Conceptualising community

The term community was used in the informants’ narratives in eight different senses. These communities varied in level of intimacy and formality. The level of connectedness in these communities ranged from every day and face-to-face spaces of families and neighbourhoods, to the technology-mediated online communities, and the broadly identifiable diaspora population. In the same manner these communities also ranged from the non-formal groups of friends to impersonal and formally organised groups or associations. The succeeding

section briefly discusses these eight community conceptualisations that can be used as tools to spatially situate the second-generation’s transnational belonging.

Community as immediate family/household and friends. The family and the household are the first groups where a sense of community can be developed. The family or household involves the people that you grew up with and a space where one feels a strong sense of belonging. Participants’ narratives show that it was common to find several families living in the same household (especially so if the first-generation parents were relatively new in London or had no means of renting a place of their own). This behaviour of ‘staying together’ may be seen not only as an economic strategy to pull resources but this also served as a social-cultural buffer where one can practice Filipino-ness. Claire illustrated this sense of community in this account:

It was a shared household with another Filipino family. That woman

is now who I know is my ninang47_{, my godmother.... I was never part}

of ... a typical family structure of mother, father, brothers, sisters... For the first two years I was pretty much born and raised with my mother as the only parent and my ninang and her husband and her daughter, who was pretty much my god sister, akin to a sister in a way. From the outset

we’ve always known that even though we are not blood related, close friends and family of the same culture as Filipino, we are very important to each other. We relied on each other’s support system.

Once my mom would go to work, my ninang would look after me and vice versa. It was until when my dad came down when my mom moved out and set up our own family together.

Household-sharing enabled the second-generation participants to introduce the children they grew up with as their cousins even if they are not actually blood-related. As a sign of respect, children were taught to call every person who is of the same age as their parents as Tito (Uncle) or Tita (Auntie). For a Christian family these ties were somehow formalised when

these adults become their godparents during baptism. I will elaborate on these significant relationships in Section 5.3.1.

Community as neighbourhood. As an extension of the grouping behaviour stated above Filipinos also commonly set up household in areas with an established Filipino presence. In most cases the neighbourhood was multicultural (in the sense that many other ethnic groups lived there). Starting from when the time her mother began working in the early 1970’s, Claire witnessed the transformation of the neighbourhood where they lived:

It is more diverse than it was when she came – a lot of whites, and English living in East London during that time with a handful of ethnic minorities and packets around. Now, in East London where we are, the majority is gone. There are not many English around. They all moved out. (laughs)

The change in ethnic landscape of a neighbourhood was not a neutral and easy process. It took time for Filipinos to be integrated or at least to be seen as members of the community. Belonging in neighbourhoods was actively earned rather than automatically given by the locals or the ‘original settlers’. In some instances Filipinos, along with other immigrant groups, were seen as ‘invaders’ by original settlers. For example Kyle shared how they were received in a predominantly white-black neighbourhood:

Growing up, it was really strange. I was the foreigner with all the friends in the estate. In the estate it was only white people and black

people. I was a foreigner because I didn’t fit in their little boxes. And then suddenly, when all the Arabs started moving in, um they used to talk to me and my mom and say, “Look at these foreigners coming in.” And my mom will be like, “Five years ago, you were saying that to us. Now, you’re saying it to the Arabs.” It’s really weird how now

we are accepted but the Muslims [aren’t] and there is someone else for them to hate.

In his life course Kyle witnessed the transformation of the social landscape of his neighbourhood. Through the years the neighbourhood had a succession of ‘immigrant others’ that the original settlers did not initially welcome. The Filipinos, the Middle Eastern, the

Muslims, and more recently the Eastern Europeans have successively moved in to the originally white-black community.

Community as formal group. Community in this usage refers to a relatively formal and organised character and assumed personality through names that are anchored on a Filipino identity. For example a community is named after their: (a) current place of residence in London or UK (e.g. East London Filipino Federation, Association of Filipinos in Bristol); (b) their provincial or ethno-linguistic origin in the Philippines (e.g. the Aguman Kapampangan for those who come from Pampanga and speak the Kapampangan language; or the Batangas

Association for those originating from the Tagalog-speaking province of Batangas); (c) or

their interests/ occupations (e.g. the religious group Banal na Pag-aaral/ Holy Study). The Philippine Embassy is the most formalised of these groups. Also included in these spaces are the schools and the church. The socio-civic organisations cited were clearly ‘Filipino’ in their orientation whereas schools and churches were not exclusively ‘Filipinos’.

Community as the aggregate of Filipinos in London. Unlike the families and neighbours to whom the informants were exposed in their everyday lives, the aggregate community does not have a direct personal relationship with the participants. Nevertheless, the aggregate Filipino community remain to be ‘facially’ and audibly recognisable (especially on streets and on Sundays inside the church). Parents (particularly mothers) would often initiate greeting to a

fellow Filipino who passes within their range of vision. Interactions with this community

range from a glance and a smile as a token recognition or an utterance of ‘Kumusta po?’ (How are you?) in passing.

Community as Filipino population in the UK-at-large. An extension of the immediate local neighbourhood or city is the knowledge that there are Filipinos all over the UK. Taken

together this may be called the diaspora population – a loosely organised social formation that (in one way or another) connects with and reproduces a Filipino consciousness and culture (Vertovec, 2006a). Although purported members of the diaspora may not necessarily meet in their entire life they however imagine the community by virtue of the Philippines as a place of origin (particularly among the first-generation).

Community as composed of Filipinos in the Philippines. This sense of community invokes a broader imaginative identification with Filipinos in the Philippines as fellows by referring to them as ‘my people’. This community, or more appropriately the nation, may at some point be a distant, faceless, and simply cognitive construct (especially when members of the second- generation have only been acquainted to it through the personal stories of their parents). This conceptualisation is transformed once the person finally travels to the parental homeland. The Philippines as a place and the people as a community assume a face when the members of the second-generation finally meet the immediate and the extended relatives, visit to various places in the Philippines (specifically the hometown of their parents), and gain experiences that involve ‘coming-and-staying-home’ with newly met relatives.

A historically-situated community. The character of the Filipino community also varies historically. The neighbourhoods where the ‘older’ second-generation grew up is different from the neighbourhood where the ‘younger’ second-generation now live. Kyle, as illustrated in an extract in Section 5.1.3, p.148, spoke of the Filipino community in the 1980’s - a time when the Filipino community has not yet reached a critical mass. He was a child back then and opportunities and reception to immigrant families in general are markedly different from the more tolerant and equitable present times.

Community as a virtual site. Belonging can be also negotiated via the computer-technology- mediated spaces of online communities that people turn to as an alternative to or alongside real face-to-face spaces. Study participants reported examples of social networking sites (e.g. http://www.asianave.com/) where people of similar backgrounds group together or organisations that maintain virtual presence (e.g. http://philippinegenerations.blogspot.com/). After giving an overview of the eight senses of community I now pay close attention to two geographical locations that denote ‘here and there’ – the Philippines and the UK – of transnational belonging.