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

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. For a discussion on the racialization of Filipinos under U.S. colonialism in the Philippines, see, for instance, Julian Go, “Racism and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practices in America’s Pacific Empire,” Qualitative Sociology 27, no. 1 (2004). Rick Baldoz does an interesting analysis of how these racializing discourses then played out when Filipinos arrived on U.S. shores to work during the colonial period: Rick Baldoz, “Valorizing Racial Boundaries: Hegemony and Conflict in the Racialization of Filipino Migrant Labor in the United States,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27, no. 6 (2004). 2. See http://institution.ibon.org/ for Ibon publications. 3. According to Carlos, the Philippines is second only to Mexico as the largest exporter of workers in the world. See Ma. Reinaruth D. Carlos, “On the Determinants of International Migration in the Philippines: An Empirical Analysis ,” International Migration Review 36, no. 1 (2002). The 2005 figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), however, put the Philippines as third after China and India in terms of total migrant population. See for example, International Organization for Migration, World Migration 2005: The Costs and Benefits of International Migration (Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2005). 4. For the most recent statistics on Philippine migration see www.poea .gov.ph/. The only stock estimate of Philippine migrants available from the POEA is from 2004. This figure is likely to be higher at present. 5. Ibid. 6. From www.census.gov.ph/. 7. See Wayne A. Cornelius et al., Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective , 2d ed. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004). Their study provides a multicountry perspective on immigration control. 8. Numerous studies have been conducted exploring, among other issues, the myriad reasons why people (especially women) from the Philippines seek to live and work outside of the Philippines. The following are just a small sampling: Pauline Gardiner Barber, “Agency in Philippine Women’s Labour Migration and 167 168 Notes to Introduction Provisional Diaspora,” Women’s Studies International Forum 23, no. 4 (2000); Kimberley A. Chang and Julian McAllister Groves, “Neither ‘Saints’ nor ‘Prostitutes’: Sexual Discourse in the Filipina Domestic Worker Community in Hong Kong,” Women’s Studies International Forum 23, no. 1 (2000); Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001). 9. See POEA, “Middle East,” www.poea.gov.ph/html/prospects2004/html. 10. Enrico Dela Cruz, “Philippines 2007 Overseas Workers’ Remittances at Record 14.4 Billion Dollars,” Thomson Financial News Limited (2008), www.forbes .com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/02/15/afx4659876.html. The IMF ranks the Philippines third after Mexico and India in terms of remittance earnings. See International Monetary Fund, Migration and Foreign Remittances in the Philippines (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 2005). 11. See, for instance, Michael Burawoy, “The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labor: Comparative Material from Southern Africa and the United States,” American Journal of Sociology 81, no. 5 (1976). 12. Neferti Tadiar, “Domestic Bodies of the Philippines,” Soujourn 12, no. 2 (1997): 5. 13. Saskia Sassen, “Women’s Burden: Counter-Geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival,” Journal of International Affairs 53, no. 2 (2000): 101. 14. I provide a detailed discussion of my methodological approach to studying labor brokerage in the Appendix. 15. To understand labor brokerage I pay attention to officials’ and bureaucrats ’ interpretation and implementation of the government’s migration policies and face-to-face interactions between low-level civil servants and citizens in the daily operations of the migration bureaucracy. By focusing on the more mundane aspects of state practice, I necessarily understand “the state” as a complex institution populated by a range of agents and characterized by numerous contradictions even as it may be oriented by broader rationalities or “interests.” 16. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 65. 17. Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 12. 18. See John Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,” in Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened, ed. John Williams (Washington D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990) for an elaboration of the key precepts of the Washington Consensus. Notes to Introduction 169 19. William I. Robinson, “Beyond Nation-State Paradigms: Globalization, Sociology and the Challenge of...