Amidst the recent global financial crisis and housing busts in various countries, the Philippines’ booming housing industry has been heralded as “Southeast Asia’s hottest real estate hub” and the saving grace of a supposedly resilient Philippine economy. This growth has been fueled by demand from balikbayan (returnee) Overseas Filipinos and has facilitated the rise of gated suburban communities in Manila’s sprawling peri-urban fringe. But as the “Filipino dreams” of successful balikbayans are built inside these new gated residential developments, the lives of marginalized populations living in these spaces have been upended and thrown into turmoil as they face threats of expulsion. Based on almost four years of research, this book examines the tumultuous geographies of neoliberalization that link suburbanization, transnational mobilities, and accumulation by dispossession. Through an accounting of real estate and new suburban landscapes, it tells of a Filipino transnationalism that engenders a market-based and privatized suburban political economy that reworks socio-spatial relations and class dynamics. In presenting the literal and discursive transformations of spaces in Manila’s peri-urban fringe, the book details life inside new gated suburban communities and discusses the everyday geographies of “privileged” new property owners—mainly comprised of balikbayan families—and exposes the contradictions of gated suburban life, from resistance to Home Owner Association rules to alienating feelings of loss. It also reveals the darker side of the property boom by mapping the volatile spaces of the Philippines’ surplus populations comprised of the landless farmers, informal settler residents, and indigenous peoples. To make way for gated communities and other profitable developments in the peri-urban region, marginalized residents are systematically dispossessed and displaced while concomitantly offered relocation to isolated socialized housing projects, the last frontier for real estate accumulation. These compelling accounts illustrate how the territorial embeddedness of neoliberalization in the Philippines entails the consolidation of capital by political-economic elites and privatization of residential space for an idealized transnational property clientele. More than ever, as the Philippines is being reshaped by diaspora and accumulation by dispossession, the contemporary moment is a critical time to reflect on what it truly means to be a nation.

"Based on years of field research, this study examines the construction of urban and suburban space in the Philippines since a recent housing boom caused by an influx of wealth from returning Filipino migrants. It analyzes various developments, such as the rise of gated suburban communities and their effects on marginalized populations"--

The contributors to this volume examine the actual workings and on-the-ground effects of contemporary political economic shifts in the Global South, and implications for reconfiguring social networks, conceptions and practices of governance, and burgeoning social movements. How do various groups in the Global South respond to and manage chronic states of insecurity and precarity concomitant with contemporary globalization processes? While drawing on diverse ethnographic viewpoints in the Philippines, the authors analyze the impact of these processes through the conceptual framework of "emergent sociality," a purported connectedness among individuals fostered through interactions, copresence, and conviviality within a community over a long duration. In so doing, the case studies in this volume suggest, illuminate, and debate insecurities that may be commonly shared among populations in the Philippines and throughout the Global South. This anthology will be of great interest to students and scholars of cultural anthropology, globalization and Philippines society.

Seki presents an ethnography of uncertainty and precarity experienced by people in urban, rural, and transnational, communities in the Philippines as a case study of social protection without the possibility of a robust welfare state. He deals with topics including urban poverty, environmental degradation, and transnational migration. Throughout these chapters, Seki elaborates on the modes of security and protection that people living at the margins of global capitalism create through mobilizing their sociality and networks. He traces the emerging configuration of "the social," a collectivity and connectedness that ensures a sense of security in life among people. The social can be defined as an idea or institution, which had enabled formal and impersonal solidarity such as that which provided the underpinnings of the modern welfare states of the West during the mid-20th century. In the twenty-first century the social in this context is experiencing a fundamental reconfiguration as it faces deepening insecurity, risk, and the precariousness of the post-Welfare State or post-Fordist regime. What are the contours of the social emerging in an "unlikely place" of the Philippines amid contemporary insecurity and precariousness? A vital resource for scholars of the Philippines, and of anthropology and social policy in the Global South more widely.

Providing a critical overview of transnationalism as a concept, this Handbook looks at its growing influence in an era of high-speed, globalised interconnectivity. It offers crucial insights on how approaches to transnationalism have altered how we think about social life from the family to the nation-state, whilst also challenging the predominance of methodologically nationalist analyses.

