ABSTRACT
Geographical Distance and Geographical Space in Human History Two of the leading pillars in the study of the history of religion in the world, Mircea Eliade and Charles Long, give us in their respective works valuable insights into how people in earlier centuries viewed migratory movements. The eminent Eliade tells us, for example, that European immigrants in the sixteenth century who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe viewed and thought of America ‘as the country where they might be born anew, that is, begin a new life’.2 There was an expectation for a better and a beatific existence in the New World. For his part, the equally eminent Long says that the New World made an extraordinary impact on European consciousness, and European immigrants to America looked at their journey as a quest for Utopia and for a world with sacred meanings; in other words, a paradise where the pilgrims and the diaspora people from the Old World would be freed from the evils found in the homeland and
1 I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Prof. Ma. Rosario P. Ballescas of the
University of the Philippines in Cebu City, Prof. Francis A. Gealogo of Ateneo de Manila University, Mr. Benigno D. Tutor, Jr., Publisher of Philippines Today in Tsukuba City, Japan, and Prof. Ajit Singh Rye of the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, for their extremely valuable comments and suggestions regarding the writing of this paper. Moreover, I am very grateful to Mr. Reynaldo Reyes of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila for his assistance in administering the questionnaire survey among prospective Filipino migrants in Manila and to my wife Dr. Aurora F. Bauzon of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila for help in the statistical analysis of the survey results. I am very profoundly grateful, and this study is dedicated, to my beloved Pampanga beauty for her inspiration, encouragement, patience and understanding. Last but not the least, I am highly indebted to my colleague in the University of Tsukuba faculty, Prof. Harald Kleinschmidt, for affording me this invaluable and irreplaceable opportunity to participate in his project on international migration. And I am thankful to the Doctoral Program in International Political Economy and the Graduate School of Area Studies of the University of Tsukuba for providing me the academic atmosphere that ennobles my spirit and provides me the freedom and opportunity to walk the way of my liking with joy, and for engendering my pursuit of the life of the mind.
