Taking the country as a case study to understand contemporary processes of neoliberal globalization, Rodriguez (sociology, Rutgers U.) examines how and why the Philippine state has emerged as a global enterprise of labor. Among her qualitative methods are ethnographic research of the governments migration bureaucracy, interviews with state officials and migrants, and a decade of archival work with government documents. She describes the mechanisms by which the state mobilizes, exports, and regulates migrant labor to meet worldwide gendered and racialized labor demand, and how such trafficking has altered the conception of Philippine citizenship. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Migrant workers from the Philippines are ubiquitous to global capitalism, with nearly 10 percent of the population employed in almost two hundred countries. In a visit to the United States in 2003, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even referred to herself as not only the head of state but also “the CEO of a global Philippine enterprise of eight million Filipinos who live and work abroad.”Robyn Magalit Rodriguez investigates how and why the Philippine government transformed itself into what she calls a labor brokerage state, which actively prepares, mobilizes, and regulates its citizens for migrant work abroad. Filipino men and women fill a range of jobs around the globe, including domestic work, construction, and engineering, and they have even worked in the Middle East to support U.S. military operations. At the same time, the state redefines nationalism to normalize its citizens to migration while fostering their ties to the Philippines. Those who leave the country to work and send their wages to their families at home are treated as new national heroes.Drawing on ethnographic research of the Philippine government’s migration bureaucracy, interviews, and archival work, Rodriguez presents a new analysis of neoliberal globalization and its consequences for nation-state formation.
