Curating Development: Filipino migrants' investment in Philippine futures

在世界各地，低收入国家的人们，主要是妇女，离开他们的家，去高收入国家照顾别人和照顾别人的家。本项目调查了一组来自菲律宾的移民护工，她们在伦敦和香港生活和工作，这两个城市是菲律宾移民护工和家政工人的重要目的地。我们的目标是利用艺术活动和公共展览来增加移民在他们生活和工作的地方的福利，并提高移民对他们自己、他们的家庭和他们的祖国的好处。这些移徙家政和护理工作者在其他地方从事的工作使他们能够建造房屋，并投资于留在家中的家人和亲人的未来。更广泛地说，他们的汇款总额占其本国国内生产总值的很大比例。学者们争论这些汇款是否有助于长期发展。然而，他们普遍同意，如果移徙者获得公平工资和良好工作条件的权利得到保护，如果移徙者不仅投资于个人消费，而且投资于可持续的社会和经济企业，那么移徙的发展效益将大得多。我们将与伦敦、香港和马尼拉的非学术伙伴、社区和慈善机构紧密合作，举办一系列有关菲律宾护工的艺术活动和公开展览。移徙护工本人将主要参与艺术活动和展览的制作和策划。首先，我们将使用来自社交媒体、照相手机、张贴照片和个人收藏的物品和图像的摄影和拼贴技术，请移民说明他们作为移民护理工作者在国外生活的经历以及他们对本国发展的贡献。我们将利用他们拍摄的照片，让移民参与对话，讨论他们的日常关切和福利需求，以及他们对自己、家人和祖国的未来期望。其次，我们将与移民和我们的非学术合作伙伴合作，选择他们制作的一些图像进行专业印刷，并在每个城市举行的一系列公共展览中展出。此外，我们亦会委托居住在伦敦及香港的菲律宾视觉艺术家创作两件原创作品。在这些活动和展览中创作和展示的图像和艺术作品将有助于提高公众对这些移徙护理工作者所从事的重要工作的认识，并帮助我们表明，通过保护移徙者的权利和确保他们的福利，我们可以提高他们在本国和东道国所照顾的人的福利。艺术和公共展览，以及我们围绕展览组织的讲习班，还将在移民之间和政策制定者之间引发讨论，共同使他们能够确定新的方法，以增加移民投资的长期效益和发展影响。一段时间以来，学者和活动人士一直在积极地挑战这样一种观点，即移民护理人员和家庭佣工只是“听命使唤的女佣”。这让人们对这些女性在克服各种社会界限和文化障碍时所获得的技能和发挥的创造力有了更好的认识。然而，这些移徙护理工作者在很大程度上仍然被排除在关于本国移民和发展的对话之外。通过艺术和公共展览的新颖运用，这个项目将把这些富有创造力和足智多谋的人带入对话，并启动那些早就应该进行的关于发展的对话。

Around the world, people, mainly women, leave their home place in lower income countries to take care of people and look after other people's homes in higher income countries. This project investigates one group of migrant care workers, women from the Philippines, who live and work in London and Hong Kong, two important destinations for Filipino migrant care and domestic workers. Our aim is to use art events and public exhibitions to increase migrant welfare in the places they live and work and enhance the benefits of migration for themselves, their families and their home country. The work that these migrant domestic and care workers undertake elsewhere enables them to build houses and invest in the future of family and loved ones who are left at home. More broadly their remittances collectively account for a significant percentage of GDP in their home country. Scholars debate whether those remittances contribute to longer term development. However, they generally agree that the development benefits of migration would be substantially greater if migrant rights to a fair wage and good working conditions were protected and if migrants invested not just in personal consumption but in sustainable social and economic enterprises. Working closely in collaboration with our non-academic partners, community based and charitable organisations in London, Hong Kong and Manila, we will run a series of art events and public exhibitions about Filipino migrant care workers. Migrant care workers themselves will be centrally involved in producing and curating the art events and exhibitions. First, using photographic and collage techniques with objects and images from social media, camera phones, posted photographs and personal collections, we will ask migrants to illustrate both their experiences as migrant care workers living abroad and their contributions to development in their home country. We will use the images they produce to engage migrants in conversations both about their everyday concerns and welfare needs and about their future aspirations for themselves, their families and their home country. Second, working with both migrants and our non-academic partners, we will select some of the images they produce to be professionally printed and displayed in a series of public exhibitions to be held in each city. We will also commission two original pieces of art work from Filipino visual artists residing in London and Hong Kong respectively to contribute to the exhibition. Together, the images and art works created and displayed at those events and exhibitions will help to raise public awareness about the vital work that these migrant care workers perform and help us show that by protecting migrant rights and ensuring their welfare we enhance the welfare of those that they care for both in home and in host countries. The art and public exhibitions, together with the workshops we organize around the exhibitions, will also generate discussions among migrants and with policy makers and collectively enable them to identify new ways to increase the longer term benefit and development impact of migrants' investments. Scholars and activists have for some time now actively sought to challenge the view that migrant care and domestic workers are simply 'maids to order' . That has led to a better appreciation for the skills these women acquire and the creativity they exercise in overcoming different sorts of social boundaries and cultural barriers. However, those migrant care workers are still largely left out of conversations about migration and development in their home country. Through novel use of art and public exhibitions this project will bring these creative and resourceful people into that conversation and jump start those long overdue dialogues about development.