Migration and the sensuous geographies of re-emplacement in the Philippines

Abstract

This paper explores migrant returns to homeplaces, examining affective understandings of place and subjectivity in an intercultural context. Drawing on data gathered in migrant sending communities in the Philippines, it examines how local 'structures of feeling' (after Williams 1973) and migrant habitus (Bourdieu 1980) interact with place in the experiences of return for Filipina migrant workers. Practices of re-emplacement are explored in an intercultural context with the analysis examining both the author's own intersubjective encounters with migrant respondents and respondents' changing understandings of place and emotions. Through this ethnography of intercultural living, the argument drawing out the feeling of the researcher's habitus as it intersects with that of the respondents, shows how habitus links emotions to embodied experiences of place and culture.