Contradictions of Class and Consumption When the Commodity Is Labour
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Why Philippine Migration?How could a country with so many gifted, so many nice people, end up in such a mess? -Benedict Anderson (quoted by Patricio Abinales in the Introduction to the Philippine edition of Imagined Communities, Anderson, 2003: xxvi)For us, overseas employment addresses two major problems: unemployment and the balance of payments position. If these problems are met or at least partially solved by contract migration, we also expect an increase in national savings and investment levels.-President Ferdinand E. Marcos, 1982 (cited in Gonzalez, 1998: 57)At first glance migration studies seem well positioned to confront theoretical and challenges posed by globalization discourses. Migration compels researchers to consider political, economic and social conditions in multiple nation states and raises questions about migrants' social identities and agency. And yet, paradoxically, much migration research remains bound to theoretical conventions of methodological nationalism; migrants and migration flows are considered from the vantage points of particular nation-states (both migrant-sending and receiving). This parallels but disguises earlier research conventions premised on migration as a radical break or rupture in the lives of migrants. Alternatively, some new approaches celebrate flows which remain ungrounded (see the Introduction to Inda and Rosaldo, 2002). However useful in their descriptive detail, fragmented social science conventions can also limit enquiry to the institutional and policy frameworks of im/migration reception and incorporation, or obstacles thereto. Mindful of such limitations, this paper draws upon 10 years of multisited ethnographic research which explores the migration experiences of Philippine women (Filipina)-in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Canada-and the gendered class and consumption contradictions of their transnational, globalized livelihood practices.1The paper examines how the increasing globalized consumption of Philippine gendered labour produces various contradictions in four related areas. The first contradiction lies in public policy which juggles the social and political effects of increased reliance on migration. The second set of contradictions relates to the normalization of migration as an important livelihood option for Philippine women, Filipina. Many of these women leave children, marital partners and other significant kin needing care in the Philippines while they provide caregiving services to overseas employers. Thirdly, in the Philippine economy the significant influx of migrant remittances contributes to the national balance sheet and enables new forms of consumption and migration-related industries to flourish. However, the benefits of such changes are precariously tied to volatile labour market conditions beyond the control of Philippine policy. And, fourthly, for migrants themselves (women for the purposes of this paper), migration enables new forms of consumption, economic subjectivity and class agency-but in problematic ways given the nature of their typically de-skilled employment, and the transnational location of their work and political expressions. Here, the contradiction is that they do not directly experience the fruits of their labour and when they support the migration preparations of female relatives, they perpetuate cyclical migration. Also, when migrants are politically active, the institutional frameworks that result from their activism serve to normalize migration. Throughout the paper I explore theoretical and issues relevant to writing ethnographies of migration framed against globalization discourse. I also discuss the class effects attending Philippine gendered migration while engaging in a dialogue about the absence of attention to class in related migration research.Migration Ambivalence in Policy and PracticeSince President Marcos's commitment to a labour export policy in the 1970s, Philippine gendered labour migration has increased dramatically both in scale and geographic scope. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.035 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".