Elusive Homecomings: Race, Sex and Diasporic Youth in Filipino Return Migration

Elusive Homecomings: Race, Sex and Diasporic Youth in Filipino Return Migration

Speaker: Martin F. Manalansan
University of Illinois, Department of Anthropology

Friday, January 16, 2009
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

208N – Seminar Room, North House
Munk Centre For International Studies
1 Devonshire Place

Register online http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?eventid=6334

This presentation focuses on the experiences of Filipino young men and women who were born and/or raised in Britain, Canada, Australia and the U.S. and have returned to the Philippines to gain employment in the Philippine entertainment industry (film, television, and runway/print/commercial modeling. Through ethnographic fieldwork, this project traces the ways in which racial, gendered and sexual ideologies intersect in the lives of these young people as they struggle to claim cultural citizenship and professional success in the industry. Such ideologies are transnationally mediated and formed. For example, racial ideologies of American multiculturalism are challenged and inflected by Filipino historical legacies of mestisaje. This presentation is part of a large-scale examination of Filipino return migration as well as the critical analysis of the transforming cultural landscape of contemporary Philippine society in the 21st century.

Martin F. Manalansan IV is associate professor of anthropology, and Asian American Studies. He presently serves as co-chair of the Society for Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists and board member of the Association for Feminist Anthropology. He is also the Social Science Review Editor for GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies.