Homeland developments: Filipino America and the politics of Diaspora giving.

Abstract

"Homeland Developments: Filipino America and the Politics of Diaspora Giving" explores the implications of varying and situated giving practices in processes of diaspora formation. Annually, hundreds of Filipino American organizations, foundations, and associations give monetarily, of members' time, and in kind to or in solidarity with projects, movements and nongovernmental organizations in the Philippines. Moving away from an initial premise of giving as simple charity, this dissertation understands organized and public efforts by Filipino Americans to better, help, or fight for a cause in the Philippines to be forms of giving that necessarily entail frameworks of human and social need, sanctioning attendant visions of societal transformation and, at times, the maintenance of the social order. This work insists on bringing together often disparate mechanisms--for example, philanthropy, emergency relief, humanitarianism, environmentalism, or social justice work--in an analysis of the discursivity of giving and its implications for counter-hegemonic practices and frameworks of social transformation. With a transnational and diasporic analysis, this dissertation interrogates how dominant relationships of giving manifest in the spaces of and between Filipino America and the Philippines and impact the possibilities of diaspora politics, identities, belonging and imaginations.