Migration Revolution: Philippine Nationhood and Class Relations in a Globalized Age by Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. (review)

Migration Revolution: Philippine Nationhood and Class Relations in a Globalized Ageis a major contribution to Philippine studies. With his latest book, Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr has given us an impressive analysis of migration and class relations in a globalized world. This book is not only relevant for students of migration but more importantly for scholars interested in the consequences of modernity, particularly its effects on class and popular culture. It will stimulate much debate about the nature and origins of a national consciousness and the formation of a national imaginary in an increasingly global and pan-national condition.

While most of the essays in this book have been published earlier, subsequently revised and rewritten as chapters for this publication, Migration Revolutionreads as a seamless collection of related topics. These chapters cover the experiences of Filipino seafarers and their intrepid voyages to distant lands where some eventually settled. They also deal with the issue of global labor and its effects on subjectivity, including notions of shame and betrayal for having left the homeland. Notions of citizenship in an increasingly flexible and transient mobility are critically and originally explored, including attempts by the nation-state to incorporate its extraterritorial citizens. The concluding chapter on transnationalism gives us tantalizing, if necessarily incomplete, insights on contemporary aporias. All these topics interpenetrate, and Aguilar provides us with many important insights in an increasingly transhuman global condition.

While migration has attracted much interest both globally as well as in the Philippines, surprisingly little serious academic research has been conducted in this field, apart from the economic and policy implications of this phenomenon. Aguilar’s contribution addresses this gap in the literature as it relates the historical origins of migration with contemporary factors such as the progressive intercalation of the global economy and culture. The strength of this publication lies in its broad treatment of the topic and in expanding the analysis to include neighboring countries in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia. His observation that the Philippine workforce (referring to nineteenth-century Filipino seamen) was, in the first instance, global before it became national reveals the historical and cultural complexities of this phenomenon (58). The book’s historical chapter locates the contemporary condition of migrant labor and transnational consciousness within a wider perspective rarely encountered in the literature.

Aguilar’s grasp of both the theoretical and empirical literature is impressive; not much escapes his critical gaze. In addition, he has drawn widely from his cosmopolitan and diverse academic postings such as his lectureships in Singapore and Australia before joining the Department of History at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he is currently based. Trained as a sociologist but drawing on interdisciplinal perspectives, he guides the reader through a complex field with remarkable ease.

Nevertheless, I would have wanted a fuller discussion of several issues affecting both migrants and their home communities. The notion of a globalized homeland has received some attention recently (e.g., Leopoldina Fortunati, Raul Pertierra, and Jane Vincent, eds., Migration, Diaspora, and Information Technology in Global Societies, Routledge, 2012). Also, a recent study of the role of the new media in maintaining ties between Filipina mothers based in London and relatives in their home villages is provided by Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller ( Migration and the New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia, Routledge, 2012). These studies raise issues discussed by Aguilar in a pre–social media era. However, they are relatively recent publications and may have preceded Aguilar’s essays. A more puzzling omission, given Aguilar’s encyclopedic grasp of the literature, is the book by Greg Bankoff and Kathleen Weekley ( Post-Colonial National Identity in the Philippines: Celebrating the Centennial of Independence, Ashgate, 2002). While this latter study mainly discusses the 1998 centennial celebrations, its suggestions regarding a postnational, transnational, or regional consciousness support most of Aguilar’s earlier contentions. This is perhaps not surprising since the authors are...