Racism and Resistance among the Filipino Diaspora

Everyday Anti-racism in Australia

Kristine Aquino

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367787219
• eBook ISBN: 9781351781596
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Filipino migrants constitute one of the largest global diasporas today. In Australia, Filipino settlement is markedly framed by the country's on-going nation-building project that continues to racialise immigrants and delineate the possibilities and limits of belonging to the national community.

This book explores the ways in which Filipino migrants in Australia experience, understand and negotiate racism in their everyday lives. In particular, it explores the notion of everyday anti-racism – the strategies individuals deploy to manage racism in their day to day lives. Through case studies based on extensive fieldwork the author shares ethnographic observation and interview material that demonstrate the ways in which Filipinos are racially constituted in Australian society and are subject to everyday racisms that criss-cross different modes of power and domination. Drawing on theoretical approaches in critical race scholarship and the sociology of everyday life, this book illuminates the operation of racism in a multicultural society that persists insidiously in exchanges across a range of public and private spaces. More importantly, it explores the quotidian ways in which 'victims' of racism cope with routine racialised domination, an area underdeveloped in anti-racism research that has tended to focus on institutional anti-racism politics.

Shedding light on a neglected corner of the global Filipino diaspora and highlighting the complexity of lived experiences in translocal and transnational social fields, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of diaspora and migration studies, the study of race and racism and ethnic minorities, with particular reference to the Asian diaspora.

1
Introduction

I am very proud of Filipinos. In the hospital there are so many nurses! They love to hire Filipina nurses because they are masipag (hard-working). I have a Filipino friend and she’s working in a factory and she asked, ‘Why is it that no Australians work in the factory?’ You know why? Because they cannot work hard like Filipinos. White people, they don’t want. It’s below them… I don’t know, I’m not trying to criticise (slightly whispers), but the way we are treated, you really can feel it. Even now, it’s okay. It’s better now than before. But there’s still discrimination. But it’s up to us. If you want to be discriminated then they can get away with it. But you have to show them, stand up to them. You must not put up with it!

—Melinda, 55-year-old Filipina migrant from Sydney

I met Melinda, a small and outspoken Filipina woman in her fifties, through my grandmother’s Filipino senior citizens group. We were introduced when I escorted my Mama to a community hall in the south-western suburbs of Sydney for an annual Seniors Valentine’s Day celebration. Semi-retired and much younger than the other elderly Filipino members, I found Melinda in the middle of the action, busily organising the potluck and the program. Despite her tiny stature, she was bursting with contagious energy, speaking at an excited pace and animating the other seniors to life. I remember my Mama explaining to me in the way only grandmothers know how, “That’s Melinda, my friend. She talks too much. Always talking. But she has many stories to tell.”

As I lent a hand here and there for the group’s very busy social calendar, I got to know more of Melinda and invited her to sit down with me to share her story. I eagerly revealed that I was writing a book about Filipino migrants in Sydney. Less readily, I added that I was particularly interested to find out about their experiences of racism. Many other Filipinos who I had approached about the subject were often hesitant to impart painful and uncomfortable accounts about their migration. But Melinda had responded with gusto, “Oh, yes, yes. I have a lot to say!”

Melinda migrated on a spousal visa to Australia in the 1970s after a long-distance courtship with an Australian citizen from an Irish background. Introduced to each other by her hairdresser, they met in the Philippines during his business travels when she was thirty-three while he was much older, by fifteen years. At the time, she was working as a bookkeeper, which she eventually gave up to move to Australia. Sadly, her husband died after only a few years of marriage after suffering a stroke and Melinda fondly spoke about his kind-hearted nature as she remembered their time together. She admitted that he left her with some money from his business, which has allowed her a little bit of luxury to work part-time as an accounts clerk and dedicate most of her days helping Filipino senior citizens. But, more so, Melinda recounted to me quite vividly her regular experiences of prejudice prompted by her status as a Filipina wife of a much older white man. Upon moving to Australia, she complained of being unfairly judged often not by strangers but in intimate settings among her husband’s family and friends. Melinda recalled, “Some of his friends accepted me, some friends not… They are thinking Filipinas are not good. They think we are maids. His family talk behind my back. They are thinking he just got me from the Philippines like a property.” She has also endured other incivilities, usually slight and indirect, such as being stared at in public spaces when out with her partner and ignored or mocked by sales attendants: “Just in general here, when they see a white person with a Filipina – they think ‘mail order’, that girl is with him for money.” While these experiences are uniquely painful to Melinda, at the same time, I could see she was attuned to how commonplace it might be for other Filipinas in her position. Melinda’s personal experience is implicated in a popular discourse which featured in Australian media in the 1980s and 1990s about ‘mail order brides’ and particularly targeted Filipina women after a proliferation of advertisements marketing ‘Filipina brides’ to Australian men. This label remains conspicuous even today, producing a range of racialised (and sexualised) stereotypes about the Filipina: the ‘opportunistic predator’, the ‘fragile victim’, the ‘submissive object’.

The manner in which the ‘Filipino’ must always look at herself ‘through the eyes of others’ and ‘through the revelation of the other world’, to borrow from Du Bois (1903), is a palpable struggle.¹ It is estimated that 10.4 million Filipinos reside outside of the Philippines – the largest numbers are composed of permanent settlers, followed by low-wage labourers, and a small proportion are living abroad undocumented (International Organization for Migration, 2013). Local and global imaginings of the diaspora remain deeply problematic: from demeaning conceptions of the ‘Filipina bride’ to storylines of exploited Filipino migrant workers, to benevolent but silencing labels such as the ‘model migrant’ assigned to longer-settled middle-class Filipino migrants. Beyond discursive archetypes, these categories speak to material positionings produced by larger webs of structural power and get played out in routine encounters of racism which exclude and marginalise Filipinos in the places that they call ‘home’.

This book explores the ways in which Filipino migrants in Australia experience, understand and negotiate racism in their everyday lives. Filipino settlement to Australia is markedly framed by the country’s ongoing nation-building project that continues to racialise immigrants and delineate the possibilities and limits of belonging to the national community. Moreover, this racial order intersects in complex ways with the racial regimes from Western colonisation of Philippine society, in which Filipino bodies and subjectivities have long been implicated even before the event of migration. I explore how historical, sociocultural, political and economic forces racially constitute these migrants and produce experiences of everyday racisms which criss-cross structural and quotidian, national and trans-national modes of power and domination. There is, though, something even more profound in Melinda’s story. The opening quote from our interview communicates a narrative about ‘hard-working’ Filipinos. It acts as a source of pride and respect – a representation about what it means to be ‘Filipino’ in Melinda’s eyes. In particular, it is offset against a narrative constructed about privileged white Australians. While Melinda encourages Filipinos to directly confront prejudice and discrimination, coping with marginality and domination includes not only reordering the material world through practice and action but also representational processes of managing the self. This book also brings to light how racially devalued personal and collective identities are reworked in the face of powerlessness. It reveals the ways in which these individuals attempt to resist every day, often through unremarkable means, being subjugated and victimised.

Researching Filipino migrants in Sydney

In 2014, there were 225,110 Philippine-born persons living in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). Despite being the fifth largest overseas-born group in the country, there is still little comprehensive research on Filipino migrants in the extensive scholarly study of immigrant settlement to Australia. There is also little to be found in the established area of research on international Filipino migration. Filipina women in Australia once occupied the centre of local scholarly enquiry in the advent of an influx of Filipinas migrating as spouses of Australian citizens in the 1980s and 1990s (Roces, 2003; Cuneen and Stubbs, 2003; Saroca, 2006; Khoo, 2001; Jackson, 1989; Woelz-Stirling et al., 1998; Robinson, 1996). This correlates with the broader international research agenda, where Filipina women figure significantly in the analysis of the feminisation of global labour migration. Research in these contexts has exposed the pervasive exploitation endured by low-wage and low-skilled Filipina migrants, such as domestic helpers, care workers or hostesses, particularly in Hong Kong, Singapore and the continents of the Middle East and Europe (Parrenas, 2001; Pratt, 1996; D. McKay, 2007; Gibson et al., 2001; San Juan Jr., 2001). Recent attention has been paid to the plight of male low-wage Filipino workers labouring as construction workers and seamen in the Middle East (S. McKay, 2007). In Australia, emergent research into Filipino labour migration has contributed knowledge about the experience of Filipina nurses and Filipino temporary workers (Siar, 2013; Hawthorne, 2001) and in the context of Filipino male experiences the identity politics among gay Filipino men have formed the basis of critical examination (Caluya, 2006). Aside from the ‘mail order bride’ controversy, however, Filipino migrants in Australia could be easily understood as a relatively ‘unpanicked’ community (Noble, 2009a) when canvassing the tendencies for academic enquiry to be conducted on groups who are most vulnerable or those who are at the centre of popular moral panics. Australia’s Filipino immigrant demographics are most similar to that of America’s – the majority are permanent settlers, a significant proportion has achieved middle-class status and the second generation is often considered well integrated.² However, North American scholarship is much more developed as imperial relations between the US and the Philippines have necessitated close scrutiny of Filipino settlement in America to reveal nuanced modes of neocolonial domination (Vergara, 2008; Espiritu, 2003; Bonus, 2000; Espana-Maram, 2006; Manalansan, 2003). I take encouragement from these exceptional works researching Filipino global migration and settlement to offer a closer look at the Filipino diaspora in this corner of the world.

The fieldwork for this book was carried out in Sydney, which is located in the east coast state of New South Wales (NSW) and is the most populous city in Australia. Almost half of the total population of Philippine-born immigrants in Australia reside in NSW and approximately 80 per cent of this number is concentrated throughout metropolitan Sydney (ABS, 2015). Between 2008 and 2012, I met and talked with Filipinos living and working across the vast suburban sprawl of the city. In particular, Sydney’s ‘Filipino heartland’ is found in the locality of Blacktown, in the outer western suburbs (see Figures 2.1 to 2.4). I spent time observing and participating in Filipino community events and devoted countless hours at sites which Filipinos frequent for work and leisure, getting to know their day-to-day lives and routines. This was not so much unfamiliar terrain for me. I am a second-generation migrant Filipina and grew up in a suburb not too far from Blacktown, and I spent my childhood attending many Filipino community events with my family. Admittedly, this study was perhaps always a work in progress. For personal reasons, I have been interested in understanding the experience of immigrants and the phenomena of racism as a way to make sense of my own life lived in Australia, where I constantly confront the multitude of racialised positionings to which I am relegated – ‘Filipino’, ‘Asian’, ‘Australian’, ‘Filipino-Australian’, ‘immigrant’, ‘non-white’. This has roused a political and theoretical interest in larger questions around race, migration, citizenship and nationhood, particularly in the context of a ‘multicultural’ society.

To be sure, many Filipinos I encountered are quite happy and content with their lives in Australia. Migrating has afforded most with a sense of economic security that the Philippines can no longer provide. For first-generation migrant Filipinos the sacrifices of migration have opened up even bigger opportunities for their children, although it is expensed by their own mobility. For others who migrated for love, settling in Australia has fulfilled the desire for a family. For those who migrated to join their kin, the anxieties of uprooting are well worth it in order to be reunited. For a growing number of newly arrived Filipinos, meanwhile, migration to Australia is just another stop in their multiple border crossings around the world for contracted labour, though there is a general sense that Australia is the land of the ‘fair go’. Nonetheless, amid the steady hum of ordinary life, I found accumulated experiences of racism – signalling how these migrants can never take their migration or settlement for granted. From the numerous people I met and conversed with over the course of four years, I sat down with forty-five Filipino migrants for in-depth interviews who ranged from their late twenties to their early sixties, male and female, and are composed of first-generation migrants, second-generation migrant children and those newly arrived, often on temporary working visas. Their experiences are reconstructed here and demonstrate the subtleties of racial formations in lived contexts.

While my interviews probed into life histories, at the centre of my enquiry were questions specifically about encounters of racism and as well the means of coping with racism. This book, therefore, presents knowledge of racism and resistance that emerge from Filipino migrants themselves. I use ‘experience’ as sociological data to value individuals as interpretative actors who actively construct realities about their lives and the social world in which they are situated. My methodological approach is purposeful in the broader context in which these experiences are located. Racism in Australia, if not completely relegated to some bygone past, has become a topic of ‘debatability’ and it is a conversation which mutes the voices of those whose lives continue to be distressed by racism (Lentin, 2016). The experience of Filipino migrants detailed in this book respects the accounts from the marginalised and dominated as imperative to telling us about how racism might operate on the ground and its connection to larger racial structures.³ In particular, the stories of racism I came across are not the violent or dramatic kind, but take the form of what Essed (1991) calls everyday racism – racism inscribed in taken-for-granted practices and experienced in the course of routine exchanges. Filipino migrants experience racism as mundane aggression, like bullying, harassment and intimidation, and also quiet hostility, like social distance, condescension or small acts of exclusion. These encounters occur in the everyday spaces they traverse and inhabit, such as the workplace, public spaces like shopping centres, restaurants, bars and sporting arenas, and even the private sphere involving social situations with friends. Such everyday racisms have tangible effects, like the denial of mobility because of being constantly passed over for promotions at work or having to limit one’s movements to certain spaces. Moreover, it has affective penalties as the wear and tear of routine yet subtle racism can slowly eat away at one’s dignity through being regularly made to feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, humiliated and rejected. Despite connotations of mundanity, these experiences signal acute systems of domination in everyday life.

Undertaking social enquiry among ‘your own kind’ is not as easy as some may think. Throughout the course of my research I discovered the difficulty that is defining a ‘community’. For the most part, many Filipinos were welcoming of my interest in their lives and the issues ‘we’ were facing ‘together’. In the beginning, admittedly, I struggled to intellectualise some things as ‘issues’ because they did not resonate instantly with my own life experience as a ‘Filipino’ in Australia. Having been an ‘insider’ by virtue of being ‘Filipino’ sometimes led me to miss the tiny details that make some lives different from my own, making me more of an outsider than I thought. On the other hand, the more I became immersed in people’s lives, the more it became difficult to remove myself as an objective observer as I genuinely developed a sense of belonging to this ‘community’ like never before. I came to empathise with its pains and struggle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Histories of the ‘Filipino’ in Australia and beyond
• 3 Coping with honorary whiteness: aspirant middle-class Filipino migrants
• 4 Reclaiming rights, morality and esteem: the dignity of working-class Filipino migrants
• 5 ‘Mail order bride’ or loving wife? Revisiting the experience of Filipina ‘marriage migrants’
• 6 More than a game: embodied resistance among young Filipino-Australian street ballers
• 7 Conclusion
• Index