Migration Waves and Movement Tide: Shifting Resources and Fluid Identities in Filipino Diaspora Mobilization

• In Event: 549 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 10. Immigrant Mobilizations

Abstract

Diaspora mobilization is a dynamic process by which political entrepreneurs deploy resources, frames and identities in response to opportunities to make claims about homeland issues. Using the case of Filipinos in the United States who mobilized to oppose the dictatorship of Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, I show how the changing demographic of the Filipino migrant population defined the available social relations and discourses into which political entrepreneurs could tap and thus shaped the master frames and collective identity of the anti-martial law movement. Waves of migration and parallel processes of assimilation and return continuously transform the protest infrastructure, which provides material and symbolic resources for mobilization. A collective identity is also constantly constructed and negotiated within the discursive field of the changing migrant community.

Author

• Sharon Quinsaat, Grinnell College