Migrant mothers,left-behind fathers: the negotiation of gender subjectivities in Indonesia and the Philippines

The distinct feminization of labour migration in Southeast Asia – particularly in the migration of breadwinning mothers as domestic and care workers in gender-segmented global labour markets – has altered care arrangements, gender roles and practices, as well as family relationships within the household significantly. Such changes were experienced by both the migrating women and other left-behind members of the family, particularly ‘substitute’ carers such as left-behind husbands. During the women’s absence from the home, householding strategies have to be reformulated when migrant women-as-mothers rewrite their roles (but often not their identities) through labour migration as productive workers who contribute to the well-being of their children via financial remittances and ‘long-distance mothering’, while left-behind fathers and/or other family members step up to assume some of the tasks vacated by the mother. Using both quantitative and qualitative interview material with returned migrants and left-behind household members in source communities in Indonesia and the Philippines experiencing considerable pressures from labour migration, this article explores how carework is redistributed in the migrant mother’s absence, and the ensuing implications on the gender roles of remaining family members, specifically left-behind fathers. It further examines how affected members of the household negotiate and respond to any changing gender ideologies brought about by the mother’s migration over time.     

Battle of the bedroom

The Philippine government's position on aggressive population management is in conflict with the Catholic Church's opposition to artificial means of birth control, particularly sterilization. The Episcopal Commission for Family Life plans to increase its campaign against contraception at their local level. The government effort through the Department of health will provide access to contraception in a network of 600 hospitals and 1500 rural health units. Government support comes from 2 Protestant churches, the Church of Christ, which is the largest independent church in the Philippines, and the United Church of Christ. Leaders of both churches gave the Minister of Health letters of support which stated that family planning (FP) was necessary to curb population growth which was too high, and China and Thailand are countries which are economically better off with population planning. The government position is similar to former President Corazon Aquino's. The new President, Fidel Ramos, is a protestant and wants economic prosperity for the Philippines; part of the formula for achieving economic growth is slowing population growth. There is limited resources in a sluggish economy and the push for zero population growth can be accomplished through effective contraception. The birth rate fuels poverty is the position of Juan Flavier, Health Secretary. Annual population growth is 2.3% and family size is 4.8/couple while agricultural growth is only 1%. The ideal family size recommended is 2 children/family. The Philippine Commission on Population in its 6-year plan is hoping to obtain 200 million in foreign aid and involve a larger network of nongovernmental organizations. Choice is the key component. Women need to be convinced that birth spacing will reduce maternal and infant mortality. Flavier has reassured Cardinal Jaime Sin of the Catholic Church that Natural methods or the rhythm method would be taught. Health experts argue that the discipline and sacrifice necessary for effective natural methods is lacking.     

The spatial and gendered politics of displaying family: exploring material cultures in grandfathers’ homes

This article analyses the meaning that 27 men who are grandfathers ascribed to the domestic material cultures of their homes, during an exploratory study that investigated their contemporary social and cultural geographies. In recounting stories about a number of items and artefacts placed about their homes during the interviews, that they specifically related to their experiences as grandfathers, the men provided insight into the various ways in which ageing men position themselves in ambivalent ways in relation to cultural stereotypes about grandparenthood, masculinities and ageing. Moving beyond the surface of the objects on display, their discussions also revealed the complex ways in which the material cultures of their homespaces are shaped by, and reproduce, diverse family relationships and their associated politics. The article contributes to, and bridges agendas in social and cultural geography that examine the relationship between the shifting meanings of home for older men, the politics of attending to the material and both the family and older masculine identities as spatial projects.     

Concealed Communities: The People at the Margins

The “concealed communities” of our title are the people archaeologists have often labeled as “marginal.” Archaeologists writing about both prehistoric and historic periods have commonly made a range of assumptions about margins and marginality, and their discussions have often categorized marginality as ecological, economic, or socio-political. Whilst it has been common to privilege one or other of these categories in order to explain how societies worked, they are rarely mutually exclusive. In addition, since marginality is relative, virtually any group might be made marginal depending on people’s perspectives in the past or present. Sometimes marginality can be imposed (economically or politically), and sometimes even actively chosen. Defining the “margin” is a complex business, and the term needs sensitive, context-orientated use to make it useful for archaeologists.     

