Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

August 2007

Publication Title

American Sociological Association Annual Meeting

Disciplines

Gender and Sexuality | Migration Studies | Race and Ethnicity | Sociology | Work, Economy and Organizations

Abstract

The Philippine’s' ongoing labor export policy since the early 1970s has resulted in one of the largest national outflow of skilled labor and service workers and in the proliferation of gendered Filipino diasporic and migrant communities around the world. Poverty and very few economic opportunities in the Philippines explain a significant portion of this outflow. The labor export policy thus creates a structural opening for many to seek livelihood outside the Philippines. The government fosters this policy so that temporary migrant workers and immigrants settlers send remittances back to the Philippines, bolstering the national economy. Since the 1980s, Filipino migration globally exhibits significant gender differences in job recruitment and social network ties. However, since September 11, 2001, the United States and several countries with sizable Filipina and Filipino migrants have passed legislations and enacted policies that dramatically target Filipina and Filipino migrants for mass deportation and removal. This study examines, in particular, post-9/11 governmental activities to start and implement the mass removals of Filipinas and Filipinos in Malaysia, Italy, and the United States. The study argues that their forced returned migration is becoming an emerging transnational gendered regime of labor regulation within neoliberalism and global militarism since 2001. It finds that forced returned migration is becoming an emerging gendered pattern for Filipinos transnationally since the late 1990s. It highlights the general issues of work, belonging, and removal faced by these potential deportees and how they forge new racial-ethnic, diasporic identifications, and transnational meanings of migrancy and residency.

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