How the Left Organized the Filipino Diaspora

Protest by Filipinos at Dam Square in Amsterdam, Netherlands, against human rights violations in the Philippines on September 21, 1987 | Sepia Times / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In an article by Jacobin, Alex de Jong’s book review of Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora by Sharon M. Quinsaat (University of Chicago Press, 2024) shows how this book outlines how the Left won the demographic of Philippine overseas workers — only to soon lose it.

When people move abroad and settle in other countries, they don’t automatically form a diaspora. Rather, a diaspora is shaped through political activity and mobilization, Sharon M. Quinsaat, associate professor of sociology at Grinnell College, argues in her book Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora.

For several reasons, Filipino migrants offer an interesting case. Not only is the Filipino migrant population, more than ten million spread over more than two hundred countries and territories abroad, one of the largest of any nation. Labor migration is a key aspect of the state’s economic policy. And although political persecution drove part of the Filipino diaspora out of the country, most of all during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos between 1972 and 1986, it is not the result of ethnic or religious persecution, the “classical” causes of diaspora populations.

Both Bongbong Marcos, the current Philippine president, and the son of the former dictator, and his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, played important roles in whitewashing the legacy of Ferdinand Marcos, who in 2016 was buried with military honors in the national cemetery. The Filipino diaspora was once an important source of resistance against the dictatorship, which successive conservative governments have sought to rehabilitate. Today large parts of the diaspora support right-wing leaders like Duterte and Bongbong Marcos. This shift has not happened in isolation. It is, Quinsaat shows, the result of transformations in global politics and capitalism.