Sis, mamsh, kasodan: Belonging and solidarity on Facebook groups among Filipino women migrants in Japan
Article
This article explores how Filipino women migrants in Japan have appropriated Facebook to create alternative spaces and connections for addressing their needs and concerns. Using thematic analysis of discussion threads and in-depth interviews with members of the Facebook group, Pinoy Tambayan in Japan, this study shows the nuanced aspects of the gendered dimension of online ethnic enclaves on Facebook. Facebook has allowed these migrants to create online ethnic enclaves that function as an alternative to kinship and community groups—groups that Filipinos consider an invaluable resource for managing families and strengthening ties to their identity. This social, intimate tie is epitomized in terms of endearment used by members: sis (sister), mamsh (fellow godmother), and kasodan (fellow seekers of information). These terms invoke relational ties, not by blood but by shared commonalities, between the author and group members. However, while online ethnic enclaves have become an increasingly vital source of support among Filipino women migrants, the limits of these online communicative spaces can be observed, particularly in terms of visibility. In mainstream media and the wider host society, the intimate gendered narratives of Filipino women migrants are rarely discussed, and consequently, these women are misrecognized and stigmatized.
Food Fight! Cross-cultural Conflict in a Polish Blogger’s Post about Filipino Food
Article
Agness Walewinder, a Polish travel blogger, detailed her unpleasant experience in the Philippines and vowed that she “would rather go hungry that eat Filipino food again”. Her diary entry went viral on social media, infuriating Filipinos who criticized her poor research skills and bad restaurant choices.
This study analyzed 247 blog comments from the controversial blog entry, using concepts in Face Negotiation as an explanatory framework. The analysis underscored the differences between the individualistic tendencies of Western countries and the collective outlook of Asian countries. It found that the new media domain provided an equalizing environment where facework interaction strategies are more fluid, and the use of emoticons and text-based arguments compensate for the lack of non-verbal cues. The investigation of blogs and other cultural products of new media opens up a new understanding of how people from different cultures “save face”, communicate and manage conflict in an intercultural setting.
Living Through the Parameters of Technology: Filipino Mothers in Diaspora and Their Mediated Parenting Experiences
Article
The ongoing diaspora of Filipino parents in the era of neoteric communication media and technologies (CMT) has progressively been cultivating an innovative breed of Filipino parenting. While migrant parents primarily leave the country to provide for their children, this genre of parenting, which the author labels as “communicated parenting,” offers migrant parents the opportunity to function beyond economic provision by allowing them to parent their children despite the distance. Indeed, extant literature confirms that Filipino migrant mothers engage in communicated parenting through long-distance communication and CMT use. But how do migrant mothers genuinely assess the communication technologies that they use in their communicated parenting and how do they manage the capacities and limitations of these technologies? In keeping with the perspective of Apparatgeist, this article scopes the “experienced parameters” of technologies, or the capacities and limitations of technologies as experienced by Singapore-based Filipino migrant mothers, as well as their attempts to manage these experienced parameters in their efforts to parent their teenage children even across borders.