Resettlement in Lao PDR: mobility,resistance and gendered impacts

Villagers in northern Laos have been on the move for generations. Recent changes, however, in the location of their village and their daily mobility patterns differ from what they have experienced before; the government's resettlement programme has changed their livelihoods and made them more socially and economically vulnerable. The ethnic groups we studied have decided to use mobility to resist state control and seek livelihood security for themselves. By using the concept of motility, this article analyses how this household and community choices have a gender-differentiated impact. The mobility patterns of men and women have changed. While men attend to long-term investments, women are forced to make ends meet on a day-to-day basis. Men visit the market and public places more frequently, while women spend more time looking for non-timber forest products and working as hired labour. Although women now support the family and their mobility has increased, their say in the household seems to be on the decline, resulting in weakening women's motility.     

First Impressions:

They say first impressions always matter. Americans acquired an empire of tropical islands in the Pacific about which they knew little and cared even less. Yet they set to almost immediately to understand and harness these new environments for their own purposes. This paper looks at the processes through which these strange new worlds in the Philippines and Guam were incorporated and subordinated into a comprehensible imperial framework through the diaries of two environmental managers, Gifford Pinchot and William Safford. Both men wrote about their first encounters with the tropics, recording its strange flora and fauna, noting its seismic convulsions and climatic extremes, and trying to manage it by making sense of what they saw, heard, smelt and touched. As diarists, scientists and, above all, imperialists, they give us rare insight into the initial attitudes of the men who managed these new imperial landscapes.     

LIVING WITH MIGRATION

In the Philippines, large-scale overseas migration has raised concerns about left-behind children, who are perceived to be most affected by the absence of fathers, mothers or both. Without their ‘real’ parents (especially mothers) to rear and guide them, left-behind children are perceived to bear the brunt of the social costs of migration. Based on data collected from a 2003 nationwide study, this article examines how left-behind children (specifically those aged 10–12 years old and adolescents) cope without their migrant parents. Three questions are explored: (1) how children are raised in the absence of one or both migrant parents; (2) how children (re)configure family, family life and family practices; and (3) what roles children have, if any, in how the family unit copes with the migration of one or both parents. Although migration creates emotional displacement for migrants and their children, it also opens up possibilities for children's agency and independence.     

The mealtimes that bind? Filipina au pairs in Danish families

Since 2000, more than 17,000 young Filipinas have received temporary residence in Denmark as au pairs. Officially, au pair placement is a cultural exchange program; however, it is also a domestic work arrangement where au pairs conduct domestic labor in return for food, lodging and allowance. The au pair is expected to live as part of a host family, who in turn should offer a protective space for the young foreigner. Nevertheless, au pairs and hosts often find this challenging. Focusing on mealtimes, this article examines how culturally diverse practices of family relations influence au pairs' participation in their host families. The study employs anthropological perspectives on kinship to explore the forms of closeness and distance that govern au pair–host relations, leading to a discussion about how au pairs and hosts approach themes such as hierarchy, independence and family inclusion in different ways. This adds to the ambiguous positions au pairs are offered as they are to involve themselves in gendered tasks that ‘makes the family’, while they also are expected to liberate themselves from the host family sociality. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among au pairs and hosts in Denmark, as well as with the au pairs' families in the Philippines, the article suggests that studies of migrant domestic workers should embrace family practices in the receiving as well as the sending society when attempting to merge the themes of family and work relations.     

