Description
Book SynopsisAmidst the recent global financial crisis and housing busts in various countries, the Philippines' booming housing industry has been heralded as Southeast Asia's hottest real estate hub and the saving grace of a supposedly resilient Philippine economy. This growth has been fueled by demand from balikbayan (returnee) Overseas Filipinos and has facilitated the rise of gated suburban communities in Manila's sprawling peri-urban fringe. But as the Filipino dreams of successful balikbayans are built inside these new gated residential developments, the lives of marginalized populations living in these spaces have been upended and thrown into turmoil as they face threats of expulsion.Based on almost four years of research, this book examines the tumultuous geographies of neoliberalization that link suburbanization, transnational mobilities, and accumulation by dispossession. Through an accounting of real estate and new suburban landscapes, it tells of a Filipino transnationalism that engender
Trade ReviewBased on rich empirical material and detailed analysis [Ortega] exposes the logics of contemporary Philippine ‘development’ that is built on accumulation by dispossession. Hailing himself originally from a village that forms part of today’s sprawling suburbs of Metro Manila, Ortega is able to present a grounded, reflexive and compassionate account of those who bear the cost of neoliberal urbanization in the Philippines. The wide-ranging ethnographic overage of sites and angles, most significantly offering perspectives of life both inside and outside of the gated communities, sets this book apart from other treatments of the subject. The individual chapters together provide a multidimensional account of neoliberal (sub)urbanization, allowing Ortega to convincingly show the connections that span the local and the transnational, the inside and outside of gated communities, and the historic processes of dispossession with contemporary ones, that together sustain neoliberal accumulation.... This book is essential literature for readers who want to understand processes of globalisation, economic development and urbanization unfolding in the Philippines and beyond. It is an impressive work of thorough and engaged scholarship that exposes the complex, entangled and relational geographies of socio-spatial transformations in contemporary Southeast Asia, that take courage, patience and persistence to unravel. A truly compelling read and inspiring achievement! * Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography *
This book is a multidimensional interpretation of the role of real estate development in the neoliberal restructuring of Philippine urban space, focusing of the growth of suburban development in the periphery of the Manila metropolitan region in the last few decades. Ortega has produced a major contribution to our understanding of urban development in the neoliberal era in the Philippines and Southeast Asia more generally. -- Terry McGee, University of British Colombia
This engagingly-written book provides a critical geographic analysis of the “Filipino Dream.” Rather than focusing on the labor geographies of Filipinos seeking to make better lives for themselves overseas or the economic geographies of their remittances home, Arnisson Andre Ortega examines the (sub)urban spatial expression of migrant and diasporic aspirations—gated, “world class” real estate. Venturing beyond the gates of peri-urban Manila and scratching beneath the glossy veneer of prestige and “progress,” Ortega unearths powerful landscapes of dispossession that are matters of both contemporary neoliberal urbanization and inherited inequities. -- Tim Bunnell, National University of Singapore
This innovative study provides important new insights on the political economy of urban development in the Philippines. With great ethnographic detail, Ortega shows how the actions and identities of overseas Filipinos, narratives of nation-building, and real estate come together to form a critical mode of neoliberalization in the twenty-first century. -- Katharyne Mitchell, University of Washington
The Philippines is on the leading edges of the world’s urban revolution. This book is required reading for anyone who wants to understand this revolution and the reconfigurations of capital, culture, and property on the frontier between gated-community and family-values-based suburban domesticity and the violent dispossessions of farmers, squatters, and indigenous peoples. -- Elvin Wyly, University of British Columbia
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction: Placing Dreams and Building Homes Chapter 2: The Business of Building a Nation Chapter 3: Return, Reside, Reinvest: Mapping the Real Estate Boom Chapter 4: Neoliberalizing Manila’s Peri-Urban Fringe Chapter 5: Gated Dreams and Communities Chapter 6: Everyday Life Inside the Gates: Resistance, Loss and Risk Chapter 7: Volatile Spaces in the Peri-Urban Fringe, From the Fields to the Mountains Chapter 8: Metropolitan Accumulation by Peri-urban Relocation Chapter 9: Conclusion: Building Dreams Over Dreams
