IU Kokomo Associate Professor of Sociology, Ligaya Lindio McGovern, Ph.D., to Speak at International Conference in Switzerland
May 7, 2008
Indiana University Kokomo Associate Professor of Sociology, Ligaya Lindio McGovern, Ph.D., has been invited to speak at an international conference at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, on May 13, 2008. The International Research and Consulting Center of the Institute of Federalism, University of Fribourg, is organizing and hosting the conference on the theme, “Asian Minorities in Africa.”
Professor McGovern, who has done extensive research on globalization and international migration, will be speaking on the topic, “Exporting Cheap Labor to the Semi-Periphery and the Core of the Global Political Economy: The Philippine Experience – Filipinos in Africa.” McGovern says that destinations of Philippine export labor include core and semi-periphery countries, changing somewhat the usual pattern of migration where there was the movement mainly from the periphery to the core of the global political economy.
In recent years, Philippine labor export to Africa demonstrates an increasing trend, although still lower than export labor in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Yet, there is very little study on migrant Filipinos in Africa. McGovern’s presentation will discuss the rationale and dynamics of Philippine labor export, the patterns it has taken, the investment in human capital of exported workers, the niches in which they find employment, and the problems and conflicts these migrant workers encounter in the African destinations. In the final analysis, McGovern argues that Philippine labor export in the context of neo-liberal globalization is besieged with contradictions and enmeshed with the social construction of a cheap and expendable global labor force that is both gendered and racialized.
