Through Migrant Lenses Examination Draft 2

Through Migrant Lenses Indians, Koreans and the Mediation of Diasporic Voices in Manila Jason Vincent A. Cabanes Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of PhD in Communications Studies The University of Leeds Institute of Communications Studies May 2013 - ii - The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Assertion of moral rights: The right of Jason Vincent A. Cabanes to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2013 The University of Leeds and Jason Vincent A. Cabanes - iii - Acknowledgements The abiding social concern of this dissertation—the diasporic experience of marginalisation—is something that has always been close to my heart. My parents, Cynthia and Edward, were Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Saudia Arabia for more than twenty-five years. As a child, I used to spend my summers with them and the Filipino community in Riyadh. It was in observing the lives of my parents and their friends that I first became witness to the travails of Filipino migrant life. My dear and long-time neighbourhood friends, Lakhvir and Manpreet, are Manila-born Indians. It was in growing up with them that I first saw the difficulties of migrant life in the Philippines. I owe the inspiration for this work to my beloved parents and their fellow diasporic Filipinos, as well as to my forever friends Lakhvir and Manpreet and their fellow diasporas in the Philippines. The long and winding path to the completion of this dissertation was something that I could not have properly navigated without the guidance of my two supervisors, Helen Kennedy and David Hesmondhalgh. I am grateful to them for tirelessly, meticulously, and critically poring through the many drafts of my chapters. I am also grateful to them for their constant patience and support throughout the many difficult moments I encountered during the course of my writing. Beyond these things, I will always remember Helen for our often tough but always rewarding supervision sessions. As a testament to her generosity, our supervisions did not only cover a diverse range of topics, they also spanned diverse forms of communication, including face-to-face conversations, mobile phone calls, and Skype video calls. Meanwhile, I will always remember David for those moments when our discussions turned philosophical and when I found his ideas paradigm-changing. I will also remember him for those moments when I talked to him about my more mundane problems and when his advise was very reassuring. I can only hope to one day mature into a scholar with the same calibre as my supervisors. I am thankful as well to those scholars who kindly took time out to discuss the various aspects of my dissertation with me. You were of tremendous help in my efforts at refining my ideas. I consider you as my mentors too. In the UK, I was privileged to get to talk about my research with Mirca Madianou, Myria Georgiou, Stephen Coleman, Giorgia Aiello, Bethany Klein, Nancy Thumim, and David Kay. In the Philippines, I was equally privileged to have had conversations about my work with Fernando Zialcita and Roland Tolentino. I am also indebted to those people at Ateneo de Manila University who helped me plan and implement the Shutter Stories collaborative photography exhibition project. I certainly could not have mounted the project without the - iv - support of Violet Valdez, the Executive Director of the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism and, more importantly, my BA and MA dissertation supervisor. Neither would have I been able to do it without the expertise of the ACFJ staff, namely Irene Veñegas, Chat Pizzaro, and Rose Madjos. I am thankful to my colleagues at the Department of Communication who, in their different capacities, engaged with my dissertation: Mark Escaler, Severino Sarmenta Jr., Cheryl Borsoto and Jimmy Domingo. And I am thankful to all of my students with whom I shared and discussed my work, but most especially to Katherine Tan, Claire Cua, Paolo Arago, Bernice Sibucao, and Aya Lemence. My constant friendship and enduring intellectual partnership with Jonathan Ong were very important throughout the course of my PhD, and they mattered the most in those moments when the vagaries of everyday life threatened to “interrupt” the progress of my work. Thank you for being my best friend. Important as well to my PhD life were the friendships and intellectual bonds that I fostered with Jayeel Cornelio, Lawrence Santiago, Lia Uy-Tioco, Anjo Lorenzana, Clarissa David, Angeli Diaz, Kyungmin Bae, Megha Amrith, Dia Flores, Chris Cuevas, and Percival Pastrana. The same goes for Yanling Yang, Divya Maharajh, Jian Hui Lee, Ray Hsiao, Yumme Xia, Ruben Gonzales, Molly Bettie, Ella Karim, Daniel Mutibwa, and my other colleagues at the Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds. I also cannot but give special mention the “infinite hospitality” of Francis Fernandez and Myra Fernandez; I would not have survived life in England had it not been for our movie marathons, shopping sprees, road trips, and pig out sessions. Throughout my PhD journey, the people at home in Manila have also been a constant source of encouragement. To my dearest grandmother, Lola Pacita, you will always be the most loving teacher I will ever know. I truly hope I am making you proud. To Tito Jun and to Tita Verna, I will never forget how you always brought me to the airport, fetched me from the airport, and, in between these, made sure that Lola Pacita was okay. I will most certainly bring you both to the airport when your much awaited migration to the USA finally happens. To Ate Lina, thank you too for never wavering in your care for Lola Pacita. I would not be able to leave Manila if you did not constantly reassure me that my grandmother was in good hands. Of course, I owe much to the local Filipinos who joined the focus group discussions and to the Indians and Koreans whom I interviewed. Thank you for sharing your life stories with me. I owe even more to the five Indians and four Koreans who participated in the Shutter Stories project. Although my promise to keep you anonymous holds me back from revealing your names, do know that I deeply appreciate the opportunity I had to collaborate with you. I truly hope Manila will learn to better appreciate you and all the other diasporas like you. - v - Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to Kristel Acedera. I would not have pulled through without your intellectual generosity, immense patience, unfaltering support, and, above all, love that transcends space and time. They were what sustained me in this most difficult endeavour of my life yet. I hope to share a non-social-media-mediated future with you. This dissertation is funded by the ICS PhD Scholarship of the Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds. - vi - Abstract This study had two key aims: to understand the how the mediation of multiculturalism in Manila marginalised the city’s Indian and Korean diasporas and, more importantly, to “interrupt” (Pinchevsky, 2005) this problematic mediation by exploring whether and how a collaborative photography exhibition project might create a space that fosters the voices of these migrants. To address these two concerns, I did life story interviews of seventeen Indian and fifteen Korean diasporas from Manila, six focus group discussions with local Filipinos from Manila, an impressionistic analysis of contemporary Philippine mainstream media, and participant observation of Shutter Stories, which was a collaborative exhibition project that I worked on together with Manila’s Indians and Koreans and with two photography scholars from one of Manila’s top universities. By weaving together these rich and diverse data sets, this study provides a nuanced counterpoint to extant works that focus on understanding multiculturalism in the cities of the developed world. In particular, it reveals that although Manila’s Indians and Koreans tend to be economically superior to the city’s local Filipinos, they are nevertheless symbolically marginalised. This is most evident in the problematic mediation of multiculturalism in Manila, the dynamics of which are characterised by what I call the cycle of strangeness and estrangement. Together with this, one other key contribution of this study is that it maps out the complexities of how a collaborative photography exhibition project might create a space for marginalised voices that can challenge dominant social discourses, such as the mediation of multiculturalism in Manila. As regards the photographic mediation of voice, this study underscores the importance of considering both how the various properties of the photograph are activated in the context of production and of consumption, as well as how the various practices of photography might be harnessed in a way that balances the call for both ethics (that is, the desire for marginalised to have a voice) and aesthetics (that is, the desire to ensure that the voices of the marginalised will be engaging enough to be heard). And as regards the social mediation of voice, this study reveals that the already difficult task of helping marginalised groups, such as migrant cultural minorities, to articulate stories that are in line with their personal life projects is made complicated by the need to also think about the much more difficult task of helping establish a society that is willing to foster such voices.

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