Handa sa laban araw-araw? (Ready to fight every day?)

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to identity the sense of citizenship prevalent in the Philippines. Citizenship here is defined in two respects: an active dimension (exercis-ing voice) and a passive dimension (claiming rights or sense of entitlement). <br /> Findings from a series of problem-centered interviews with call center agents are complemented by the outcome of several annual surveys by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), especially the ISSP surveys on government (2006), social inequality (2009) and citizenship (2004) and validated by the analysis of media col-umns and societal artefacts over the last 10 years.<br /> While the first part of the dissertation analyzes why trade unions and other forms of collective interest representation hardly develop in the call center setting (economic citizenship), the second part identifies readiness to political action and expectations towards the state (political citizenship) in the context of an “informal security re-gime” (Geoff Wood). The main part of the study is followed by a postscript offering an outlook on opportunities and limitations of citizenship in the Philippine social and cultural context. <br /> The work contains several theoretical discussions of basic concepts and issues arising when sense of citizenship, especially in a non-European context, is analyzed. These include critiques on the theory of citizenship and on precarity, the middle class(es), citizenship in a non-western context, spaces of the political and post-national citizen-ship. In sum, a sense of citizenship is identified as full of requirements so that the stand-by citizen is rather considered the norm.<br /> The work comes to the conclusion that there is no general lack of a sense of citizen-ship among Filipinos. However as they have never experienced a comprehensive public service and consider such “unrealistic,” their expectations as citizens are in practice low. The state is considered as enabler, not as provider, so that self-help is given priority. Such rather communitarian sense of citizenship is identified as con-niving with a neoliberal governementality of responsibilization. Only among those with a left political socialization can a sense of citizenship, as assumed in most schol-arly literature, be identified, with substantial expectations towards the state, demand of accountability and an identity as political subject (professional citizenship).