‘Our noses will bleed and then we die’: using language as a borderland strategy

These spaces of belonging point to their enactments, where one can see how identity is ‘organised in the context of definite social relationships and spatial practices in which identities are simultaneously the product and the producer of the social circumstances in which they are set’ (Knowles, 1999, p. 115; author’s emphasis). Cultural capital such as education, language (fluency and adaptability), local knowledge, social norms, ideologies and behaviours all have different social value within Ireland and in the Philippines. Filipinas’ social relationships in the diaspora reveal issues of identity and uneven power relationships across physical and social borders.