• DOI:10.1215/10642684-2007-039
• Corpus ID: 142268960

Transportation: Translating Filipino and Filipino American Tomboy Masculinities through Global Migration and Seafaring

@article{Fajardo2008TransportationTF,
  title={Transportation: Translating Filipino and Filipino American Tomboy Masculinities through Global Migration and Seafaring},
  author={Kale Bantigue Fajardo},
  journal={GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies},
  year={2008},
  volume={14},
  pages={403 - 424}
}

• Kale Bantigue Fajardo
• Published 12 July 2008
• Sociology
• GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies

Recently, the New York Times featured a report on the rising numbers of global migrants who collectively send oceanic-size remittances back home to the global south. The Sunday Magazine cover includes a photograph of a Filipina nurse — posed as abandoned, forlorn, and castaway — wearing medical scrubs, white shoes in hand, barefoot on a distant shore (Abu Dhabi?), aquamarine waters in the background; while inside the magazine a lengthy article discusses growing waves of migration from the global south to north, specifically focusing on the near constant outflow of Filipino/a migrants as a case study. The isolated and lonesome Filipina nurse on the magazine cover is revealing. She signifies how global migration and labor in general, and Filipino/a global migration and labor in particular, have been feminized.1 That is, more women than men from the global south, including the Philippines, migrate to and work in the global north. Beyond suggesting the numerical differences in Filipino/a male and female migration patterns, she evokes a specific genealogy of how the Philippines as a nation and Filipino peoples in general have been feminized through U.S. and Japanese colonial, imperialist, capitalist, and misogynist discourses, which consistently inscribe the Philippines as a feminine and hence “weak nation-state,” and the country’s citizens and workers as exploited people, largely women.2 Historically, these discourses have circulated through the figure of the Filipina as “prostitute,” “mailorder bride,” or “DH” (domestic helper). The wind-tossed and forsaken Filipina nurse brought to a foreign shore by the powerful tides of economic globalization is therefore a new twist on an entrenched discourse of Philippine and Filipino/a feminization, marginalization, and disempowerment.