ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I discuss the concept of agency and how it relates to experiences of suffering, hardship, and structural violence. Agency is evident in my participants’ accounts in life-changing decisions and escaping from exploitation, in the day-to-day navigation of life and constraints, and also in endurance while in difficulty. I discuss the idea of sacrifice as a fundamental part of the worldview in much of the Philippines, a driving logic to migration and work, and a way of interpreting and coping with difficulty and suffering. Facing the risk of human trafficking, and often interpreting the experience of trafficking, is shaped by the idea of sacrifice. I argue that places of sacrifice reveal how people’s lives are ordered by and around suffering and multiple violences, but that sacrifice is also invoked in transcending and transforming the violence that people are facing through finding agency, meaning, and resilience.
