Making Home in Diasporic Communities ─ Transnational Belonging Amongst Filipina Migrants

Focusing on the home-making practices of migrants in the EU, this book demonstrates the global scope of the Filipino Diaspora, engaging wider scholarship on globalization and the ways in which the dynamics of nation-state institutions, labour migration, and social relationships intersect for transnational communities. Based on original ethnographic work conducted in the Philippines and in Ireland, Making Home in Diasporic Communities examines the social practices and symbolic enactments of “home†for Filipina migrants through language, religion and food, exploring the factors that position Filipinas within their ‘host’ society and those which affect their experiences in relation to Filipino social formations in the Philippines, Ireland, and the United States. With attention to the inconsistent operation of immigration policies and contradictory reactions in public discourse to immigrants, who are often working in positions lower than their qualifications, the author examines the ways in which Filipinas construct their identity and respond to their complicated social positioning in the Diaspora. Adopting a transnational ethnographic approach to raise questions of inclusion and exclusion for Diasporic communities, Making Home in Diasporic Communities explores the the intersectionality of gender, uneven power relationships, race, class, institutional barriers, transnationalism and belonging. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and anthropology with interests in migration and ethnic relations, and identity, home-making and gender in Diasporic settings.

Diane Sabenacio Nititham is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Murray State University, USA and co-editor of Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture.