Lifetimes of Disposability and Surplus Entrepreneurs in Bagong Barrio, Manila

Working in collaboration with Migrante International and drawing on testimony of residents in the remittance-dependent, migrant-sending community of Bagong Barrio in Caloocan City in Metro Manila, Philippines, we examine the systematic production of lifetimes of disposability that drives labour migration across the generations. The closure of factories and contractualisation of work in the 1980s created the conditions in which labour migration is not a choice but a necessity. Diligent use of remittances to pay for the education of their children in many cases has produced a new generation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), and investment in housing often is another route to OFW status. Alongside this narrative of ongoing precarity, we listen closely to the testimony of residents for ways of living that are both subsumed within and somewhat excessive to accounts that might render their lives as merely waste or wasted. Sa tulong ng Migrante International at gamit ang ilang kwento ng mga residenteng patuloy na umaasa sa remittance o padala ng kanilang mga kamag anak na OFW, aming sisiyasatin sa papel na ito ang sistematikong produksyon ng tinatawag ni Neferti Tadiar na “life-times of disposability” na siyang nagtutulak sa pangingibang bansa ng libo libong Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) mula sa Bagong Barrio, isang barangay sa lungsod ng Caloocan, Maynila. Sa lugar na ito, ang pagsasara ng maraming pabrika at kontraktwalisasyon nung 1980s ay siyang nagtulak sa marami upang maghanap ng trabaho sa ibang bansa. Para sa mga residente ng Bagong Barrio na aming napanayam, ang pagalis ng Pilipinas para sa hanap buhay ay hindi lamang isang personal na pagpapasiya. Isa itong kasagutan sa matinding pangangailangan. Bukod pa rito, karamihan sa mga OFW, sa tulong na rin ng kanilang mga kamag anak ay napipilitang gamitin ang remittance para sa pagaaral ng mga anak o sa pagbili ng lupa at bahay bilang puhunan para sa kanilang mga anak, ang susunod na henerasyon ng OFW sa kanilang pamilya. Sa kontekstong ito ng pawang na siklo ng pangingibang bansa, nais naming pakinggang mabuti ang mga kwento ng mga residente ng Bagong Barrio upang mabigyang pansin ang iba pang uri ng pamumuhay na kontra sa karaniwang pagtingin sa buhay ng Pilipinong migrante, na ito ay nasasayang lamang o isa nang patapon na buhay. What long-term residents remember about Bagong Barrio from the 1960s and 1970s are vacant fields of tall weeds, mud, the absence of basic infrastructure, smells and garbage: “people would just wrap their shit and throw it in your backyard”.1 North of central Manila and not yet incorporated into the metropolitan area (see Figure 1), the site was one of the region's largest garbage dumps, an area referred to as Pugad Baboy (which translates as swine's nest or pig fields). When informal settlers began to arrive, it was a place where garbage was thrown and people were literally salvaged, that is, killed and/or discarded.2 Early settlers at that time were themselves a kind of excess. Some were displaced from informal settlements located in the Intramuros and Sampaloc areas in central Manila: “when we were asked to leave [Intramuros], we moved here”.3 Others came from poor rural areas from northern and other provinces. Bagong Barrio became a squatter's settlement of mostly shanty housing, where residents lined up with pails at 4 am to fetch water from the well of the local “business man of water”. After Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos established the National Housing Authority (NHA) in 1975, an infrastructure of roads, sewage and electricity was slowly developed, and in 1980 Imelda Marcos came to Bagong Barrio during a local election, in her capacity as the Governor of the Metro Manila Commission. She sang the song Dahil Sa lyo [Because of You] and promised residents: “I will give you this land”.4 Succeeding Presidents have persisted with this promise of land-titling, more recently President Arroyo in 2005 during her “de Soto tour” of poor communities in Metro Manila on the fourth anniversary of EDSA 2 (four days of political protest in 2001 that ousted then President Estrada).5 Despite these efforts to solidify the settlement, economies of excess and disposability persist in Bagong Barrio, and, in many ways, residents remain a surplus population. The slow temporality of neoliberalism in the Philippines over the last half century has created, in Neferti Tadiar's (2013:38) phrasing, lifetimes of disposability6 and the conditions for permanent, intergenerational stagnation among large populations, a phenomenon perceived not as “an event” or “immanent fate” but “simply a[n enduring] mode of life”. A part of this enduring temporality of disposability has been the respatialisation of family life through the massive expansion of labour migration. Drawing on periods of fieldwork in Bagong