Gender perspective on the social networks of household heads and community leaders after involuntary resettlement

The study of social network analysis in Indonesia and the Philippines reveals that after a certain period in a new community and living among involuntarily resettled strangers, household heads and community leaders will eventually replace their disrupted previous networks with new network ties. The paper likewise demonstrates how gender moulds social network features at the levels of the Indonesian household heads and Philippine community organization after involuntary resettlement. Existing gendered context in two settings like the Indonesian woman’s role as primary caretaker of the household and the absence of a consolidated patriarchal system in the Philippines is shown to have reinforced gender (dis)advantages. As reflected in the two settings, those who have the biggest networks are also the brokers or the influential actors who can control and have an advantage in accessing social capital. Further, basing on the two cases, we identify the gender norm of the centrality of women’s role as homemaker and caregiver in addition to other roles as a similar explanation for the bigger proportions of friends in the networks of women as compared to men. Unless outside interventions reconfigure the natural trajectory of the social networks, gender equality in terms of leadership, decision-making and access to suitable programs and projects as well as to the relevant authorities, remains problematic.     

Identity and socio-economic mobility in Venetian Crete: the evolution of a citizen family (sixteenth century)

This study focuses on the socio-economic dynamics in Crete under Venetian rule, particularly in the sixteenth century, a critical period for the power of the Republic of Venice in the eastern Mediterranean. There is an attempt to approach these processes by examining the evolution of a Cretan family named Episcopopulo, which originated from the middle social stratum, the so-called cittadini (citizens). The essay tries, after outlining the socio-political characteristics of the intermediate social group, to illuminate aspects of the history of this family, who strove to find its way in an environment marked by fermentations and changes in the political, financial, ideological and social field. The study, among other things, examines the various professional activities of the family members and the practices they utilized to achieve a decisive improvement in their financial status. It also highlights the strategies they employed to their rise in the social hierarchy, as well as their persistent efforts, after acquiring a title of nobility, to retain and increase their wealth and to enhance their role in the public sphere.     

Crafters of Kingship: Smiths,Elite Power,and Gender in Early Medieval Europe

IN THE EARLIEST CENTURIES of the Middle Ages, skilled metalsmiths were greatly valued by cult leaders who required impressive objects to maintain social links and the loyalty of their retainers. Despite their clear importance, smiths were peripheral characters operating on the fringes of elite communities. Such treatment may reflect an attempt to limit the influence of metalworkers, whose craft was seen as supernatural and who themselves were probably spiritual figureheads; archaeological evidence associates smiths and their tools in symbolic processes of creation and destruction, not only of objects but also of buildings and monuments. The Church clearly appropriated these indigenous practices, although conversion eventually saw the pre-eminence of the sacred smith and their practice wane. Anthropological study provides numerous comparators for skilled crafters acting as supernatural leaders, and also suggests that as part of their marginal identity, smiths may have been perceived as a distinct gender.     

Alice through the looking glass: emotion,personal connection,and reading colonial archives along the grain

This is a paper about Alice Ravenhill, an under-scrutinized early twentieth-century colonial settler in British Columbia, Canada. It is also a paper about the relationship and deep connections that I developed with her through archival research, a relationship and set of connections that I suggest open new spaces to (re)consider present-day colonial power in British Columbia. Specifically, I propose that ‘against the grain’ archival readings of BC’s past, with an emphasis on finding evidence of resistance to colonial power, can serve to distance the present from the past, thus positioning both contemporary geographies and researchers at work in the province today as existing in a different time and place than those of Alice Ravenhill and other colonial subjects. If, by reading ‘along the archival grain’ as I attempt to do in this paper, we (particularly those of us who live and work in BC today) instead understand ourselves as deeply and emotionally connected to colonial settlers like Alice Ravenhill, and if we understand their lives and work as similar to our own, there is a chance we might avoid some of their more egregious undertakings.     

