Empire of Care

Choy Catherine Ceniza Choy

Description

In western countries, including the United States, foreign-trained nurses constitute a crucial labor supply. Far and away the largest number of these nurses come from the Philippines. Why is it that a developing nation with a comparatively greater need for trained medical professionals sends so many of its nurses to work in wealthier countries? Catherine Ceniza Choy engages this question through an examination of the unique relationship between the professionalization of nursing and the twentieth-century migration of Filipinos to the United States. The first book-length study of the history of Filipino nurses in the United States, Empire of Care brings to the fore the complicated connections among nursing, American colonialism, and the racialization of Filipinos.Choy conducted extensive interviews with Filipino nurses in New York City and spoke with leading Filipino nurses across the United States. She combines their perspectives with various others-including those of Philippine and American government and health officials-to demonstrate how the desire of Filipino nurses to migrate abroad cannot be reduced to economic logic, but must instead be understood as a fundamentally transnational process. She argues that the origins of Filipino nurse migrations do not lie in the Philippines' independence in 1946 or the relaxation of U.S. immigration rules in 1965, but rather in the creation of an Americanized hospital training system during the period of early-twentieth-century colonial rule. Choy challenges celebratory narratives regarding professional migrants' mobility by analyzing the scapegoating of Filipino nurses during difficult political times, the absence of professional solidarity between Filipino and American nurses, and the exploitation of foreign-trained nurses through temporary work visas. She shows how the culture of American imperialism persists today, continuing to shape the reception of Filipino nurses in the United States.

Sujets

• Médecine
• USA
• Nursing
• Philippines
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822384410
• Langue: English

Extrait

American Encounters / Global Interactions

e m p i r e o f c a r e

A series edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg

This series aims to stimulate critical perspectives and fresh interpretive frameworks for scholarship on the history of the imposing global presence of the United States. Its primary concerns include the deployment and contestation of power, the construction and deconstruction of cultural and political borders, the fluid meanings of intercultural encounters, and the complex interplay between the global and the local. American Encounters seeks to strengthen dialogue and collaboration between historians of U.S. international relations and area studies specialists. The series encourages scholarship based on multiarchival historical research. At the same time, it supports a recognition of the representational character of all stories about the past and promotes critical inquiry into issues of subjectivity and narrative. In the process, American Encounters strives to understand the context in which meanings related to nations, cultures, and political economy are continually produced, challenged, and reshaped.

Empire of Care

c a t h e r i n e c e n i z a c h o y

Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History

d u k e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s

Durham and London 2003

∫2003 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of

America on acid-free paper$

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Carter & Cohn Galliard by

Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data appear on the last

printed page of this book.

This book is dedicated

to my mother, Patria Ceniza,

for her loving support.

c o n t e n t s

Illustrationsix Acknowledgmentsxi Introduction: The Contours of a Filipino American History 1

p a r t i Nurturing Empire 15 1. Nursing Matters: Women and U.S. Colonialism in the Philippines 17 2. ‘‘The Usual Subjects’’: The Preconditions of Professional Migration 41

p a r t i i Caring Unbound 59 3. ‘‘Your Cap Is a Passport’’: Filipino Nurses and the U.S. Exchange Visitor Program 61 4. To the Point of No Return: From Exchange Visitor to Permanent Resident 94

p a r t i i i Still the Golden Door? 119 5. Trial and Error: Crime and Punishment in America’s ‘‘Wound Culture’’ 121 6. Conflict and Caring: Filipino Nurses Organize in the United States 166

Epilogue 186

Appendix: On Sources193 Notes197 Bibliography229 Index245

i l l u s t r a t i o n s

Maria Abastilla Beltran (left) prior to her departure to America in 1929. From Fred Cordova,Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans.39

‘‘Senior class receiving instruction in operating-room techniques, Philippine General Hospital.’’ From Philippine General Hospital School of Nursing Ninth Annual Announcement and Catalogue, 1915–1916, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD. 44

‘‘1915 class and the Superintendent of the School of Nursing, Philippine General Hospital.’’ From Philippine General Hospital School of Nursing Ninth Annual Announcement and Catalogue, 1915–1916, U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD. 50

Manila Educational and Exchange Placement Service advertisement in a 1965 issue of thePhilippine Journal of Nursingportrays travel as a simple route to finding happiness. 91

Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center advertisement in a 1969 issue of thePhilippine Journal of Nursingtargets its former exchange visitor nurses from the Philippines for permanent employment. 101

Corazon Amurao, lone survivor of the 1966 Richard Speck massacre in Chicago, reading a newspaper account of her plan to run for councilor in her home town of San Luis, Batangas in the Philippines. From Bettmann/c o rb is.131