Practices of place-making: globalisation and locality in the Philippines

Abstract

Global flows of people and information in the Asia-Pacific region are creating new forms of place that stretch across national boundaries and rural-urban distinctions. These new mobile forms of place link long-inhabited rural areas to cities, national centres, and to rural frontiers within the nation. Here, we describe new forms of place that are being produced by contemporary migration and economic change, using data from the Philippines and applying Appadurai's theorisation of translocality. Our analysis links these flows of overseas migrants to concomitant processes of economic change, migration and new rural livelihoods. We outline changing practices of place within the Philippines, exploring ways that transnational migration can articulate with apparently 'local' development and the flow-on effects from migration on the spatial patterns of rural livelihoods.