Transportation: Translating Filipino and Filipino American Tomboy Masculinities through Global Migration and Seafaring

A Sea of (Filipino/a) Global Migrants

Recently, the New York Times featured a report on the rising numbers of global migrants who collectively send oceanic-size remittances back home to the global south. The Sunday Magazine cover includes a photograph of a Filipina nurse—posed as abandoned, forlorn, and castaway—wearing medical scrubs, white shoes in hand, barefoot on a distant shore (Abu Dhabi?), aquamarine waters in the background; while inside the magazine a lengthy article discusses growing waves of migration from the global south to north, specifically focusing on the near constant outflow of Filipino/a migrants as a case study. The isolated and lonesome Filipina nurse on the magazine cover is revealing. She signifies how global migration and labor in general, and Filipino/a global migration and labor in particular, have been feminized.¹ That is, more women than men from the global south, including the Philippines, migrate to and work in the global north. Beyond suggesting the numerical differences in Filipino/a male and female migration patterns, she evokes a specific genealogy of how the Philippines as a nation and Filipino peoples in general have been feminized through U.S. and Japanese colonial, imperialist, capitalist, and misogynist discourses, which consistently inscribe the Philippines as a feminine and hence "weak nation-state," and the country's citizens and workers as exploited people, largely women.² Historically, these discourses have circulated through the figure of the Filipina as "prostitute," "mail-order bride," or "DH" (domestic helper). The wind-tossed and forsaken Filipina nurse brought to a foreign shore by the powerful tides of economic globalization is therefore a new twist on an entrenched discourse of Philippine and Filipino/a feminization, marginalization, and disempowerment.

Within this social context, in the Philippines and the diaspora, sea-based migration and transportation—also known as seafaring—has emerged as an important economic and cultural space through which Filipinos counter these discourses. Because seafaring is a profession where Filipino men are employed in large numbers, seafaring and seamen provide alternative spaces and figures for Filipino state officials, cultural workers, seamen, and even anthropologists to highlight a more masculine occupation and image of the Philippines and its people.³

Although a largely invisible migrant group in the United States, Filipino seamen can be found working on ships docked in every major port around the world. They constitute the largest ethnic/racial/national group in the industry's workforce and currently constitute about 28 percent of the labor in global shipping. Setting a national record in 2006, 260,000 Filipino seamen worked on thousands of container ships and oil tankers, which transport 90 percent of the world's goods and commodities, as well as cruise ships, which transport tourists.⁴ Locally (in the Philippines), Filipino seamen as "OFWs" (Overseas Filipino Workers) are significant because they contribute huge sums of foreign currency to the national economy. In 2006 Filipino seamen sent home approximately $2 billion.⁵ In the same year, OFWs (land- and sea-based) remitted a record high $12.8 billion. This global-local picture suggests why OFWs in general and Filipino seamen in particular are socially significant in Philippine and diasporic contexts.

For ten years I have been researching how working-class Filipino seamen imagine, experience, and create their masculinities through their everyday practices in global shipping, as well as how the Philippine state and other Filipino subjects imagine and produce Filipino masculinities through the sea and seafaring. From 1997 to 2002, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork with Filipino seamen in Manila and Oakland (primarily at maritime ports), and also with state officials, business people, and seafarer advocates in these two port cities. I gained access to Filipino seamen during fieldwork by accompanying (Catholic) seafarer advocates who were visiting ships, and I also visited ships independently. My encounters and conversations with seamen in ports generally ranged in length from a few minutes to an hour, usually during meals or work breaks.⁶ In metropolitan Manila and the provinces, I had longer conversations with seamen who were back from sea; those looking to begin or renew...