Racism and Resistance among the Filipino Diaspora: Everyday Anti-racism in Australia

154 Pages·2018·1.17 MB·English

by  Kristine Aquino

Racism and Resistance among

the Filipino Diaspora
Filipino migrants constitute one of the largest global diasporas today. In Australia,
Filipino settlement is markedly framed by the country’s ongoing nation-building
project that continues to racialise immigrants and delineate the possibilities and lim-
its of belonging to the national community. This book explores the ways in which
Filipino migrants in Australia experience, understand and negotiate racism in their
everyday lives. In particular, it explores the notion of everyday anti-racism – the
strategies individuals deploy to manage racism in their day-to-day lives. Through
case studies based on extensive fi eldwork the author shares ethnographic observa-
tion and interview material that demonstrate the ways in which Filipinos are racially
constituted in Australian society and are subject to everyday racisms that criss-cross
different modes of power and domination. Drawing on theoretical approaches in
critical race scholarship and the sociology of everyday life, this book illuminates the
operation of racism in a multicultural society that persists insidiously in exchanges
across a range of public and private spaces. More importantly, it explores the quo-
tidian ways in which ‘victims’ of racism cope with routine racialised domination, an
area underdeveloped in anti-racism research that has tended to focus on institutional
anti-racism politics. Shedding light on a neglected corner of the global Filipino
diaspora and highlighting the complexity of lived experiences in translocal and
transnational social fi elds, this book will be of interest to academics in the fi eld of
diaspora and migration studies, the study of race and racism and ethnic minorities,
with particular reference to the Asian diaspora.
Kristine Aquino is Lecturer in Global Studies at the University of Technology
Sydney, Australia. Her research interests are in the study of global migration,
transnationalism, race and ethnicity, and everyday multiculturalism in urban life.
Routledge Series on Asian Migration
Series Editors: Yuk Wah Chan (City University of Hong Kong), Jonathan H. X.
Lee (San Francisco State University, US) and Nicola Piper (The University of
Sydney, Australia)
E ditorial Board: Steven J. Gold (Michigan State University, US), David Haines
(George Mason University, US), Pei-Chia Lan (National Taiwan University), Nana
Oishi (University of Melbourne, Australia), Willem van Schendel (University of
Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Biao Xiang (University of Oxford, UK), Brenda
Yeoh (National University of Singapore)
Racism and Resistance among the Filipino Diaspora
Everyday Anti-racism in Australia
Kristine Aquino
Racism and Resistance
among the Filipino Diaspora
Everyday Anti-racism in Australia
Kristine Aquino
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Kristine Aquino
The right of Kristine Aquino to be identifi ed as author of this work has been
asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Aquino, Kristine, author.
Title: Racism and resistance among the Filipino diaspora / Kristine Aquino.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge series on
Asian migration | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2017016408 | ISBN 9781138707931 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315201306 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Filipinos—Australia—Social conditions. | Immigrants—
Australia—Social conditions. | Racism—Australia. | Australia—Race
relations. | Australia—Emigration and immigration. | Filipino diaspora.
Classifi cation: LCC DU122.F5 A78 2018 | DDC 305.800994—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016408
ISBN: 978-1-138-70793-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20130-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For my parents, Lita and Augie

Contents
List of fi gures viii
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Histories of the ‘Filipino’ in Australia and beyond 17
3 Coping with honorary whiteness: aspirant middle-class
Filipino migrants 43
4 Reclaiming rights, morality and esteem: the dignity
of working-class Filipino migrants 66
5 ‘Mail order bride’ or loving wife? Revisiting the
experience of Filipina ‘marriage migrants’ 87
6 More than a game: embodied resistance among young
Filipino-Australian street ballers 111
7 Conclusion 133
Index 140
Figures
2.1 Parade of traditional Filipino costume, Philippine
Cultural Day, St Marys, May 2009 40
2.2 Filipino Seniors Sonata Concert, Memorial Hall,
St Marys, 2010 40
2.3 Filipino turo turo (point point) restaurant on Main Street,
Blacktown 41
2.4 Filipino business hub in Main Street, Blacktown 41
2.5 Grand Final contention at the 2011 New South Wales Filos
Championship Cup, Auburn 42
2.6 Filipino symbols inscribed as tattoos among young Filipino
basketball players 42
Acknowledgements
There are many people who deserve my sincerest gratitude.
F irst and foremost, while their real names are not revealed in this book, I thank
all of the Filipinos who shared their time and lives with me. Their journeys have
touched me in so many ways and I hope to do their stories justice here.
This book was researched and written during my time at Macquarie University,
Sydney, which was my intellectual home for close to ten years. It began as a
doctoral thesis at the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion and completed as a
book manuscript while I was Associate Lecturer at the Department of Sociology.
I am grateful for the support of my senior colleagues and also for the Macqua-
rie Research Excellence Scholarship that enabled me to undertake the research.
Most especially, a big thank you goes to my mentors, Amanda Wise and Selvaraj
Velayutham, who have both been so generous in nurturing my academic abilities.
Their intellectual guidance through this work and complete belief in my potential
have sustained me over the past few years and I am incredibly grateful for their
continued support. I truly look forward to working together again and to many
more years of friendship. I also thank Harry Blatterer, Alison Leitch and Justine
Lloyd for all of their kind and reassuring encouragement. Thank you to my won-
derful peers who shared the PhD journey with me, Sudheesh Bhasi, Laavanya
Kathiravelu, Kylie Sait and Banu Senay. I cherish all of the serious and silly chats
we shared about our research and our lives outside, amid piles of reading or bottles
of wine. I am also grateful for the support of Peter Rogers, Barbara Beard, Niro
Kandasamy, Edgar Liu and Vincent Suarez at Western Sydney Regional Informa-
tion and Research, where I worked while completing my studies, who all helped
me navigate the rich complexities of Western Sydney. As I begin the next stage
of my academic career at the University of Technology Sydney, I look forward
to sharing this book and collaborating with my new colleagues at the School of
International Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
F or their enthusiasm in pursuing the publication of this book, I thank the edi-
tors of Routledge’s Series on Asian Migration, Nicola Piper, Yuk Wah Chan and
Brandon H. X. Lee. Many thanks also to Routledge editors Dorothea Schaefter
and Lily Brown, who made publishing my fi rst book a really easy and friendly
experience. Several scholars whose work I admire have provided helpful feed-
back throughout various stages of peer examination of the manuscript – Trevor