Ph.D. Candidate
Ms Maria Andrea Medina SOCO

'Return' Migrant Domestic Workers in the Philippines: Cosmopolitanism and Its Development Potential

Recent years have seen the burgeoning of embodiment literature that view labour migrants not as economic actors but as individuals with desires, needs, and aspirations, who seek self-actualization and form new identities and socialities abroad. A number of migration scholars have in fact extended the notion of cosmopolitanism to include labour migrants. Knowing how these migrants adapt new identities and socialities, or cosmopolitan qualities, in homeland spaces upon return provides a key to the recognition of their transformative capacities in the home and community.

This study will explore cosmopolitanism in the everyday geographies of returned Filipino migrant domestic workers, inquiring into the skills, competencies, lifestyles, and sensibilities that labour migrants acquire abroad. Female domestic workers are chosen as the subjects of my study because of their position in the class structure and the gendered nature of their work. An aim of this study is to look at how intersections of class, gender, and place shape the acquisition of cosmopolitanism in host countries as well as its practice in the home country upon return. The study will examine how cosmopolitan qualities are articulated and negotiated in relation to cultural expectations of the home and community through, for instance gender roles and consumption. Ultimately, the study seeks to determine how these spatial and social forms of cosmopolitanism can be harnessed so that structural change can be effected and the capacities of return migrants fully utilized.