In Migrant Returns Eric J. Pido examines the complicated relationship among the Philippine economy, Manila’s urban development, and balikbayans—Filipino migrants visiting or returning to their homeland—to reconceptualize migration as a process of connectivity. Focusing on the experiences of balikbayans returning to Manila from California, Pido shows how Philippine economic and labor policies have created an economy reliant upon property speculation, financial remittances, and the affective labor of Filipinos living abroad. As the initial generation of post-1965 Filipino migrants begin to age, they are encouraged to retire in their homeland through various state-sponsored incentives. Yet, once they arrive, balikbayans often find themselves in the paradoxical position of being neither foreign nor local. They must reconcile their memories of their Filipino upbringing with American conceptions of security, sociality, modernity, and class as their homecoming comes into collision with the Philippines’ deep economic and social inequality. Tracing the complexity of balikbayan migration, Pido shows that rather than being a unidirectional event marking the end of a journey, migration is a multidirectional and continuous process that results in ambivalence, anxiety, relief, and difficulty.

Developmentalist Cities addresses the missing urban story in research on East Asian developmentalism and the missing developmentalist story in studies of East Asian urbanization. It does so by promoting inter-disciplinary research into the subject of urban developmentalism: a term that editors Jamie Doucette and Bae-Gyoon Park use to highlight the particular nature of the urban as a site of and for developmentalist intervention. The contributors to this volume deepen this concept by examining the legacy of how Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitical economy, spaces of exception (from special zones to industrial districts), and diverse forms of expertise have helped produce urban space in East Asia. Contributors: Carolyn Cartier, Christina Kim Chilcote, Young Jin Choi, Jamie Doucette, Eli Friedman, Jim Glassman, Heidi Gottfried, Laam Hae, Jinn-yuh Hsu, Iam Chong Ip, Jin-Bum Jang, Soo-Hyun Kim, Jana M. Kleibert, Kah Wee Lee, Seung-Ook Lee, Christina Moon, Bae-Gyoon Park, Hyun Bang Shin.

In contemporary Manila, slums and squatter settlements are peppered throughout the city, often pushing right up against the walled enclaves of the privileged, creating the complex geopolitical pattern of Marco Z. Garrido’s “patchwork city.” Garrido documents the fragmentation of Manila into a mélange of spaces defined by class, particularly slums and upper- and middle-class enclaves. He then looks beyond urban fragmentation to delineate its effects on class relations and politics, arguing that the proliferation of these slums and enclaves and their subsequent proximity have intensified class relations. For enclave residents, the proximity of slums is a source of insecurity, compelling them to impose spatial boundaries on slum residents. For slum residents, the regular imposition of these boundaries creates a pervasive sense of discrimination. Class boundaries then sharpen along the housing divide, and the urban poor and middle class emerge not as labor and capital but as squatters and “villagers,” Manila’s name for subdivision residents. Garrido further examines the politicization of this divide with the case of the populist president Joseph Estrada, finding the two sides drawn into contention over not just the right to the city, but the nature of democracy itself. The Patchwork City illuminates how segregation, class relations, and democracy are all intensely connected. It makes clear, ultimately, that class as a social structure is as indispensable to the study of Manila—and of many other cities of the Global South—as race is to the study of American cities.

The Oxford Handbook of Southeast Asian Englishes is the first reference work of its kind to describe both the history and the contemporary forms, functions, and status of English in Southeast Asia (SEA). Since the arrival of English traders to Southeast Asia in the seventeenth century, the English language has had a profound impact on the linguistic ecologies and the development of societies throughout the region. Today, countries such as Singapore and the Philippines have adopted English as a national language, while in others, such as Indonesia and Cambodia, it is used as a foreign language of education. The chapters in this volume provide a comprehensive overview of current research on a wide range of topics, addressing the impact of English as a language of globalization and exploring new approaches to the spread of English in SEA. The volume is divided into six parts that investigate, respectively: historical and contemporary English contact in SEA; the structures of the Englishes spokes in different SEA nations; the English-language literatures of the region; approaches to English in education throughout the region; and resources for researching SEA Englishes. The handbook will be an invaluable reference work for students and researchers in areas as diverse as contact linguistics, English as a Foreign Language, world Englishes, and sociolinguistics.

The study of urbanization in Southeast Asia has been a growing field of research over the past decades. The Routledge Handbook of Urbanization in Southeast Asia offers a collection of the major streams and themes in the studies of the cities in the region. A focus on the urbanization process rather than the city as an object opens the topic more broadly to bring together different perspectives. This timely handbook presents these diverse views to build a clearer understanding of theoretical contributions of urban studies in Southeast Asia and to provide a complete collection of scholarly works that are thematically structured and a useful tool for teaching urbanization in Southeast Asia. Following the introduction by the editor, the handbook is structured along central, emerging themes. It contains six parts, which are each introduced by the editor: Theorizing Urbanization in Southeast Asia Migration, Networks and Identities Development and Discontents Environmental Governance The Social Production of the Urban Fabric Social Change and Alternative Development This handbook will be an essential reference work for scholars interested in Urban Studies, cities and urbanization in Asia, and Southeast Asian Studies.