Kababayan Solidarity? Filipino Communities and Class Relations in United Arab Emirates Cities

Abstract

Class relations among Filipino workers in the urban United Arab Emirates (UAE) are examined through three Filipino communities: the kababayan street community, voluntary associations, and born-again Christian groups. Although Filipino populations in the UAE engage in various occupations, both middle- and lower-class Filipinos are bound by the same legal restrictions: partial citizenship and temporary employment. This has accorded importance to the kababayan street community as the basic safety net that ideally covers all Filipinos, although Filipino solidarity co-exists with class consciousness in a complex and fluid way. Though some middle-class Filipinos distance themselves from ordinary or domestic workers, they need such workers to affirm their own worth in the UAE; solidarity too is experienced differently from its egalitarian form by being one in which professionals can be providers. Class relations take different shapes, and intimacy can even develop in some faith groups where frequent and close interactions occur, backed by a common spiritual experience and a new outlook. As such, unlike other transnational Filipino communities, e.g. the USA where anomie exists along class lines, UAE cities provide more occasions and locations for class relations, reflecting the state's political and economic structure, but also the subjectivity and everyday practices of Filipino workers.