Barrio in 2014 and 2015, and working in collaboration with Migrante International, a migrant advocacy organisation, we focus here on the persistent intergenerational reproduction of entrenched precarity, and ongoing spatial economies of liquidity and disposability.7 Lifetimes of disposability evidence suffering, in Povinelli's phrasing, that is “ordinary, chronic and cruddy rather than catastrophic, crisis-laden, and sublime”. Being less “eventful”, this suffering is, she argues, less susceptible to the “ethical impulse” (2011:3–4). But documenting the temporality of intergenerational precarity opens critical opportunities as well. As Elizabeth Povinelli (2011) argues, sacrificial redemption is a technique of social tense that is often deployed to explain (away) social harm. A close appraisal of the repetition of disposability across generations puts a lie to this mode of deflection, used in the global North and South alike to legitimate labour migration, because it makes clear that sacrifice in the past and present is unlikely to be redeemed in the future. Precarity in Bagong Barrio is produced within the specifics of Philippine history: a history of Spanish and American colonialism, integration within the global capitalist economy through partnerships with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, an export-oriented industrial development strategy that has subjected the population to the effects of various structural adjustment policies (Bello et al. 2005; Raphael 2000; San Juan 2000, 2009; Tadiar 2009), and a home-grown version of crony capitalism, or what Paul Hutchcroft (1998) describes as booty capitalism. This history has been shadowed by a vigorous urban restructuring program for Manila during the Marcos era (the City of Man), accompanied by substantial urban dispossession: namely, the removal, containment, concealment and relocation of squatters (Benedicto 2014; Garrido 2013; Pinches 1994; Tadiar 2009; Tolentino 2001). Rather than waste to which the state is indifferent,8 in the Philippines, through a labour export program that dates from 1974, segments of this “disposable” population have served as valuable assets, who sustain their families and the post-colonial state through their remittances. In 2014, remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were estimated to be US$26.0 billion or almost 15% of the country's GNP Tadiar is estimated that in Philippine as an OFW, and of the population on remittances for their and at children in the Philippines of the are up with at one working overseas Bagong Barrio is a site in which this global is is both a community and of or of referred to the as to labour another as a migration is in Bagong has a migration to is both a of OFW labour and a place where from the from the through their and the and to leave as labour is that Migrante International is their efforts and for to pay close to this Precarity in Bagong Barrio is in to other urban of life in Bagong Barrio within ongoing to with and the we the urban and of which for produced in in to the of metropolitan In for to from within and across the global that is in the and through which are et al. et al. 2013; and 2013; The of as and just a on Filipino is up with and from the in as Bagong Barrio in accounts of the of the global South are themselves of and is the Philippine an of labour from which other labour in Bagong Barrio In that and political in both the global North and the Philippines from the of Bagong and migration, informal and and the and of it is to the and surplus the global North and South it is that the in in the Philippines, not as an of and choice but as a of a family with of and This might be of as surplus and the state on remittances a to the urban and rural that the Philippine state has a structural on this surplus one that not the of the urban poor but the of social by of the or Tadiar argues, of of the of the urban pay close to these of and the social reproduction of OFW labour that sustain the ongoing production of labour migration within the global of of migrant lives in Bagong Barrio on the testimony of community to we were by in the of Migrante This strategy from political and as or surplus populations, the of that we As themselves as the of the of lives among surplus in the Philippines, by Neferti Tadiar as the of global be into in ways, of which and the of and to both the of and the repetition of these across the is one of the of the of testimony and across the global South and North 2005; we to this of and in the of Migrante migrant workers are often into and these political et al. Tadiar are often in Philippine state of development as of the and in and as and of and global and in political as surplus or close to life opens opportunities to listen these established In her with of and other lives in the Philippines, Tadiar for what from these for of social and social and for of that to the of through the of she up the of other for ways of living in the that and that in ways we would be to into political have to listen closely to what residents of Bagong Barrio about their for ways of living that are both subsumed within and somewhat excessive to accounts that might render their lives as merely waste or within global capitalism. 