Migrant Returns

"While the balikbayan—or return migrant—has been a staple figure in Filipino government policies, movies, television shows, and other venues of the popular imagination, no work has fully rendered the multiple dimensions of migrant return. Nuanced and trenchantly argued, Migrant Returns is an outstanding ethnographic opus that will make a major contribution to scholarship in Asian American studies, Asian studies, migration and diaspora studies, and globalization." - Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora

"Migrant Returns is an important book and especially timely given its analysis of our current global moment, the contemporary Philippines, and the history of migrations between the United States and the Philippines. It could easily become a standard reference for the history of neoliberal migrancy in the early twenty-first century." - Vicente L. Rafael, author of Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation

"Recommended." - C. W. Sherrill, Choice

“An insightful and timely account of Filipino Americans and their newfound role as key players in the Philippines' bourgeoning retirement and real estate industries.” - Paul Nadal, Journal of Asian American Studies

"Dense and carefully argued ... Migrant Returns captures the multiple dimensions associated with return migration and serves as a valuable resource for those interested in transnationalism, globalization, and migration scholarship." - Armand Gutierrez, International Migration Review

"Through his ethnographic investigation of the circulation of funds, imaginations, and bodies, Pido provides a convincing example of what a modern, transnational analysis of migration can attain." - Julio Decker, Journal of American Studies

"A rich ethnographic account of homing. . . . Migrant Returns is a paradigmatic illumination of the multiple landscapes—personal, familial, social, and cultural—created by re/settlement, representation, and ultimately return that are emblematic of any relocation ideology. . . . By articulating the multiple logics of global economies and local social geographies, [Pido] has given us a nuanced ethnographic plunge into the multidirectional complexities and paradoxical positions of the current global diasporic moment." - Anastasia Christou, American Ethnologist

"[This book] enables the imagining of future lives of migrants where home is not fixed, and how migrants negotiate their sense of home, belonging, and return in the era of 'precarious modernity.'" - Katrina Navallo, New Books Asia

"Overall, this book usefully troubles the labels of returnee and retiree within migration studies.… Pido's ability to incorporate an analysis of the role of the Philippine state and transnational real estate brokers in exploiting but also perpetuating this tension, makes Migrant Returns a valuable addition to Philippine and diaspora studies." - Anjy Mary Paul, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies