Global Filipinos: Migrants' Lives in the Virtual Village

The problems of overseas Filipino workers with loneliness; long absences from spouses, children, and other relatives; abuse by employers and governments; and efforts to use their time and talent to further individual opportunities are understood easily in McKay’s monograph. The photos of her Filipino informants . . . add a human touch to the topic of overseas workers. . . . Recommended.

― Choice

McKay’s study makes for fascinating and recommendable reading, well beyond the realm of Filipino specialists or of migration scholars more broadly. Development, mobility, emotion, home, and home-making are all research areas to which Global Filipinos has much to contribute and inspire.

― International Journal of Comparative Sociology

Global Filipinos is more than an ethnography of migration. Covering large theoretical and disciplinary ground, McKay presents an engaging and important study on wider questions of what it means to live and cope at the margins of development economies, national identities and transnational citizenship.

― Social Anthropology

This in-depth and well-written narrative provides a rare glimpse into the lives of individuals shaped by globalization and migration. It also raises critical questions about the concept of a virtual village in which migrants’ lives are enmeshed. It is especially recommended for readers interested in anthropology and cultural studies.

― Sojourn

This book is a refreshing departure from more conventional tales of Filipino migration . . . [T]aking an avowedly anthropological approach . . . McKay’s book builds from a village study; . . . The book is an important contribution nor only to debates on migration and development, but also as an exemplar of multi-sited ethnography and the study of emotion and affect. . . [T]his text should be required reading for scholars of migration and development, and indeed for anyone wishing to learn more about the implications of global mobilities in a globalizing Southeast Asia.

― Aseasuk News

Global Filipinos is a significant contribution to the literature on global migration and diaspora. It likewise provides a crucial and timely corrective to Eurocentric studies of affect, subjectivity and cosmopolitanism. . . . By chronicling how a village ‘extends into the world’ . . . , Global Filipinos succeeds in reminding us anew that the world makes itself known and felt through the dynamics of the village.

― Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

What is happening to Haliap is certainly not unique to its residents. . . Change Haliap for Southern Philippine’s Baroy in the southern Philippine province of Lanao del Sur and you will find similar conflicts with OFW [overseas Filipino workers] family members – as well as ongoing optimism over the promise of overseas work and life. It is this recognition of a malady that affects the entire nation that makes Global Filipinos a captivating . . . read.March 2014

― Jrnl Royal Anthropological Inst JRAI

A luminous, elegant, and well-argued multi-sited ethnographic study.

— Martin F. Manalansan IV