Global Friday Presents

Co-sponsored with Inspiring Women Among Us (IWAU) and the Geography Program

Dr. John Paul (JP) Catungal
Assistant Professor
Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT:  The figure of the global Filipina is a familiar one in part because her discursive and material mobility has been aggressively pursued by the Philippine state for export as labour and by other nation-states to fulfill needs especially in the caring fields. Feminist geographers and Filipinx studies scholars have noted strongly that the gendered and racialized naturalization of the global Filipina’s commitment to family – both hers and her employees’ – is key to her production as a globally mobilizable subject. In this talk, I examine how the familial Filipina is put to work in the service of other forms of global mobility - those of the intrepid Western tourist and of transnational corporations seeking new markets. Rather than interpreting this is a new development in the Filipina’s place in the global economy, I argue that her sustained circulation as a global subject is precisely why she is mobilizable as a synecdoche for Philippine hospitality: that the global familiarity of her gendering and racialization as familial is central to the opening of the Philippines to global tourism and corporate markets.

Refreshments will be provided.

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Global Friday gratefully acknowledges funding from the Dean of CASHS.