ABSTRACT
Kares’ chapter examines the manner in which Philippines-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Gawad Kalinga recruits relatively affluent, primarily second-generation Filipino American youth to participate in its housing development efforts. While the NGO’s discursive strategies have effectively encouraged volunteerism among members of the Filipino diaspora in order to realize affordable housing for eligible working poor Filipino families, they have also facilitated a particular type of affective relationship between relatively affluent Filipino American youth volunteers and the Philippine state. In so doing, by offering young people a sense of belonging and emphasizing the national obligation they have by virtue of being “Fil Am,” Gawad Kalinga has been able not only to mobilize unpaid labor but to generate new categories of citizenship and scripts for achieving “Filipino-ness” among particular members of the Filipino diaspora. In this way, ethnographic detail both demonstrates how the reconfiguration of the social extends beyond state borders as well as calls attention to the moralizing dimensions of the growing power and authority of NGOs in a transnational context.
