Debating the Politics of Temporary Migrant Labour: a transnational exchange

在地理学家、移民倡导组织和专业戏剧艺术家之间为期四年的合作关系中发展起来的，这项拟议的研究旨在就英国、加拿大和菲律宾的临时移民劳工政策和国内照顾政治产生实质性的跨国辩论。我们的工作直接回应了永久移民定居的旧模式正在让位于临时或循环移民的方式，我们参与了与加拿大的住家照顾者计划和当前英国移民政策重组直接相关的问题。我们认为，我们的知识交流（KE）活动的范围是必要的，因为从全球南方到全球北方的劳动力迁移是一个跨国问题，因此，我们必须重新配置讨论正义、权利、关怀和需求的规模。这个项目代表了一个不寻常的和创造性的知识交流的实例，以一种新颖的方式传播传统的社会科学。我们提议在马尼拉举办一场纪念戏剧演出（名为Nanay），将菲律宾照护者的经历与菲律宾国内发生的辩论联系起来。作为一种知识载体，Nanay将传统的定性研究成绩单转变为证词剧场；我们的剧本完全是基于对菲律宾家庭佣工、他们的孩子、雇主和保姆代理人进行的15年访谈中逐字逐句的独白。作为社会科学家，我们转向见证戏剧，因为它的体现品质提供了空间，鼓励观众以不同的方式思考世界，暂时暂停判断，并以富有成效的方式扩展关于临时移民劳工和护理伦理的政治讨论领域。因此，该项目提供了一个实例，说明社会科学已经被转化为设计有效的方式，将研究投入到更大的公众辩论中。继菲律宾的KE活动之后，我们将在格拉斯哥、伦敦、多伦多、温哥华和蒙特利尔等城市举办一系列公众论坛。这些论坛旨在将政策制定者、移民倡导团体和研究人员聚集在一起，以便我们报道在菲律宾发生的辩论，并促进就移民政策和英国和加拿大移民工人的不稳定状况进行对话。在菲律宾，我们将与马尼拉雅典大学（Ateno de Manila University）的成员合作；在加拿大，我们将继续与不列颠哥伦比亚省菲律宾妇女中心的长期伙伴关系；在英国，这些活动将与格拉斯哥难民、庇护和移民网络以及伦敦Kalayaan中心合作。我们发展创新的教育方法以及与倡导团体合作的动机是，我们希望创造新的方式来影响变革，并创造机会，在这些机会中，我们可以模拟（而不仅仅是宣称）一个更平等的政治辩论空间。

Developed in a four-year partnership between geographers, migrant advocacy organisations and professional theatre artists, this proposed research seeks to generate substantive, transnational debate on the policies of temporary migrant labour and the politics of domestic caregiving in the United Kingdom, Canada and Philippines. Our work responds directly to the way the old paradigm of permanent immigrant settlement is giving way to temporary or circular migration, and we engage issues related directly to Canada's Live-In Caregiver Program and the current restructuring of immigration policy in the United Kingdom. We suggest the scope of our knowledge exchange (KE) activities is necessary because labour migration from the global south to global north is a transnational issue, and as such, we must reconfigure the scale at which discussions of justice, rights, care and need take place. This project represents an unusual and creative instance of knowledge exchange that disseminates conventional social science in a novel way. We are proposing to take a testimonial theatre production (entitled Nanay) to Manila to bring the experiences of Filipino caregivers into conversation with debates happening within the Philippines. Written as a knowledge vehicle, Nanay transforms traditional qualitative research transcripts into testimonial theatre; our script is based entirely on verbatim monologues taken from interviews conducted over a fifteen year period with Filipino domestic workers, their children, employers, and nanny agents. As social scientists, we turned to testimonial theatre because its embodied quality offers space in which to encourage audiences to think about the world differently, to temporarily suspend judgment, and to extend the terrain of political discussion on temporary migrant labour and the ethics of care in productive ways. The project thus offers one instance where social science has been translated in order to devise affective ways of putting research into greater public debate. Following our KE activities in the Philippines, we will conduct a series of public forums in the cities of Glasgow, London, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. These forums will be designed to bring together policy makers, migrant advocacy groups, and researchers in order for us to report on the debates that took place in the Philippines, and to facilitate dialogue on immigration policy and the precarity of migrant workers in the United Kingdom and Canada. In the Philippines, we will be working with members of the Ateno de Manila University; in Canada, we will continue our long-standing partnership with the Philippine Women Centre of British Columbia; and in the United Kingdom, these activities will be orchestrated in collaboration with the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum, and Migration Network, and London's Kalayaan centre. Our development of innovative KE pedagogy and collaborations with advocacy groups is motivated by the desire to create new ways to affect change and to produce opportunities in which we can model (and not just profess) a more egalitarian space for political debate.