Date and Time: December 20th (Mon.), 2010, 11:30-13:00
Place: Tonan-tei (Room no. 201) on the 2nd floor of Inamori Foundation
Memorial Building.
Speaker: Filomeno V. Aguilar, CSEAS visiting research fellow and
Professor of History at the Ateneo de Manila University and editor of
the journal Philippine Studies.
Topic: “Filipinos as Global Labor Migrants in the Nineteenth Century”
Abstract:
There is a widespread misconception that the global labor migration of Filipinos began only in the 1970s when Marcos promoted overseas employment as state policy. When looking back to the nineteenth century,
only the travels of the rich, young men like Jose Rizal, known as the
ilustrados, enter the popular consciousness. However, this talk presents evidence that ordinary Filipinos engaged in work-related long-distance migration in the nineteenth century and found jobs both within and outside the Spanish realm. Their movements suggest that Filipinos were active participants in the world’s great age of migration, which occurred from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century.
Migrating way ahead of and in larger numbers than the ilustrados, these workers were at the forefront of the country’s engagement with modernity.