Affective Friendship that Constructs Globally Spanning Transnationalism: The Onward Migration of Filipino Workers from South Korea to Canada

Abstract

This article explores how affective friendship of migrant Filipino workers constructs transnationalism that overarches different host countries. Following a sequence of ‘mobility and sedentariness’ through ‘multi-sited ethnography’ methods, I discuss the affective friendship that emerges out of a specific sociocultural context in Korea, namely activities of the Catholic congregation. I also demonstrate that such friendship is accompanied by onward migration to Canada through the transfer of ties in a new social setting. Moving beyond the duality of home and abroad, this study reveals that migrants’ transnationalism exhibits cosmopolitanism through the reconfiguration of their compatriot friendship into globally spanning, multi-local ties.

Key Words:

• Affective friendship
• Transnationalism
• Onward migration
• Cosmopolitanism
• Migrant Filipino workers
• South Korea
• Canada

Acknowledgements

I express my sincere gratitude to the Filipino migrant friends who shared time and generous help with me for this research, and to these friends and Filipino Father for kindly giving me a permit to write their stories. I also thank to Roland S. Coloma for his heartfelt support to carefully read and comment on my earlier drafts, and to Seonyoung Seo for her readily help to recommend useful readings. My appreciation also goes to Kevin Hannam, Pennie Drinkall, and the anonymous referees for their encouraging and thought-provoking comment. An earlier draft of this article was presented in the 17th Young Scholars’ Conference on Philippine Studies in Japan at Kyoto University on 15 July 2012.

Funding

Research in Korea in 1999–2000 was conducted as a part of the project of ‘Filipino Diaspora in Asia: Social and Personal Networks, Organizing, Empowerment, Ethnicity, and Culture’ that was funded by the Japan Academy for the Promotion of Sciences (Project No. 11691079, FY1999–2001) and coordinated by Mamoru Tsuda. The research (2003–2005 in Korea, 2009–2010 in Canada) was supported by the Matsushita Asia Scholarship of the Matsushita International Foundation (Konosuke Matsushita International Scholarship of the Konosuke Matsushita Memorial Foundation) and the government of Canada under the Canadian Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme (PDRF). I feel very much indebted to the generous funding and assistance of these organizations.

Notes

1. Some contract migrant workers can apply their permanent residency through the Provincial Nominee Program or PNP. ‘PNP is a federal-provincial agreement under which a province determines its own criteria for the selection of foreign workers,’ such as based on ‘labour market needs and priorities’ (Nakache and Kinoshita 2010, 35).

2. Migrants have been received in Korea only since the late 1980s, and private agencies are not much institutionalized. Moreover, as domestic work is not popular among Filipino migrants in Korea (Lee 2005), it is not possible to use domestic work as a preparatory step for entering Canada as live-in caregiver (McKay and PWC 2002, 16).