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Kidnapping, Citizenship, and the Chinese


This essay examines how the kidnappings from the late eighties to the present historically conflate the Chinese and the capital. It takes as its starting point the relations between the Chinese and the state during the post-EDSA period. On the one hand, there is the Chinese demand for political representation and their deployment of a discourse of citizenship and rights, while on the other, there is the state's intensified deployment of an extractive policy towards the Chinese on the issue of permanent residency and citizenship. Although kidnapping is treated as a social relation that is implicated in historical forms of power and agency, it also views it as a signifying act that is implicated in the "givenness" of the Chinese. In bringing the two inquiries together, there is the possibility of a "Chinese in the Philippines" that demands, as a condition of its existence, a questioning of borders, new thinking, and experience of home and nation.


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