Abstract
Research on migrant care and domestic workers has focused on their multiple dislocations and exclusions in the diaspora, analysing a highly gendered global economy of care and domestic work. This article investigates the role of ritual performance and spirituality in female care workers’ projects of migration and in the emergence of their feminized and racialized subjectivities. On the basis of anthropological research in Israel and the Philippines, it analyses Filipina care workers’ narratives of migration to Israel as a form of spiritual transformation, investigating their spiritual practices and emphasis on Christian morals like ‘compassion’ and ‘patience’ for their work. Israel, a country that has recruited Filipinos as carers for the elderly since the 1990s, is a destination country highly valued among Filipino Christians as the ‘Holy Land’. Focusing on evangelical Christians, the article portrays four women for whom migration to Israel signifies an ethical career: turning into ‘Holy Land’ pilgrims, Christ-like activists and missionaries, they are engaged in a deeply self-transforming journey. Rooting themselves in Christian spiritualities and morals, these women negotiate and ‘inhabit’ rather than openly challenge existing gender norms. Engaged in corporeal disciplining of their selves during affectively demanding care work, and in migration more generally, their moves are analysed as a form of ethical formation.
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Notes
In the absence of any available statistical data, this observation is based on anthropological research. Of about 30–50,000 Filipinos in Israel, about 1,000 were organized in the evangelical Jesus Is Lord congregations alone. In the Philippines, the official statistics claim that 92.6 per cent of the population are Christian, of whom 81 per cent are Roman Catholic and the remainder Protestant or Pentecostal/evangelical. For a discussion of the often interchangeably used and overlapping terms ‘evangelical’, ‘charismatic’, ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘Pentecostal’ Christianity, see Burgess et al. (1988). In this article, I employ the term ‘evangelical’ rather than Pentecostal and use ‘charismatic Christianity’ as a blanket term for charismatic movements in both evangelical and Catholic denominations (see Coleman, 2000: 20ff.).
Jesus Is Lord was founded by Eduardo C. Villanueva (‘Brother Eddie’) in the Philippines in 1978. With six million members by its own account, it has now been transformed into one of the largest evangelical movements in the Philippines.
The names of Filipina interviewees have been replaced by pseudonyms throughout the article.
Interview with Sandra, 23 April 2008. The following quotations from Sandra are also taken from this interview.
For an ethnographic description of ‘slaying’ as practised by charismatic Catholics of the Philippine El Shaddai movement, see Wiegele (2005: 143ff.). During the ‘slaying’, the Holy Spirit is believed to enter the body, forcing the evil spirit to leave it.
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Acknowledgements
The research for this article took place from 2007 to 2010 in the framework of a large AHRC grant, the ‘Footsteps’ project (PI Prof. Pnina Werbner), which formed part of the Diasporas, Migration and Identities programme based at the Universities of Keele and Hull (UK). It also profited from earlier research on Filipina care workers in Israel (2003–2007) supported by the Max Planck Society's Minerva Foundation, the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, and the Institute of Social Anthropology in Halle. Earlier versions were presented at the 2009 AHRC Diasporas, Migration and Identities Programme/Cronem Conference and the Diasporic Encounters, Sacred Journeys Conference at Keele University (June 2009). The author is grateful to Mark Johnson, Alicia Pingol, Deirdre McKay and Pnina Werbner, whose comments and insights have been crucial for this article.
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Liebelt, C. on gendered journeys, spiritual transformations and ethical formations in diaspora: Filipina care workers in Israel. Fem Rev 97, 74–91 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2010.32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2010.32