Democratization through Migration? Political Remittances and Participation of Philippine Return Migrants.

• Author: Abao, Carmel V.
• Position: Book review

Democratization through Migration? Political Remittances and Participation of Philippine Return Migrants. By Christl Kessler and Stefan Rother. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2016. Hardcover: 181pp.

This book presents a convincing narrative on the political socialization of Filipino migrant workers in both democratic and authoritarian host countries, and the extent and ways by which such socialization affects the workers' attitudes towards politics in their home country. It is convincing because it nuances what is obviously a complex nexus: migration and politics.

The main strength of the book lies in the mixed quantitative-qualitative research methodology employed by the authors. The book draws largely from surveys among first time and returned migrants, but it also allows the migrants' voices to speak for themselves. It is this combination of data and voice that makes the reader pay close attention to every page. Throughout the book there are tables and figures, as well as vignettes of real-life stories and first-person accounts. The "respondents" thus come to life and the reader is provided with a fascinating, broad picture of transnationalism, not just of migrant work but also of political ideas and values.

The research design is thorough from start to finish. The theoretical assumptions of the authors are carefully laid out in the first chapter and are backed by a comprehensive literature review on a range of pertinent topics such as social remittances, migration and development, the history of Filipino outmigration, issues and problems of Filipino migrants, and politics in the Philippines and the host countries. In addition, the development of the research design--from the selection of respondents to the choice of survey questions, to the choice of research implementers (i.e. Social Weather Station for the surveys and the Department of Political Science of the University of the Philippines-Diliman for the in-depth interviews)--is convincingly explained which further strengthens the book's credibility.

The outcomes of the research are clearly useful. The surveys on the profiles of the respondents present baseline data that point to empirical evidence for narratives that hitherto relied on anecdotal evidence. The book, for example, has an entire chapter (Chapter 5) on the "migration experience" in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong where survey results on working conditions and salaries...