Presentation on Wed – Tadiar’s “Filipinas Living in a Time of War” Jacky Jessica Bryan

Please email 2 pg summary by 6pm on Tues Points that you will be presenting to the class Keep summary to minimum Remember to relate to larger questions & themes of course

as well as to other texts of the classPapers back @ end of class

Office hours = Wed (8/28 & 9/4) 12 to 1 – send email for confirmation

Study guides for final exam distributed Wed

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Preparing Migrants for Export

THE LABOR BROKERAGE STATE

What ideas & images do we associate with the term “liberal”?

Liberalism’s Enlightenment roots Original Anglo-Saxon

meaning = “free men” versus those conscripted in social hierarchy

Anti-absolute monarchy & feudalism = liberal-democracy and proto-capitalism

Locke’s commonwealth = individual + market freedom

LIBERALISM

“The problems of political domination, exclusion, and

inequality within liberalism are deepened dramatically when we

consider the record of liberal-democratic nation-states

founded in racial slavery and colonial expansion” (Nikhil Pak

Singh)

Liberalism in the post-Cold War New World Order: assumption that the free market

automatically leads to civic order and economic prosperity

freedom to accumulate will guarantee all other freedoms

Consequences of neoliberalism: Removal of economic regulations Market options for social welfare

programs. Ex. Privatized health care Attacks on unionization. Ex. Right to

work statesSimultaneous shrinking of the

state and redefinition of citizenship and rights (xvii)

NEOLIBERALISM

“For the Philippines neoliberal strategies of the state have long been shaped by its status as a neocolony of the United States” (xvii)

What is neocolonialism? informal vs formal control extraction vs association

American exceptionalism and benevolent assimilation

Philippines as transitional case study between old world colonization (Spain) and new world order neocolonization (US)

THE NEOCOLONY & NEOLIBERALISM

How does Robyn Rodriguez define a “labor brokerage state”?

What US colonial legacies enabled the Philippines to transform itself into a labor brokerage state?

How does the Philippine state draw on racialized and gendered logics to market its citizens as ideal workers in the global economy?

QUESTIONS

“a neoliberal strategy that is comprised of institutional and discursive practices through which the Philippine state mobilizes its citizens and sends them abroad to work for employers through the world while generating a ‘profit’ from the remittances that migrants send back to their families and love ones remaining in the Philippines” (x)

Negotiating with receiving countries

Formalization of migrationEnsuring temporary, flexible and

disciplined labor

LABOR BROKERAGE STATE

1898 Philippine revolution Spanish American War Treaty of Paris

1900-1930s – Pensionados & Manongs

1934 Tydings McDuffie Act Military Bases Agreement & EVP (7)

1950s – IMF loans to Philippines 1972 – Declaration of Martial law

(11) 1980s – SAPs and foreign debt

worsen 1986 – People Power 2000 – Ramos, SOFA & VFA 2001 – People Power II & GMA

COLONIAL LEGACIES

“authorization” as key to Filipino mobility Passport as token of national

belonging vs guarantee of mobilityPhilippine state as researcher

and manager of visa regimes Skills training =

professionalization and protection or exploitation?

Documentary processing Proof of Philippine govt’s

modernization & efficiency Practice of monitoring and

disciplining“’international borders serve to

maintain global inequality’” (47)

MIGRATION BUREACRACY

Institutional vs discursive practices of labor brokerage Labor diplomacy + marketing

of migrants for export Reliance on racialized &

gendered scripts Filipina nurse – essentialist

assumptions of Filipina femininity (61)

Filipino seafarers – colonialism as advantage (63)

National difference marks labor skills = national hierarchy of laborers

MARKETING PEOPLE

Discursive tactics of regulation migrant citizenship “the sense that membership in the Philippines is increasingly

construed as actually requiring employment overseas” (79) Neoliberal conception of citizenship rights to protection &

social welfare vs rights of mobility & accumulationBalikbayan (81)

Marcos’s regime Overseas support Required remittances

bagong bayani (84) Aquino Presidency Neoliberal turn Religious iconography

OCW OFW OFI (88)

BAGONG BAYANI

Filipina overseas worker = bagong bayani & source of national shame. Ex. Maricris Sioson

Conflict between patriarchal Philippine nationalism and Philippine participation in neoliberal global capitalism

Resolution paternal state & moral education/values Education & decision-making

takes responsibility from state and puts it on individual women

Self-policing and re-enforcing of heteropatriarchal norms

THE INTERNATIONAL DOMESTIC

May 2001 – Filipina garment workers strike Malaysian-owned factory Under Brunei jurisdiction Contracted by US-based companies Negotiated by private Philippine-based

recruitment agencies “Protected” by Philippine government

repatriation “Nationalism and citizenship have

become the modalities through which the labor brokerage state mobilizes people to work as low-wage, temporary, gendered, and racialized laborers globally and secures their persistent relations to the nation-state” (143)

MIGRANT CITIZENSHIP’S CONTRADICTIONS

Ex. Migrante International:Global network linking

diaspora and country of origin

Dynamic use of electoral politics & radical social movements

Redefining citizenship from bottom up migration & remittances vs justice & accountability Place consciousness

Emphasis on workers’ dignity & respect

ANTICAPITALIST TRANSNATIONAL CITIZENSHIP

How can we radically revision citizenship so that it is not based

on a nation-state defined by capitalist logic?