Division of Sociology

The College of Engineering of the University of the Philippines-Diliman Campus was founded in 1910 and currently has eight departments offering a total of twelve undergraduate courses. On the average, over three thousand students are enrolled each year. In the college, teaching methods have evolved from relying on chalks and boards to incorporating software and computer-based learning to the curriculum. As part of the program on improving teaching effectiveness, professional development and teaching skills enhancement workshops are provided for the faculty. Linkages with the industry are being strengthened to provide more avenues for research funding and undergraduate/graduate employment. Effort is exerted in promoting interest in engineering following decline in student population over the past five years and the increasing engagement of graduates in non-engineering fields after graduation. Course curriculum revisions are focused on responding to demands for more globally competitive and well-rounded engineers.

This paper discusses how the American colonial policies in the Philippines reinforced identities that were created in the Spanish period, that is, how the concept of division into the majority ìChristian Filipinosî and the ìNon-Christian tribesî was further embedded in the consciousness of the people. Using primary sources from the early decades of the 1900s it shows the processes of assimilating American ìcivilizationî among the indigenous people along with the reified cultural,, religious, and politico-ethnic divisions. This division would echo itself and find centrality in many of the economic, socio-sultural and political issues that are now being contended with by the Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines. This paper focuses specifically on the Cordillera in the northern area of the Philippines.

The College of Engineering of the University of the Philippines-Diliman Campus was founded in 1910 and currently has eight departments offering a total of twelve undergraduate courses. On the average, over three thousand students are enrolled each year. In the college, teaching methods have evolved from relying on chalks and boards to incorporating software and computer-based learning to the curriculum. As part of the program on improving teaching effectiveness, professional development and teaching skills enhancement workshops are provided for the faculty. Linkages with the industry are being strengthened to provide more avenues for research funding and undergraduate/graduate employment. Effort is exerted in promoting interest in engineering following decline in student population over the past five years and the increasing engagement of graduates in non-engineering fields after graduation. Course curriculum revisions are focused on responding to demands for more globally competitive and well-rounded engineers.

The study of diverse and multicultural cities has gained considerable interest, reflecting a growing concern with migrant populations and the implications of ‘strangers’ in crowded urban societies. In this literature, one of the key considerations centers around understanding how ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse peoples “rub along” and live together in tight and dense metropolises. One strand of this research is interested in the everyday encounter – ranging from the fleeting non-verbal to more sustained engagements over longer periods of time. Despite growing interest in the mundane and quotidian, friendship as a form of social relation and interaction has been largely unexamined.

The Indian state’s relationship with its overseas residents has been extensively theorised. This literature primarily addresses the significance of remittances and knowledge, which are channelled back to the homeland through its middle-class NRIs (non-resident Indians). In these formulations, low-wage migrants are often left out. Analysis of low-wage migrants’ relationship to India is instead limited to macroeconomic formulations at village/state levels, anthropological accounts of reintegration and quotidian experiences of living abroad. Their relationship as transnational subjects caught between regimes of sending and receiving countries has yet to be effectively addressed. Based on fieldwork conducted in Dubai in 2008, this paper demonstrates that this group is largely excluded from initiatives of non-resident citizen benefits, while constructed primarily as empowered free agents in a capitalist global economy. This results in a situation where neo-liberal markets are assumed to effectively regulate labour, and sending and receiving nations abdicate responsibility for ensuring rights and welfare of the migrant. However, both countries continue to reap economic benefits of their labour as productive subjects.

Migrant Dubai analyzes the everyday lives of labour migrants in a rapidly developing city-state. Using the emirate of Dubai as a case study, it shows that even within highly restrictive mobility regimes, marginalized migrants find ways to cope with structural inequalities and quotidian modes of discrimination. It is one of the few contemporary ethnographic accounts to unpack migrant male working class experiences and compare them to those of their female counterparts, who are often domestic or sex workers. In so doing, this book makes an important contribution to the study of migration within and to the Global South, areas much neglected when compared to research on migration to Europe and North America. Moreover, it informs our understanding of other globalising states and has implications for studies of temporary migrants in other parts of the world. Finally, it raises important social justice issues in the context of restrictive migration regimes and the global neoliberal economy.

‘Liveability’ continues to attract considerable attention internationally, in the media, among urban policy-makers, and from academics. In this paper, we extend consideration of liveability beyond the elite, professional migrants who are the primary target of inter-urban competition to low-wage migrants in two different urban contexts in Asia. Drawing upon narratives of South Asian men in Dubai and Singapore, we highlight friendship and sociality as vital components of quality of life – in emotional and affective as well as practical or material terms. We highlight investments in spaces, times and technologies of friendship, and also in cultures of welcome and hospitality, as key ways of extending urban liveability. While recognizing important critiques of liveability as seemingly irredeemably bound up with neoliberal inter-urban competition, we consider how such competitiveness and the ‘discursive power’ (McCann, 2004) of liveability may be steered towards the making of more welcoming and friendly cities.