Deirdre McKay – författare

Contract workers from the Philippines make up one of the world's largest movements of temporary labor migrants. Deirdre McKay follows Filipino migrants from one rural community to work sites overseas and then home again. Focusing on the experiences of individuals, McKay interrogates current approaches to globalization, multi-sited research, subjectivity, and the village itself. She shows that rather than weakening village ties, temporary labor migration gives the village a new global dimension created in and through the relationships, imaginations, and faith of its members in its potential as a site for a better future.

Focusing on the experience of Filipino caregivers in London, some of whom are living and working illegally in their host country, Deirdre McKay considers what migrant workers must do to navigate their way in a global marketplace. She draws on interviews and participant observations, her own long-term fieldwork in communities in the Philippines, and digital ethnography to present an intricate consideration of how these caregivers create stability in potentially precarious living situations. McKay argues that these workers gain resilience from the bonding networks they construct for themselves through social media, faith groups, and community centers. These networks generate an elaborate "archipelago of care" through which migrants create their sense of self.