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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

5. A Hard Look at the Balikbayan Box: The Philippine Diaspora’s Exported Hospitality

Author : Karina Hof

Published in: Food Parcels in International Migration

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The cardboard containers that Filipinos in the diaspora send and carry to the Philippines are intended to enhance life for loved ones there. But a hard look at the balikbayan box—its contents and processes surrounding its preparation—reveals that senders and receivers value these in-kind remittances expressly because they come from a place that is Other. This chapter examines how the reiteration of this particular transnational kinwork practice—by individuals and the Filipino state, which encourages and regulates it—produces an exported hospitality. That has negative implications for the socio-economic self-sustenance of a postcolonial nation and its people. Data are drawn from academic and popular literature and in-depth interviews with nine senders, all but one of whom were migrant workers in the Netherlands.

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previous chapter When Objects Speak Louder Than Words: Food, Intimacy and Power in the Contemporary Transnational Filipino Household
next chapter Spaghetti with Ajvar: An Ethnography of Migration, Gender, Learning and Change
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Metadata
Title
A Hard Look at the Balikbayan Box: The Philippine Diaspora’s Exported Hospitality
Author
Karina Hof
Copyright Year
2018
Book
Food Parcels in International Migration

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-40372-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-40373-1

Copyright Year: 2018

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40373-1_5

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