TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION: FILIPINO HOTEL WORKERS IN RURAL MANITOBA by Catherine Bryan Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August 2017 © Copyright by Catherine Bryan, 2017 For Zev ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………….…..…....vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED……………………………………….…………...vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………..………………...viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION………………………..……………………………….1 1.1 CONCEPTUAL FRAMING…………………..………..………….…….7 1.2 IN SEARCH OF MULTI-SITED ORIGINS: METHODS…...…………17 1.3 OVERVIEW OF THESIS………………………….….……………...…24 CHAPTER 2 SOCIAL REPRODUCTION…………………………………….………..33 2.1 FEMINIST HISTORIES OF SOCIAL REPRODUCTION………..……34 2.1.1 Commodified Social Reproduction and Global Care Chains……55 2.2 CONTRIBUTIONS……………...………….…………………...………62 CHAPTER 3 ARTICULATING COLONIAL PASTS………………………………….66 3.1 MANITOBA……………………..………………………………...…….66 3.2 THE PHILIPPINES………………..…………………………………….70 3.3 DOUGLAS COUNTY, MANITOBA…………………………....……...76 3.4 THE PHILIPPINES………………………………..…………………….81 3.5 CONCLUSION………………………………………..…………………87 CHAPTER 4 WATERSHED: THE HISTORY OF TOURISM, SERVICE, AND HOSPITALITY IN DOUGLAS, MB…………………………………………..………..89 4.1 CONTINUITY AND CRISIS IN MANITOBAN HISTORY..……….…91 4.2 SHELL LAKE AND THE NEW RURAL ECONOMY………………...96 4.2.1 The Porterhead Dam…………………………………………......98 4.3 CONCLUSION: A LATENT MONUMENT……………………….….112 CHAPTER 5 MIGRANT NARRATIVES OF PHILIPPINE LABOUR EXPORT……114 5.1 THE PHILIPPINES: 1960s ONWARD……………………………..….118 5.1.1 A History of Philippine Labour Export………………………...118 5.1.2 State Articulations of Migrant Subjectivity………………..…...124 5.2 MIGRANT NARRATIVES…………………………………….……...129 5.2.1 Violet and June……………………………………..…………..133 iii 5.2.2 Sheila and Lalilani…………………..………………………….139 5.3 CONCLUSION………………………………………….……………...145 CHAPTER 6 REPRODUCTION LABOUR AND PROPULATION IN ASESSIPPI- PARKLAND…………………………………………… ……………………………...149 6.1 LABOUR: CANADA’S TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKER PROGRAM…………………………………….…………………….…152 6.2 POPULATION: MANITOBA’S NOMINEE PROGRAM………….....160 6.2.1 Retain your workers: The Douglas Hotel’s Use of the MPNP…...162 6.2.2 The Promise of Permanency……………………………………...165 6.3 CONCLUSION…………………………………………...…………….171 CHPATER 7 REPRODUCTION AND HOSPITALITY…………………………...….177 7.1 EMOTIONAL AND AFFECTIVE LABOUR…………………………181 7.2 THE DOUGLAS HOTEL AS A SITE OF ROUTINE REPRODUCTION……………………………………………………...186 7.2.1 Illustrations of Hospitality……………………………….……….187 7.3 HOSPITALITY AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION………….……….192 7.4 PRECARITY, EMOTION, AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION……….198 7.5 CONCLUSION…………………………………………..……………..204 CHAPTER 8 TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL REPRODUCTION…………………..…208 8.1 JOSEPH AND NENETH……………………………………….....……211 8.2 ELIZABETH AND SHELLY……………………………..……...…....214 8.3 RETHINKING GLOBAL CARE CHAINS……….……………...……217 8.3.1 Care in the Gender and Migration Literature……………….…..218 8.3.2 Who Cares and How…………………………..………………..219 8.4 CONCLUSION…………………………………………….…………...231 CHAPTER 9 “WAIT, AND WHILE YOU WAIT, WORK”: ON THE REPRODUCTION OF LABOUR ……………………………………………………..235 9.1 NARRATIVES OF WITING IN SECONDS AND MINUTES….……237 9.1.1 Rosalinda’s Birthday………………………………...…………238 9.1.2 Christina at the Wedding………………………..……………...239 9.1.3 Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda)……………………………….…....241 iv 9.2 TECHNOLONY IN WAITING…………………………….………….243 9.3 WAITING IN MONTHS AND YEARS……………………….………255 9.4 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………....263 CHAPTER 10 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………...…265 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………274 v ABSTRACT At the intersection of three highways, the Douglas Hotel, in Manitoba’s central-west, is a place to stop for a coffee, a meal, or a night’s accommodation. Like elsewhere on the Canadian prairies, the daily labour required of these services falls largely to a migrant workforce. Bringing together historic political economy with feminist political economy, I draw on the presence of this workforce, comprised of 71 Filipino service and hospitality workers, in Douglas as an entry point into an extended exploration of the workings of social reproduction under globalized capitalism historically and at the beginning of the 21st Century. Sensitive to the transnationality that characterizes the lives of these workers, this multi- sited ethnographic study reads the details of everyday life in Manitoba and the Philippines through the historic and present-day political economy of each site. Offering this parallel yet integrated account, I highlight the variability of migrant experience in Canada at the sub-national level, as well as the ways in which receiving-states and