How Does It Feel to Be a Migrant? Affective Governmentality and Lived Experiences of Filipinas and Filipinos in Mainland China

Abstract

Based on twenty in-depth interviews conducted with Filipino migrants living and working in mainland China, I aim to shed light at their lived experiences. I primarily focus on the emotions that constitute their essential part, and the ways migrants choose to deal with them. As a result, I argue that migration systems – responsible either for emigration or immigration – by way of specific regulations, their implementation, as well as the culture surrounding mobility, utilise migrants’ emotions to manage and control this population. In order to better understand these measures and their consequences, I refer to the concept of ‘affective governmentality’. Furthermore, I show how migrants’ affective experiences become a source of hierarchies, but at the same time, a basis for the emergence of strong community ties and the establishment of ‘emotional community’. I argue that, despite the strict regulations and practices which aim at maintaining people’s relationship with the Philippines and discouraging them from settling down in China, migrants are still able to form a sense of rootedness. While experiencing vulnerability and being subjected to exploitation and discrimination, they still remain active agents who use emotions as their own resources.