ABSTRACT
Filomeno Aguilar, Jr., asks: “Are Filipinos at home in the world?”3 His question is motivated by the fact that approximately eight million Filipinos currently live and work outside of the Philippines-a figure that does not include the estimated 875,000 Filipinos working abroad as “irregular” or “unauthorized” migrants. Furthermore, the geographic scope of the Filipino diaspora4 is astounding, with migrant workers residing in 197 countries and territories. Thus, as Philip Kelly writes, “a sense of life lived at a larger scale than the village, town or nation is seldom absent from the everyday experiences of a large proportion of the population.”5