private enterprise collaborate in the creation of labour markets. Low-wage and low–status, the labour market in question demands a kind of corporate, commodified care work that ensures the bodily reproduction of the Hotel’s guests and the material reproduction of the Hotel itself. Following from the objectives of their migration, the labour these workers perform at the Hotel also supports the survival and well-being of family in the Philippines. However, in addition to ensuring the material reproduction of non-migrant kin, through their use of digital communication technology and social media, these migrants contribute to the reproduction of migrant subjectivities, and subsequently, respond to the needs of global capital and the Philippine state. Thus, identifying the various, scaled forms of social reproduction in which the Hotel’s migrant workers participate, this thesis offers a multi-faceted, transnational account of reproduction, incorporating migrants, their families, their employer, and multiple state players. While not reproductive as conventionally defined, their labour at the Hotel provides insight into the patterning and re-patterning of social reproduction, and its associated labour, under global capital. Moreover, it demonstrates the centrality of those processes to operations of capitalism. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED BES Bureau of Employment Services LCP Live-in Caregiver Program MPNP Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program OEDB Overseas Employment Development Board NSB National Seaman Board POEA Philippine Overseas Employment Agency PFRA Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration TFWP Temporary Foreign Worker Program vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my participants, the migrant workers at the Douglas Hotel and their families in the Philippines. To the Douglas Hotel for their generosity, and to the community of Douglas. To Lorraine Brown, in particular, for her support and friendship. To the folks at the Manitoba Nominee Program for their help and their dedication to the province and its inhabitants, new and old. To Diwa Marcelino, Lulu Marcelino, Jennifer Newton, and Tess Newton for their help and guidance. To my son, Zev Nagler and his father Solomon for their patience during this process, I will always be grateful. To my parents, Maryse and David Mymin, Frank Bryan and Thelma Wood, and my sister, Cindy Bryan for their unconditional, unwavering support of me. I am so fortunate. To my dearest of friends, Bart Vatour, Craig Rodmore, Barbra Moss, Mary-Dan Johnson, Joanna Erdman, Alana Cattapan, Quinn Dupont, Natasha Hanson, Laura Eramian, Andrea Smith, Kirstie Petrou, Jamie Gregor, Bruce Barber, Lachlan Barber, Stephan Coats, María Gomez, Victoria Burns, Sarah Zell, Jill Bucklachuck, and Ray Silvus. Thank you for your companionship and encouragement, your insights and suggestions. To my feminist mothers, Fiona Green, Miriam Denov, and Alexandra Dobrowolsky. To the faculty and staff of the department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie, but in particular Howard Ramos and Karen Foster for their support and encouragement, and my colleagues at Dalhousie’s School of Social Work. To my committee members, Lindsay DuBois for her wisdom and Elizabeth Fitting for her diligent care. To Leigh Binford for his thoughtful engagement with this work. To my partners in crime, Erin Wunker and Matthew Herder. And finally, to my mentor Pauline Gardiner Barber. I am privileged and honoured to work with and learn from you. Thank you. Thank you all. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In March of 2009, Ester and Jean, two migrant service and hospitality workers from the Philippines arrived in Douglas, Manitoba, Canada via Singapore. Together, the friends and former co-workers travelled to Vancouver and then onward to Winnipeg. There, they were met by their new employer who would accompany them to Douglas.Out of Winnipeg, they travelled 88 kilometres along the Transnational highway in the direction of Portage la Prairie. From there, another 263 kilometres north-west along the Yellowhead, number 16 highway. Nearing the town, entering what was once Douglas County, the near absolute flatness of the Great North American Plane gives way to rolling hills and their valley, where the road bends to accommodate an increasingly dramatic grade. This landscape extends northward, toward the Porterhead Dam and Shell Lake, but travelling further west, toward Douglas, it recedes, giving way again to the openness so often associated with the prairies. Ester and Jean's journey from the Philippines to the small town in the province's central-west would be followed by dozens of migrant workers who, like the pair, had been recruited by the region's largest service and hospitality sector stakeholder: the Douglas Hotel and Conference Centre. Ester was hired