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Abstract
The complexities that attend global mobilities have shown us how migrants recreate home by drawing from their countries of emigration and immigration. In so many ways, any homemaking practices are embedded in home’s mobile and sedentarist aspects. Amongst overseas Filipino workers (OFW), this means the performance of Filipino traditions like fiestas, and consumption of Filipino food whilst at the same time learning the language of their destination countries and partaking of their cultural and social practices. Filipino seafarers, however, present us with an interesting case: they perform homemaking practices within the constrained and limiting spaces of the ship where they both work and live. Filipino seafarers have a transportable home ready for unpacking and reconstruction on every ship that they board, drawing less on what the ship offers, but more on what reminds them of home back in the Philippines. Drawn from data gathered from more than a decade of engaging with seafarers on board ships and ashore, this article focuses on the homemaking practices of Filipino seafarers viewed as a means to meaning-making, where ships conceived as non-places could be turned into home, and seafarer wellbeing is specifically defined as self-preservation on board and continuing authority back home.
Acknowledgements
Some of the data used in this article were derived from an ESRC-funded project (ES/N019423/1) where the author was part of the research team. The editors’ and three reviewers’ sustained engagement with the drafts of the article is deeply appreciated. Louise Deeley helped with refining the rough edges of the article. All mistakes are the author’s alone.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 As per regulation mandated by the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) 2006, the maximum continuous period that a seafarer should serve on board a merchant ship without leave is 11 months.
2 Filipino seafarers often speak about starting a business, constructing or renovating houses or some other financial commitments as ‘projects’.
3 Gossiping is also one way wherein Filipino seafarers personalise their social relations on board. In most cases, social groups are formed based on the seafarer’s ethnic affiliation (for example, Bisaya, Tagalog or Ilocano, amongst Filipino seafarers) and their workstations. In these select groups, they discuss issues related to work or individual quirks of fellow seafarers not belonging to the group.
4 Seafarers would usually bring with them a laptop, a tablet or a mobile phone, as a way to connect to their families and the wider world. Thus, though seafarers that I met and interacted with would not pin nude images of women on to the walls of their cabins, or keep adult magazines in their lockers or cabinets, I presumed, and some told me, that they were keeping nude images of women on their phones, or indeed adult videos on their gadgets.
5 This happened in some Middle East airports/ports as relayed by some Filipino seafarers.
6 Whilst mobile phones are usually used to connect to families and friends, and as such the medium with which home is imagined from far away, they in themselves do not represent home for many Filipino seafarer. Though most would have wallpapers of a photo of their family members, or themselves with their loved ones, mobile phones are treated for the function that they do, their use value, rather than a symbolic link to home.
7 Some seafarers shared stories about how inspections in some ports in Africa and Asia would involve port officials and port state authorities ‘going shopping’. This means they often ask for goods which they could bring ashore once the inspection is done. Goods they usually cart away include chicken, bread, coffee, milk, bottles of wine, and condiments. Refusal to satisfy their ‘shopping’ request could lead to ‘finding deficiencies’ which then could lead to fines or worse, ship detention.