Iranian Youth in Times of Economic Crisis

Young people play an important role in shaping Iran's politics but have only a marginal role in its economy. Youth (ages 15–29) are more than one-third of the country's population and are better educated than the generation they are replacing, while accounting for more than two-thirds of the unemployed. Demographics have thrown the marriage market out of balance, with a “shortage of men” of about 25 percent, while economic pressures have reduced the ability of youth to get married and form families. The higher education system has expanded to absorb ever greater numbers of youth but because education quality is low this has not helped in reducing unemployment. The demographic pressures have amplified since 2008 when the economy entered a period of stagnation. The economic crisis has hit Iran's youth particularly hard, especially those from lower economic backgrounds because the country's rigid formal labor market preserves jobs for older workers. The record number of youth entering the labor market has to wait longer for a regular job or has to take up part-time and informal jobs. In either case, their difficulties in marriage and family formation are intensified.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 3. June 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 3 Front cover COVID-19 IN ITALY An elderly man steps outside, a bag in his hand and a mask covering his face. He stares at the wet pavement as he goes. He is wondering whether to take that onward step. His shadow on the wall magnifies his uncertainty. He is alone. It has been raining. The sun spells help. Maybe. Uncertainty and loneliness are among the emotions that we now associate with Covid-19. By 9 May, the death toll among those who had tested positive for the virus in Italy surpassed 30,000, the highest in Europe. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the paramount need has been to protect those in the most ‘vulnerable categories’, the aged and those with pre-existing conditions. Italy, as the country with the highest percentage of elderly people in Europe, has failed them. At the outbreak of the pandemic, the rushed and short-sighted resolution to transfer Covid-19 patients to nursing homes resulted in a massacre, whose scar will get deeper with time. Yet, how vital ‘the elderly’ are to society cannot be stressed enough, particularly when state family support policies are insufficient, a gap that grandparents have long been filling by taking care of their grandchildren. If uncertainty is ahead of us, so is the void left by all those ‘elderly’ men and women who will be deeply missed. In this issue, Manuela Pellegrino provides a narrative of her experience as an Italian doing fieldwork in Greece while the epidemic was in full swing. Back cover Covid-19 Rear Admiral Timothy Weber, commander of US Naval Medical Forces Pacific, speaks to members of the press moments before the hospital ship USNS Mercy departs from its base near San Diego, California, 23 March 2020. The vessel, which can host up to 1,200 medical personnel, is being deployed in support of US Covid-19 response efforts. It will serve as a referral hospital for up to a 1,000 non-Covid-19 patients should shore-based hospitals prove unable to adequately serve them. The Mercy's deployment illustrates how grave the situation has become in the US. It also reveals something about how, after decades of neglect, the country's public health infrastructures have come to rely heavily on support from military and corporate institutions. The pandemic brings to light a host of global issues, ranging from food scarcity and insecurity, mass unemployment and economic crisis, the crucial roles played by elderly people, the fate of education and schooling, the unplanned release of prisoners, the long-term consequences of ‘distancing’ directives and much more. Underlying all of these topics is a sobering observation made by medical anthropologists more than two decades ago: locally and globally, it is the poor who are most likely to contract – and die from – infectious diseases. In Salento and Silicon Valley, in Rio de Janeiro and Wuhan, the pattern has been strikingly similar – the most economically vulnerable members of society suffer disproportionately. Anthropology contributes to a fuller understanding of Covid-19 and its aftermath. Recent research has developed a more complete cross-cultural picture of recent epidemics like AIDS, SARS, Ebola and Zika. When combined with archaeological and biological knowledge of pandemics stretching back to the Black Death and earlier, the discipline adds critical historical and cross-cultural perspectives. Anthropologists have much to say about how and why communicable diseases emerge, the underlying social and environmental conditions that fuel them, and potential strategies for their effective mitigation.     

The Potential of e-Learning to Address the Needs of Out-of-School Youth in the Philippines

This paper reports on the findings of focus group discussions designed to explore the learning and skills-based needs of out-of-school youth in the Philippines, particularly addressing their reasons for leaving school, their current activities and employment, how they acquire skills and knowledge, what they want to learn about, their use of Information and Communication Technologies, and their future employment plans. It was undertaken in the context of the development of a programme of e-learning through ICT Centres to be delivered in support of the country's 5 million out-of-school youth.     

