Political love: affect, instrumentalism and dual citizenship legislation in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

In line with studies of dual citizenship that point to the need for in-depth understanding of the reasoning behind this legislative change, this study provides an analysis of the discourse that lawmakers parlayed during the debate that resulted in the passage of the Philippine citizenship retention and reacquisition law in 2003. Because of the constitutional prohibition against dual allegiance, legislators constructed a narrative with emotive force to justify emigration as well as naturalization in the destination, the latter act portrayed as devoid of political love that Filipinos supposedly reserve for the homeland. Emblematic of affective citizenship even while the state actually instrumentalized it, the passage of the law affirmed a traditional notion of exclusive singular citizenship, while concomitantly providing indirect tolerance of dual, nonexclusive citizenship for conationals overseas.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective citizenship
• strategic citizenship
• instrumental citizenship
• political love
• dual citizenship
• citizenship reacquisition
• overseas Filipinos
• discourse analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. On ‘The Goodness of Nations’ in relation to the imagined conationals: the unborn, the dead and the living, see Anderson (1998, 360–68).

2. I deliberately do not use the term ‘coethnics’ because being Filipino is not seen as an ethnicity in the Philippines.

3. The proposed bills that used ‘dual citizenship’ in its title included House Bill 81, proposed by Rep. Apolinario L. Lozada Jr; House Bill 2531, proposed by Rep. Alfonso V. Umali Jr; House Bill 4012, proposed by Rep. Romualdo T. Vicencio; House Bill 4232, proposed by Speaker Jose de Venecia; and House Bill 4295, proposed by Rep. Raul V. del Mar (House of Representatives, Republic of the Philippines 2009, 3–34).

4. In 2001, administrative naturalization became law applicable specifically to noncitizens who were born in the Philippines and have resided in it since birth. For those whose birthplace is not the Philippines and those without a Filipino parent, the only way to acquire Philippine citizenship is through the costly process of judicial naturalization specified in Commonwealth Act 473. Resident non-Filipinos who have married Philippine citizens are thus effectively barred from citizenship.

5. The nineteenth-century American historian George Bancroft is quoted to have said that states should ‘as soon tolerate a man with two wives as a man with two countries; as soon bear with polygamy as that state of double allegiance’ (cited in Pogonyi 2011, 685). In the wake of the rescue of Canadian citizens from Lebanon during the Israeli–Hezbollah war of 2006, a conservative member of parliament compared dual citizenship to ‘bigamy’ and labeled Canadians with two or more passports as ‘accidental citizens’ (Nyers 2010, 54).

6. Drilon emphasized their ‘loyalty to the country’ as ‘manifested in the eager desire to visit the country at every available opportunity’ (Senate, Republic of the Philippines 2009a, 484). Sen. Aquilino ‘Nene’ Pimentel Jr agreed and said he ‘would like to confirm’ that ‘most, if not all, former Filipinos who are retiring or have retired would want to come home to the Philippines’, stressing that ‘I have yet to meet a Filipino abroad who does not express that kind of a wish when the time comes for retirement’ (Senate, Republic of the Philippines 2009a, 704). Congressman Del Mar’s sponsorship speech also stressed the immigrants’ ‘deep longing to be back or to retire someday in their land of birth – and this is undeniably strong in the hearts and dreams of overseas Filipinos’ (Senate, Republic of the Philippines 2009a, 200).

7. In his earlier sponsorship speech, Drilon had asserted, ‘A Filipino may decide to gain another citizenship but whatever they may be, in their hearts and minds … they shall always remain Filipinos’ (Senate, Republic of the Philippines 2009a, 484).

8. Similarly, Rep. Apolinario Lozada Jr pointed out that ‘In spite of their noble desires and their indelible contribution to the Philippine economy, we conveniently strip them of their Philippine citizenship by mere operation of law’ when immigrants naturalized (House of Representatives, Republic of the Philippines 2009, 195).

9. Representative Lozada reiterated, ‘They lost their [Philippine] citizenship but they would like to reacquire it again, but their intention really is to keep on serving and helping the country and we should really not forget that they are doing this on our behalf and on behalf of our one and only country’ (House of Representatives, Republic of the Philippines 2009, 52).

10. The re-traditionalization of citizenship in an origin state like the Philippines may be the obverse of the re-nationalization of immigration and naturalization in European states (Wodak 2013).

11. Representative Jaraula continued, ‘Poor Filipino, getting to be the most dishonest, the greatest liar – journeying throughout the world, parading his character as a liar, as dishonest, because by law, we have declared that his oath of allegiance does not mean anything’ (House of Representatives, Republic of the Philippines 2009, 331; cf. House of Representatives, Republic of the Philippines 2009, 336). Similarly, Rep. Celso Lobregat stated that the bill ‘is making the Filipino a blatant liar and the laughingstock of the entire world’ (House of Representatives, Republic of the Philippines 2009, 397).

12. The point was sidestepped, however, when Senator Biazon stated further that, assuming ‘99% of those who have taken that oath was due to economic convenience’, even just one individual could return to the homeland ‘and become a fifth columnist that could render our national interest vulnerable’ (Senate, Republic of the Philippines 2009b, 105). Drilon’s response was swift: even without a dual citizenship law, a fifth columnist ‘is a possibility now’, as did happen during the Second World War.

13. The Philippine record pales in comparison to, say, the more than 780,000 Hungarians living outside Hungary who have acquired nonresident citizenship in a period of about 6 years from 2010 to July 2016; the high rate of uptake is due in part to ‘important instrumental benefits’, such as access to the EU labor market, but mainly to its symbolic value (Pogonyi 2018, 7–8). Hungary’s population in 2016 was placed at 9,821,318, much smaller than the corresponding figure for the Philippines of 103,320,222.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this paper was provided by Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Schools Scholarly Work Grant 2016–2017.

Notes on contributors

Filomeo V. Aguilar

Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. is Professor in the Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University, and Chief Editor of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints. He is the author of Clash of Spirits: The History of Power and Sugar Planter Hegemony on a Visayan Island (University of Hawaii Press and Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1998); Maalwang Buhay: Family, Overseas Migration, and Cultures of Relatedness in Barangay Paraiso (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2009); Migration Revolution: Philippine Nationhood and Class Relations in a Globalized Age (NUS Press, Kyoto University Press, and Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014); and Peripheries: Histories of Anti-marginality (Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2018).