Imagining the Filipino American Diaspora: Transnational Relations, Identities, and Communities
Author(s): Jonathan Y. Okamura (Author)
Publisher: Routledge
Publication Date: 1 Sept. 1998
Edition: 1st
Language: English
Print length: 160 pages
ISBN-10: 0815331835
ISBN-13: 9780815331834
Book Description
First published in 1998. The Philippines play a major role in expanding the international Filipino community through its promotion of international labor migration-Filipinos can currently be found in over 130 countries throughout the world. As the first major work to conceive of Filipino immigration as a diaspora, this study analyses the diasporic nature of Filipino relations, identities, and communities and shows how these transnational phenomena are socially constructed by the everyday actions and activities of Filipino Americans. Instead of focusing on an ethnic minority and its relation to its host society, a diasporic perspective places emphasis on the transnational relations created and maintained among that minority, its homeland, and other diasporic communities. Transnational ties are evident in the movement of people, money, consumer goods, information, and ideas. Diaspora represents a new and fluid conceptual image quite apart from the usual coordinates based on physical location, territory, and distance. Transnational relations and practices will continue to be an increasingly important dimension of the Filipino American community because of the ongoing family-based immigration from the Philippines, further technological advances in communication and transportation, the expansion of transnational capital, and continuing racism and discrimination, all of which have made it necessary for Filipinos in the United States, the Philippines, and throughout the world to create and maintain diasporic lives and culture.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Valuable in expanding the breadth of analytic scholarship devoted to addressing late-twentieth century population movements and unstable moorings.offer(s) much needed depth to the localized specificities of the transnational experience with all its complex textures, patterns, and consequences. A valuable contribution to the growing scholarship on diaspora as well as on Asian American and Filipino American studies.” — JAAS
From the Author
This is the first full study of Filipinos as a diaspora. Hi, I’m Jon Okamura, the author of Imagining the Filipino American Diaspora. Much thanks for your interest in my book. I believe that it is the first full length study to develop and apply the concept of diaspora to Filipinos. Rather than view Filipino Americans as an ethnic minority, I contend that they should be conceived as a diaspora because of their significant transnational relations with their homeland that differentiate them from other ethnic minorities in the United States. A diaspora consists of these transnational linkages that connect people in overseas communities with their homeland rather than being merely a dispersed people. I argue that a diaspora is a transnational social construction, that is, it is transnational in scope and is socially constructed through the individual and collective actions of immigrants/migrants. I also would like to share with you how I came to write Imagining the Filipino American Diaspora. Twenty years ago I began my dissertation fieldwork with post-1965 Filipino immigrants in a multiethnic, inner city area of Honolulu called Kalihi. After receiving my PhD degree in anthropology from the University of London in 1982, I eventually moved to Manila where I taught and conducted research for three years in the mid-1980s. I have been meeting overseas Filipinos in various parts of the world such as Hong Kong, London and Belau since 1979, and in the early 1990s while working at the University of Hawaii I decided that diaspora was an exciting concept to capture their transnational relations with their homeland as evident in balikbayan returnee visits, the sending of remittances and consumer goods, and long-distance telephone communication. Please send me your comments of my book to okamuraj@hawaii.edu. Thank you.
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