Ong, Jonathan Corpus and Cabañes, Jason Vincent. 2011. Engaged, but not immersed: Tracking the mediated public connection of Filipino elite migrants in London. South East Asia Research, 19(2), pp. 197-224. ISSN 0967-828X [Article]

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Abstract or Description

While most of the literature highlights the social, economic and cultural aspects of Filipino migration, this study explores its political dimension by focusing on the public connection of Filipino elite migrants in London. Unlike other types of Filipino migrants, such as Americanized balikbayans and ‘low-skilled’ labour migrants, elite migrants are expected to return physically to the homeland as part of their nationalistic duty to ‘lead the nation’. From their interviews and participant observation, the authors discover that overseas scholars indeed maintain a strong interest in homeland political issues through heavy news consumption on the Internet. However, this has also fostered an ambiguous kind of public connection. On the one hand, elite migrants remain engaged with issues that they hope to address on their eventual return, but on the other hand they are not immersed with ‘other’ Filipino people in the diaspora. Their political engagement involves talk and mediated conversations with limited face-to-face collaborations with other migrants. This kind of public connection lends itself to long- distance particularistic communication and a great volume of discussion, but limited and short-term forms of public activity. The authors argue that elite migrants’ practices of political engagement are inscribed in continuing socio-historical – and fundamentally classed – divides in Philippine society. Further, rather than enabling cross-class communications and connections, the media are frequently used by elite migrants to maintain political, economic, social and cultural divides.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.5367/sear.2011.0044
Additional Information:	"This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in South East Asia Research in 2011, available at: https://doi.org/10.5367/sear.2011.0044. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited."
Keywords:	public connection; elite migrant; political engagement; media consumption; ilustrado; class
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Dates:	Date Event 2011 Published
Item ID:	37331
Date Deposited:	10 Jul 2024 14:03
Last Modified:	10 Jul 2024 15:40
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/37331

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