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the of to was for to be from the National for this The of to from what (2011) urban as located in to of and various in urban it to because are many to it on in the as that it in the and it a of came of that an the be but it been that it will be to just pay will be the to The was for this who asked for the was for a but to give it be as Tadiar argues, that be as a of and a to a home-grown crony capitalism, this is to residents of Bagong Barrio on a close on the housing that in and/or in Bagong Barrio, where are and of their or status. the of has you here in the of The is As the of of the in the area has by over from to 2014, the of has (see Figure from an strategy of global and the of the in Metro has place in the metropolitan and it has been that from to in of central Manila and Bagong Barrio for the who is for the the it have to pay that and you to the at the would leave that and the informal as to pay the with overseas migration is a of and a who in this migration one to working in just in the OFW who in the a and a for to Bagong Barrio, within just one used up her and was her one at a OFW, a their as a migrant was a to through what with of of this was to because it to and pay a more were to it for for you have to remember that you a you to are in because it will be a for In their community of Bagong Barrio, Migrante this of as one of the in the it is that of a OFW on from her the by or the of valuable education and testimony to Tadiar's about the of the of the urban The is work and for the we have to through the with from what makes it the kind of the she to or that of But are we not would a just for a this or with this to have at it the we have a or a as as of to we would the would have to this in Bagong where and to in an up would to a to be in Caloocan family is in the their lives to be life is to be have a to to and the just to to to the and a her was with an to the over to and and to and When this to she that that she to a with and and it on that we are her and an The are the site of her life as a garbage and a of she to a in and the would be to and and the is the for a she to be is where she is, in Bagong Barrio, where her and As she her what she to is a in Bagong Barrio with at for a that will sustain her it what will would will the residents in Bagong Barrio have When their that be to family is in her and her is for to be in the A narrative of disposability and lives not these her of and her to to Bagong Barrio and her to are a of a of migration, as for in the Philippines as in the global She to in a in a for and of (Benedicto 2014; Tadiar This from accounts and is well Bagong Barrio residents have of their life which close to their of lifetimes of disposability and the production of surplus their are an of state neoliberalism and a of the respatialisation of family and work lives as a strategy for to for migrant families who work for lifetimes within their the of social reproduction to a community where of the opportunities have been where the of housing have to and where for social reproduction as education have been a and investment in the reproduction of and this the it is a within the family and one that of the that we have to of of the in many cases it yet another generation of labour of surplus In what an residents of Bagong Barrio are both and to the Philippine state as of the to from this the of Bagong Barrio, we that neoliberalism and the Philippine systematic on a surplus population as a has been by by by promise by Rather than from one it has been from many of and social we about the of residents: the of a community and and more of and as into the labour and housing as a or the of children to in a for a is new about the of and informal communities but in a in which these communities are and as the in that of their community and is and of and political of ongoing to and family that is, of a of labour and life that and the and the population. Migrante the through their and As we and of to in Bagong Barrio, of to this place in the In residents lives and excessive to of and or and populations, lives that and or that through of and migration, and the as to surplus would well to listen closely to these life for and new political this to Migrante in their efforts to the structural on OFW that the “ordinary, and suffering of the OFW is unlikely to be redeemed in the and political in the is, Migrante for their as and of labour migration, and and the for their close of a of this to for her about surplus have from and at the at the of and the of and the at the of from the and and and the and

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