“From Where I Sit”: Filipino Youth, Sexuality and Immigration in Participatory Action Research

Studies of young people\u27s experiences of sexuality rarely discuss how immigration and settlement impact youths\u27 understanding of their bodies, sexual identities, and knowledge. In this paper, Filipino youth in collaboration with adult allies, conducted a New York City-based participatory action research project and found that young people\u27s experiences and understanding of sexuality are narrated by silences, solidarity and paradoxical spaces. This study explores the contradictory experiences of passivity and subjectivity in the sexual lives of young people. Lastly, as an adult collaborator on the project I assess how “participation” as a logic of inquiry allows for youth and adult collaborators to talk through and negotiate their positions in a research project. © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved

Skype Mothers: Technology, Multi-Directional Care in the Transnational Filipino Family

This paper explores the redefinition of the roles and operation of the Filipino family for migrant and non-migrant members. Scholars have posited that “transnational motherhood” has reorganized they way that migrant mothers make meaning and participate family life in both of their host and home contexts. This paper posits that through strategies of “multi-directional care,” care work for transnational families go both ways: non-migrant family members actively partake in caring for their migrant family members. The main findings in the paper highlight the use of video computer technology to make meaning of familial roles that usually necessitate physical presence such as discipline and care work. The new development in technology for Filipino migrants to communicate with a visual register taps into a different texture of affect and communication from afar. The inventive experiences and approaches of Filipino families stretched over time and space allows us to see how the global has been sutured into the intimate parts of social life. In an increasing neoliberal world, understanding the changes in the family can also help us to understand the social processes that insist on conditions of separation and individuation

When Caring Hurts: The Work of Strained Relationships in Transnational Families

The normative conception of care work is described through qualities of nurturance, love and warmth in the intimate relationships of family members. However, the work of caring for family draws from a range of affects, from warmhearted to reticent. Applied to studies of transnational families, scholars have shown that children of migrants demonstrate resentment and indignation towards their parents abroad because of their absence. Based on the definition of care work as nurturance, transnational children narrate the emotional distance to their migrant parents with cynicism. Yet, children left behind still attend to the necessary work needed to keep their families functional despite emotive dissonance. This paper explores the labor of maintaining transnational families in spite of the positive or negative emotional charge of caring. Adding nuance to the literature on care work within the transnational family, I argue that care work is still work even if family members do not express that work with love. I seek to untangle the idea of care work as nurturing or loving; and instead present examples where care work is cold to establish the idea that caring is work that is allocated no matter the moral underpinnings. To offer a different framework to understand hostility in the care work transnational families, I use a social reproductive labor framework to analyze the emotions involved with caring in a transnational family. I provide evidence from my multi-sited ethnography of care work in Filipino transnational families to demonstrate care work carried out within strained relationships

\u27The Internet is Magic\u27: Technology, Intimacy and Transnational Families

Drawing on multi-sited ethnography and qualitative research, I argue that the visual register in particular modes of communication technology like Skype and Facebook ushers in a different quality of relationships for transnational families. Most participants in this study are undocumented immigrants unable to return to their families for long periods of time because of legal consequences that will ban them from coming back and working in the USA. On the other hand, their families in the Philippines cannot visit the USA without proper documentation. The economic necessity of working abroad and legal conditions deter family reunification. Consequently, since these families are separated their only means of sustaining their relationships is through communication technology. The new mediums of communication, given their innovations in visuality, frequency and access to one another’s digital lives, present complicated issues as well as different forms of intimacy for members in a transnational family

Coming to America: The Business of Trafficked Workers

The expansion of the United States’ current guest worker program is one policy measure that both political parties have agreed on in the immigration debate yet there continues to be a paucity of research on the experiences of migrants, many of whom are Asian, who enter the U.S. through the existing program. This paper examines the experiences of Asian guest workers with a focus on guest workers from the Philippines. Filipino migrants are an especially good case study for examining the United States’ guest worker program because the Philippines was amongst the top 5 countries supplying workers to the U.S. Through our case study of Filipino migrant workers we find that that the United States’ guest worker program ultimately relies on multiple sets of actors transnationally including the growing transnational migration industry and the Philippine labor brokerage state. Our research suggests that though guest workers as “legal” they are often dispossessed of labor rights and their immigration statuses through contract-substitution and debt bondage. We find that private labor recruiters and labor sending governments are complicit, along with employers, in producing precarious conditions for migrant workers. In effect, “legal” migration through the guest worker program becomes a thinly veneered form of labor trafficking. Our research is based primarily on on-going qualitative research with Filipino guest workers in California

Carlos Bulosan and a Collective Outline for Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies

As an activist-scholar formation called the Critical Filipina and Filipino StudiesCollective (CFFSC) we take the position that Carlos Bulosan is indispensable foran emerging multidisciplinary field that is equipped in defying the neoliberalonslaught against ethnic studies in the United States and the unbridled racismmost evident in the ongoing US “wars of terrorism” that haunt people of colorthroughout the world. We take seriously Bulosan’s insight that “[I]f the writer hasany significance, [s]he should write about the world in which [s]he lives: interprethis [her] time and envision the future through his [her] knowledge of historicalreality” (On Becoming Filipino 43). While Bulosan for our times can be taken upin an assortment of ways, for the purpose of this article we draw upon Bulosan’swriting and praxis to conceptualize an outline for CFFS that can offer groundedanalysis and academic critique

CARLOS BULOSAN AND A COLLECTIVE OUTLINE FOR CRITICAL FILIPINA AND FILIPINO STUDIES

As an activist-scholar formation called the Critical Filipina and Filipino Studies Collective (CFFSC) we take the position that Carlos Bulosan is indispensable for an emerging multidisciplinary field that is equipped in defying the neoliberal onslaught against ethnic studies in the United States and the unbridled racism most evident in the ongoing US “wars of terrorism” that haunt people of color throughout the world. We take seriously Bulosan’s insight that “[I]f the writer has any significance, [s]he should write about the world in which [s]he lives: interpret his [her] time and envision the future through his [her] knowledge of historical reality” (On Becoming Filipino 43). While Bulosan for our times can be taken up in an assortment of ways, for the purpose of this article we draw upon Bulosan’s writing and praxis to conceptualize an outline for CFFS that can offer grounded analysis and academic critique

Measuring the Capacity to Combat Illicit Tobacco Trade In 160 Countries

Background Illicit trade of tobacco negatively affects countries’ tobacco control efforts. It leads to lower tobacco prices and makes tobacco products more accessible to vulnerable populations. In this study, we constructed an illicit tobacco trade index, which measures the structural and institutional capabilities of 160 countries in addressing illicit tobacco trade. We collected the most recent and best available data on general governance, tobacco control policies, and trade and customs practices. Results Singapore, New Zealand, Finland and Sweden lead countries with the most favorable illicit tobacco trade score. We observed a positive relationship between illicit tobacco trade scores and Gross National Income (GNI) per capita and a negative relationship with the share of illicit tobacco trade to total tobacco consumption. Conclusions The capability to combat illicit trade varies across countries. However, on average, low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are less capable of addressing illicit tobacco trade as suggested by the lower illicit tobacco trade index score. The lower index score in low and middle-income countries was mainly driven by low scores in tobacco control policies and trade and customs practices and conditions. Our study reinforces the importance for LMICs to adopt the WHO’s Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Tobacco Trade Products, particularly committing to treaty obligations and investing on track and trace system and other customs reforms