The Philippines. Global Filipinos: Migrants' lives in the virtual village By Deirdre McKay Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. Pp. 247. Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Abstract

The Philippines Global Filipinos: Migrants' lives in the virtual village By DEIRDRE MCKAY Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. Pp. 247. Notes, Bibliography, Index. In the early twenty-first century, Filipino migrants working overseas comprised the third-largest group of migrant labourers in the world. This global phenomenon has impacted the lives and livelihoods of Filipinos across the Philippine archipelago including indigenous villagers in rural areas in the northern Philippines. How do villagers, both those who migrate to work overseas and those who stay behind, view and interpret migration? How do villagers feel and think about themselves in the world? In Global Filipinos, Deirdre McKay tackles these questions in a multi-sited ethnographic case study of the lives of the villagers of Haliap in Ifugao province, many of whom migrate across the Philippines and overseas. Diverging from previous ethnographic studies of Filipino international migration that have focused on the Philippine government's labour export programme and institutions like the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, McKay persuasively argues for the enduring significance of villagers' relationships and their desires for economic security and dignity as central features of late twentieth and early twenty-first century international labour migration. McKay's fieldwork took place in the 1990s and 2000s, a period of dramatic change in the municipality of Asipulo, where Haliap is located. By the end of the 1990s, Haliap respondents characterised those villages with many workers abroad as 'developed' and 'progressive' places. Progress was made visible by patterns of consumption --most notably new houses outfitted with modern appliances, and specific brands of clothing, such as Merrell shoes--enabled by the remittances sent by workers overseas. It also involved the increasing use of specific technologies such as cell phones, which resulted in the development of two cellular networks in Asipulo by 2002. Perhaps the most dramatic change was that overseas employment created a new category of elite persons in Haliap. Those villagers who had worked overseas became Haliap's 'new kadangyans', a term that referred to the old landed elite. While the chronological focus of the book is the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries, McKay emphasises that migration is not a new phenomenon for Haliap villagers. 'Villagers led mobile lives, even before overseas migration really took off (p. 4). They engaged in migration within the region to cope with a local shortage of irrigated paddy fields. Parental migration was a common practice that enabled their eldest children to inherit the family's most fertile fields. However, by the late twentieth century, overseas migration offered new and exciting opportunities for socioeconomic mobility. Earnings abroad transformed some Haliap villagers into a new class of persons who built modern homes, bought new cars, and could afford professional education for their children. These changes also wrought several downsides: villagers' perceptions of the limitless wealth of overseas workers; overseas workers' excessive borrowing that fuelled these misperceptions; and the resultant misunderstandings that created tensions among family and neighbours. …