Accumulation by dispossession and hazardscape production in post-corporate gold mining in Itogon,Philippines

This study investigates the experience of a gold mining community two decades after corporate mining activities ceased and were replaced by informal subcontract small-scale mining in Itogon, Philippines. Drawing on David Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession and Daanish Mustafa’s hazardscape, we consider the lasting effects, from 1903, of dispossession upon the establishment of the first commercial mines in the Philippines as experienced by traditional miners in Itogon. Despite the closure of mining operations, mineral lands remain privately owned, resulting in the persistence of legal land dispossession among local small-scale gold miners. Mining activities still continue as small-scale miners are able to access abandoned mines through subcontract mining. Subcontract mining has changed the source of capital that funds mining activities from mining corporation to rent-seeking small-scale mining financiers, but the new economic relations still benefit from the capitalist logic of low natural resources and labour value. We argue that the production of hazardscapes is a consequence of accumulation by dispossession through (1) processes of expropriation of mineral lands and the consequent creation of free labour among local miners; (2) the externalisation environmental cost as an accumulation strategy that results in the production of socionatural hazards; and (3) exploitation of those who labour and who are made to work in precarious work environment while contributing to the production of hazardscapes.     

The family, love, and suicide in early modern Geneva

Analysis of criminal proceedings and death records for early modern Geneva reveals an explosion in suicides after 1750. New attitudes toward courtship, marriage, and the familly contributed to this dramatic increase, as unprecedented numbers of people took their lives because of family concerns, such as marital breakdown, unhapppy love stories, and deaths of family members. Greater interest in the companionate marriage was central to these changes. After 1750, marriage, even more than parenthood, offered immunity to suicide, as married people were underrepresented among those who took their lives. Although men constituted the large majority of suicides, women and men shared the growing emphasis on conjugal sentiment, which cut across class lines.     

Nested assemblages: migrants,war heritage,informal learning and national identities

ABSTRACT

This article examines relations between Anzac heritage and Australian national identity, among migrant visitors to the Australian War Memorial (AWM). What meaning could a story derived from Australian involvement in the First World War have to migrants who moved to Australia after the Second World War? Participants in qualitative interviews were eleven first-generation Australians, whose countries of birth were England, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, Scotland, South Africa and Sri Lanka, with parental countries of birth extending to Austria, Germany, India and Japan. Drawing on sociomaterial assemblage theory, the findings illustrate the concept of nested assemblages. At increasing scalar levels, the migrants form visitor-AWM assemblages, they may (or may not) feel part of a national Anzac heritage assemblage, and as migrants they are entangled in multiple national assemblages concurrently. Assemblages pertaining to family, faith, learning and memorialising were additional networks at play. Mapping interrelations amongst these assemblages showed migrants as actively gathering and interpreting heritage, sometimes as the enactment of national identity and at other times as the performance of informal, lifelong learning. The findings have importance to institutions seeking to be responsive to diverse and changing populations, particularly those wrestling with tensions around national identity.     

Local Histories in Global Perspective: A Local Elite Fellowship in the Port City of Quanzhou in Seventeenth-Century China

The Great Mosque of Quanzhou, as a distinctive community center, bound its residents through religious, professional, and educational ties; it also linked the mosque community to other communities with bonds of shared Muslim identity and minority status. The Great Mosque was rebuilt in 1609 under the supervision of the Confucian scholar Li Guangjin. This significant event is evidence of a local elite fellowship in seventeenth-century Quanzhou consisting of three well-known Confucian scholars—Li Zhi, Li Guangjin, and He Qiaoyuan—who had close ties to their Muslim neighbors. They left meticulous records of merchants, particularly Muslim traders. This paper focuses on the fellowship among the three men in order to investigate Quanzhou’s connections to the broader world of global commercial and religious networks and to look more closely at local community life.