Logics of power and space: youth, gender, and migration

In this chapter, the narratives of three Alberta-based Filipino youth are analyzed based on the logics of power and space operating through age, gender, and migration; neoliberalism in the economy and education; and their experiences as professionals vis-à-vis the credentialing process in Canada. The narratives explore whether there is a link between neoliberal Alberta's educational framework and gender preference with regard to migrants, and the migrants’ foreign-trained professional skills and their jobs in Alberta. The narratives likewise determine how this educational framework impacts and is impacted by age, gender, and a foreign-obtained higher education. The narratives come from Filipino youth professionals, aged 15–30, who earned their university degrees in the Philippines before migrating to Alberta. Generally, this chapter explores the relations among gender, Philippine education, and the neoliberal economy in Canada.

Through Critical Theory and the use of power and spatial logics, this chapter uncovers as white dominance the narratives of decredentialing and reskilling of highly skilled Filipino youth migrants in Alberta, which limit the migrants’ basic human right to global mobility. Critical Theory is an informative tool that exposes structural, historical, prescriptive, and powerful constraints on human action and choice (Habermas, 1987 [1981]; Dean, 1994; Peet and Hartwick, 2009). Similarly, logics of space and power fuse in global migration, and evolve into dynamics of neoliberal policy regimes in education and labor that mark decredentialing and reskilling of Filipino youth as oppressive and unnecessary consequences of their choice and right to mobility.

The logic of space corresponds to the location where labor power—in quantitative, physical, locational, productive, skills, attributes, and value terms that complement the capitalist work process—is reproduced (Harvey, 2010). Spatial logics in global migration, in this chapter, consist of (1) the household of family members, with constructions of gender and sexuality, and as associated with the role of, for example, Filipino parents aiming for higher education (Nielsen, 2013) or even influencing their children's choice of university degree, and (2) the state or the government “within a defined territory that claims the monopoly of legitimate force for itself “ (Weber, 2007, p. 156). The spatial logics of the household and the state both put importance on education and complement Canada's growing market need for highly skilled labor.