Imoved from the Philippines to the United States when I was ten years old. But any Filipino could tell you that the journey started years earlier.
For my mother, moving abroad was something she had pursued for as long as she could remember. That’s why she, like so many Filipino women, became a nurse: it was her best shot at a ticket to America. Her dreams were reflected in my early childhood, which was filled with American cartoons, stories of American “benevolence” in our history books, and classes offered in English rather than Tagalog.
Years later, I would run across the perfect quote in a newspaper called The Filipino Reporter: “The American dream, says a maxim, is to own a home. The Filipino dream, to put it succinctly, is to leave the Philippines.”
In 2003, that dream came true. My mother, my brother, and I boarded a plane that took us across oceans to our new home in Cleveland — and our new place in the 12-million strong Filipino diaspora. More than 10% of the country’s population lives abroad, all carrying a piece of the Philippines in their hearts and minds, as we did in ours.
YYou might guess that there’s a culture and economy built around this phenomenon. And you would be right.
The Filipino diaspora has left a mark on the Filipino language. The Tagalog word balikbayan, literally one who returns (balik) to the country (bayan), is used to describe everything from visiting relatives to the millions of “repatriate boxes” that overseas Filipinos send to their families every year. In some cases, as with Balikbayan Magazine, the word has become a synecdoche for the broader relationship between global Filipinos and their homeland.
The diaspora has become a pillar of the Philippine economy. Remittances, or money transfers, from Filipinos abroad account for over 10% of the country’s annual GDP. In 2011, that was more than ten times the foreign direct investment and over 100 times official development assistance to the country each year.
The country has done a lot in recent years to increase remittances, philanthropy, and investments from the Filipino diaspora. But the question of how to engage the diaspora beyond a cash cow remains a question.
Some nonprofits, like schools, orphanages, and conservation organizations, have integrated diaspora volunteers as a core part of their service model. Too often, though, these engagements fall into the same traps that entangle “voluntourist” programs.
A couple of years ago, I went with a group of people to visit a widely recognized local nonprofit. Our initial optimism dissolved at the sound of action movie music and a video that promised the end of poverty in the next decade, all thanks to the heroism of its international volunteers and corporate donors. This narrative — diaspora saves the day, locals receive with gratitude — is unfortunately not the exception. It’s the way the story is being told today.
Courtney Martin describes this phenomenon powerfully in her article, “The Third World is Not Your Classroom.” At best, “voluntourist” experiences lead to a better awareness of one’s privilege and a more nuanced view of social change. At worst, they promote the old narrative of the Philippines as a passive object and diaspora as hero.
The melanin in our skin and the blood in our veins aren’t enough to keep us from embodying the same White Savior narratives that drove our own colonizers centuries ago. The same narratives that led to the Philippines’ centuries-long exploitation — that eventually drove us away — are the same narratives that we find ourselves sadly, ironically, unintentionally conjuring to the present day.
In fact, diasporas can play a unique role in the social sector. Our lives are rooted in a common history. Our identities are painted by the same palette of food, culture, and language. Our futures are in many ways bound together.
Bring these together and they form the foundation of solidarity and common humanity on which all development work should be built. How, then, do we start building?
If there’s ever been a time to crack this puzzle, it’s now. The Filipino diaspora in the United States is rising to positions of influence and power, while the community of “changemakers” in the Philippines is becoming increasingly vibrant. Technology is opening up more ways for people to learn, have conversations with one another, and work together despite distance.
OOther diasporas provide clues to what lies ahead. OneVietnam is an online network of Vietnamese people around the world who can share news, research nonprofits, and create their own online foundations that support organizations in Vietnam. Africans in the Diaspora links Africans everywhere to initiatives that cultivate self-reliant communities in the African continent. Until recently, Indicorps has brought Indians from around the world to India for grassroots work with local organizations.
Similarly, Filipinos in the diaspora can engage with their home country beyond giving money to loved ones. But it must be done in ways that start with the realities being faced in the Philippines and the capacities of local Filipinos.
There has recently been a surge of creativity in diaspora engagement. Social Products, led by a Filipino-American named Justin Garrido, is selling Filipino products like black rice from farmers and indigenous communities around the world, beginning with the diaspora. Kapit Bisig Kabataan Network brings youth to the Philippines to learn about environmental issues, and then channel those experiences towards activism and policy work in the US.
Our own work at Kaya Collaborative has brought us face-to-face with this puzzle. Our fellowship program in the Philippines brings young people from the diaspora back home to work with local changemakers. Our work has been a long pursuit of a difficult balance between recognizing privilege and committing to action; between cultivating diaspora leadership and maintaining local leadership in the Philippines.
While the field of diaspora engagement still has a way to go, we’ve been encouraged by some of the everyday returnees we’ve met through our journey. They include a social entrepreneur creating online communities of mutual support for LGBT and HIV-positive youth, a teacher leading a movement of teachers to harness tools of innovation and design in the classroom, and investors and philanthropists in search of the next generation of local Filipino talent.
They are not the norm, but they are a start. Their work is driven by that same sense of common agency, a knowledge of their own unique roles as global Filipinos — anchored in the belief that change can, and must, and in fact already is starting from within the country.
Courtney Martin described it as “humility and reverence.” No heroes, no action music. Just real work, rooted in love and solidarity.
