Search

Copyright of Asian Journal of Women's Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reconstructs the life stories of residents of SalamCompound. The compound serves as entry point for many Muslim migrants who leave the southern Philippines. Salam is both a refuge and a halfway point. A sense of dislocation permeates the stories. Dislocation begins with the movement away from a homeland that is familiar and defining of identity. The dislocation is, in a sense, an escape, a desperate project to avoid armed conflict in the southern Philippines or a desperate enterprise in search of work.Salam is a halfway point for transients prospecting for overseas work, the staging area for a global labor exodus. The sense of dislocation is not unlike locating oneself in the margins, portrayed in the residents’ negotiated identitiesand spaces, constantly challenged, implicitly regulated. Dislocation is also depicted as flexibility, portrayed by the residents making do and their everyday creative resistance and struggle in new locations in the city. Gathered throughethnographic method, the stories offer a glimpse into the lives of the residents of the compound, how they negotiate around social constructions of identities — resisting and accommodating internal and external forces that impinge ontheir lives, revealing a rich and poignant tapestry of family relations, community ironies and an ever-impinging world beyond its walls.

This paper reconstructs the life stories of residents of Salam Compound. The compound serves as entry point for many Muslim migrants who leave the southern Philippines. Salam is both a refuge and a halfway point. A sense of dislocation permeates the stories. Dislocation begins with the movement away from a homeland that is familiar and defining of identity. The dislocation is, in a sense, an escape, a desperate project to avoid armed conflict in the southern Philippines or a desperate enterprise in search of work. Salam is a halfway point for transients prospecting for overseas work, the staging area for a global labor exodus. The sense of dislocation is not unlike locating oneself in the margins, portrayed in the residents' negotiated identities and spaces, constantly challenged, implicitly regulated. Dislocation is also depicted as flexibility, portrayed by the residents making do and their everyday creative resistance and struggle in new locations in the city. Gathered through ethnographic method, the stories offer a glimpse into the lives of the residents of the compound, how they negotiate around social constructions of identities -- resisting and accommodating internal and external forces that impinge on their lives, revealing a rich and poignant tapestry of family relations, community ironies and an ever-impinging world beyond its walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]