Abstract
This paper considers how Philippine migrants prepare themselves and are prepared by others for emigration to Canada. In particular, it emphasizes how class-differentiated migrants are rendered socially homogenous as they are encouraged to be “grateful” transnational citizen subjects throughout their migration trajectories, commencing with initial decisions to migrate. Preparations for migration include individual decisions to increase marketability by acquiring particular kinds of skill sets matched to one of a variety of immigration streams. Despite such individual projects, the inequalities associated with gendered and racialized characteristics of Philippine migration trajectories and class dynamics are enduring for many migrants, though not all. Historical structural processes shaping the contours of global migration in the example of Philippine–Canada migration are compounded by the contradictory practices and outcomes associated with various preparations for migration. Current reforms to Canada’s immigration system to a “just-in-time” model promise to cause major disruptions to long-held migrant plans. Meanwhile, migrants are preconditioned to accept uncritically the multiple forms of subordination encouraged through the policies of multiple states and to accommodate themselves to new immigrant/citizen social identities which are devalued in a multiplicity of ways. This paper shows how, through the collusion of agents that migrants encounter in multiple sites, the disciplining of mobile citizens becomes more formalized and the contradictions between migrant ambition and neoliberal imperatives more visible.
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Notes
In 2012, the Philippine Department of Education introduced a restructuring plan to include an additional 2 years of high school education. Ten years of preparatory schooling will be extended to 12 years. Of course this plan to harmonize national education with “international” standards will have to contend with all kinds of limited resources in terms of personnel and infrastructure. Because of the 2-year hiatus in qualified students, restructuring will also produce challenges for universities, especially private ones, and most especially for those institutions responsive to the demands of global migration, for example in the health care sectors.
In electing to use the term discipline here I mean it in a literal sense in as much as training occurs. But I am also informed by Foucault’s discussion of The Subject and Power wherein he insists that all forms of subjection can be viewed as “consequences of other economic and social processes” (Foucault in Rabinow and Rose 1994: 131) that comprise part of the struggle and structures relating to subjectivity.
This measure was revoked in 2013 in the face of public outrage about the hiring of Chinese mineworkers by a Chinese owned firm in British Columbia and the laying off of Royal Bank Workers whose jobs were to be replaced by recruits from India.
To be eligible for this class, temporary workers must have at least 12 months of skilled work experience in an occupation defined as managerial, professional or technical and skilled trades according to the National Occupational Classification (levels O, A or B). Language and other provisions also apply.
Here I reference a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant awarded to myself and Belinda Leach from 2006 to 2010. Our collaborative project “Performed subordination: global migration and new economic subjectivities” involved comparison of Philippine and Trinidad migration histories and pathways.
Ironically, this popular Canadian coffee and fast food chain has a national recruitment strategy to import Filipinos to staff many of its locations. Such workers have entered the country under different immigration streams depending upon levels of skill recruited for. Some management trainees have entered as skilled workers, but the vast majority have been hired as temporary foreign workers under two, then later 3-year contracts. Citing, stereotypically, their excellent work ethic and community-minded dispositions, some provinces have favoured Filipino temporary foreign workers as potential new immigrants for rural communities. Manitoba, in particular, has a strong track record of recruiting and retaining Filipino immigrants who enter through a variety of channels opened up through the Provincial Nominee Programme.
This migratory pathway extends beyond the USA. I am familiar with Philippine born physician-nurses working in Halifax, Canada, just as there are RNs working as practical nurses in local hospitals.
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Barber, P.G. “Grateful” subjects: class and capital at the border in Philippine–Canada migration. Dialect Anthropol 37, 383–400 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-013-9321-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-013-9321-2