Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the government's social policies that target residents of poor neighbourhoods of Marikina City in Metro Manila. It deals with the case of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program, which is a policy for alleviating poverty among slum dwellers by supplementing their meagre incomes. The book focuses shifts from the community to the individual level and presents the life history of a fisherman. It deals with the transnational social field, which has expanded as a result of continuous overseas migration from the Philippines. The chapter examines the emergent form of the “vernacular public sphere” which, while based on family and kinship ties, goes beyond the personal sphere of intimacy and is linked with a broader mutuality of various actors in the transnational social field.