is the hierarchy by workers’ nationality and the other is the hierarchy among receiving societies. Those hierarchies are reflected upon the strategy of sending countries, and immigration and labor policies of receiving countries. Though the share of Filipino workers in the labor market has been eroded due to aggressive strategy of emerging sending nations like Indonesia and Vietnam by dumping workers’ working conditions, the Philippines Government has been trying to survive in the labor market competition by emphasizing the “high quality” workers.
Author: TOLENTINO, Rolando B.
Title of paper: Spectacles of Masculinity and the Commerce of Men’s Bodies
Philippine development uses especially young bodies as sites of exploitation and progress. In more recent times, men’s bodies have become feminized spectacles of the individual and nation’s mobility. This paper analyzes some of the cultural texts that use men’s bodies as spectacles of national masculinity: macho dancing contests, Bench underwear fashion show, and popular films. Such spectacles allow a more explicit sexualization of men’s bodies in support of intensifying national development. The paper connects the spectaculization of men’s bodies with issues of transnational capitalism as especially effected and affected from within the nation-space.
