Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Suzy Lee, Associate Professor of Human Development at Binghamton University.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at Sage Hall B05 (114 Feeney Way, Ithaca, NY 14853). For questions, contact seap@cornell.edu.

Abstract

In many parts of the world, the Philippines is synonymous with labor migration. Whether to Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, North America, Philippine workers have come to dominate the immigration labor force. The narrative that often accompanies this mass migration is one of state failure and underdevelopment, of migration serving as a safety valve for a population in need of employment and resources that could not be obtained at home. While this account is not wrong, it is also not complete. The Philippine migration is also the product of explicit state policy to produce temporary, contract-based migration, for the purpose of supporting national industrial policy. Though the goal of industrialization was never achieved, the labor export policy did eventually become the lynchpin of a new economic model, one that has achieved relatively high rates of growth since the turn of the 21st century. This presentation examines this history, and offers an analysis for why and how the labor export policy emerged and evolved over the past half-century.

About the Speaker

Suzy Lee is a sociologist and legal scholar whose work focuses on international labor migration, the transformations in migration law and policy in the neoliberal era, and the implication of migration policy for the protection of migrants’ rights. Lee's primary line of research examines the development of sending state policy regimes, with a focus on contract migration programs in the Philippines and South Korea. Other projects include studies on the effect of neoliberal economic policy on migration regimes, immigration policy and human trafficking, and the formation of political identity in deindustrialized and rural regions of the U.S.