Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments The beginnings of this book can be traced to Union City, California , my hometown, where it was perfectly normal for my brother, Reuben, and I to smell the aroma of chicken adobo and to hear animated conversations in Tagalog as we walked home from school. This experience growing up ultimately led to the core questions that this book addresses: how and why Philippine (im)migrants come to find themselves on nearly every continent on the planet. My family , particularly my parents, Ruben and Daisy Rodriguez, and my late grandmother, Remedios Rodriguez, deserve the most thanks for their support in direct and indirect ways for this book’s completion. My father instilled in me a very early love of books, and my mother’s passion for research was formative in my development as a scholar. I found myself carving out a path in life that she, under different circumstances, would have made her own; instead, she, like many others before and after her, thwarted her personal desires to pursue nursing. My parents’ investment in a set of a Funk and Wagnall’s encyclopedia is probably what led me down the path to a Ph.D. in sociology! Informal Tagalog lessons from my lola and her memories of Manila helped me to negotiate through the city when I went to live there to do field research. The tireless work of my tito Dolpo as a low-wage immigrant worker inspired me to keep a concern for workers’ struggles at the center of my analysis. Many thanks are due my colleagues and friends from the University of California, Berkeley. Jennifer Chun deserves credit for keeping me focused through graduate school and beyond; she has been a dear friend and kasama, and without her I am not sure this book would have been possible. Patrisia Macias has been a great source of support after Berkeley. Hung Thai, Tamara Kay, Josh Page, Jeff 156 Acknowledgments 157 Sallaz, Chris Weltzel, and Melissa Wilde have all been good to me in many different ways over the years. My dissertation chair, Michael Burawoy, continues to guide and inspire me; his active involvement in the shaping and completion of my dissertation, from which this book emerged, is unmatched. All of my professors at Berkeley were instrumental in my intellectual formation. Thanks are due to Nancy Chodorow, Peter Evans, Gillian Hart, Aihwa Ong, Raka Ray, and Barrie Thorne. I had the good fortune to make a new home in a wonderfully vibrant place, and I have had the opportunity to be part of a number of different communities on campus that helped me work through this book: the Department of Sociology, the Institute for Research on Women, the Department of Women and Gender Studies, the Collective for Asian American Studies, and the Immigration Group at the Eagleton Center for Politics. There are too many people at Rutgers to thank, but special appreciation goes to Ethel Brooks, Carlos Decena, Catherine Lee, Ann Mische, Pat Roos, Kristen Springer, Zaire Dinzey Flores, Allan Issac and Zakia Salime. Ann and Pat, my mentors in the sociology department, have been cheering me to the finish line with this book since day one here at Rutgers. Catherine, Kristen, and Zakia made my new life as a junior faculty member much more bearable, and I also thank the wonderful undergraduate and graduate students I have met along the way, particularly Manjusha Nair, Carlos, Zaire, Allan, and Ethel thanks for plotting and scheming with me and making academic life all that I have wanted it to be. Research for parts of this book was supported by the Rutgers ’ Research Council, Global Opportunities Award, and the Byrne Family First Year Seminars. Beyond Rutgers I am blessed to have a great transnational network of friends and colleagues to depend on: Catherine Raissiguier, Helen Schwenken, Oscar Campomanes, Nerissa Balce, Peter Chua, Martin Manalansan, Rick Bonus, Emily Ignacio, Anna Guevarra, and Melissa Alipalo. I reserve a heartfelt salamat to Lucy Burns and R. Zamora Linmark, who have been constant and patient companions on this long journey. My fore“mothers” in Filipino studies (you know who you are) who span the Pacific paved the way for those of us who 158 Acknowledgments decided to take this road. And finally I am grateful to my kasamas throughout the world, especially my comrade/sister/friend/student, Valerie Francisco, who inspire me with their visions for and work toward a better future...