Abstract
In Stuck at Home: Pandemic Immobilities in the Nation of Emigration, Yasmin Y. Ortiga examines how two of the most emblematic emigrant groups from one of the world’s quintessential emigrant-sending countries, the Philippines, experienced, and shaped, the restrictions on mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book is based on 18 months of qualitative sociological research conducted during the first two years of the pandemic. The study relies primarily on document analysis and remote qualitative interviews.
Stuck at Home is structured into five chapters, framed by an introduction and a conclusion. The introductory chapter outlines the core arguments and research questions. Chapter One provides an overview of how the Philippine state intentionally devised a labor export system as a “safety valve” for domestic unemployment while simultaneously benefiting from the remittances of overseas workers.
Chapters Two and Three turn to the case of nurses during the pandemic. While Chapter Two focuses on the restrictions imposed by the Philippine government on the deployment of Filipino health care workers (introduced in response to widespread concerns about the loss of essential skills) and on the official narratives that justified these measures, Chapter Three shifts attention to the nurses’ own reactions to the restrictions and the accompanying rhetoric, highlighting both the public and private narratives articulated by the workers themselves.
Chapters Four and Five examine the case of cruise workers. Ortiga first discusses the strategies adopted by the government to address concerns about the mass repatriation of thousands of cruise employees during the pandemic. She then shows how these strategies ultimately failed. The concluding chapter revisits the book’s main arguments, drawing on the discussions set out in the introduction, particularly the complex and negotiated context from which (im)mobility policies emerge, and the ways in which narratives surrounding the value of skills shaped how worker immobility was defined.
The book also includes a valuable appendix, which elaborates on the methodological challenges of conducting qualitative sociological research during the pandemic, when standard research practices such as in-person interviews were no longer feasible. This chapter offers thoughtful reflections that add significant value to the volume.
Stuck at Home positions itself within the emerging “post-pandemic” scholarship marked by a proliferation of research on those who do not move. It approaches this phenomenon in a notably original way, opening lines of inquiry that are particularly relevant for the sociology of migration and mobility. The book’s central thesis, which I found both clear and especially original, is that immobility constitutes a site of negotiation between state institutions and individual migrants. As Ortiga rightly observes, this perspective overturns the usual approach in migration studies, which tends to focus on the entry of “foreigners” and highlights the efforts of receiving countries to restrict the mobility of (prospective) migrants.
Here, by contrast, Ortiga illustrates how sending states also attempt to regulate the mobility of emigrants, seeking to balance the benefits of emigration with the demands of the nonmigrant constituency. As the chapters on health workers particularly demonstrate, the restrictions imposed on this group stemmed from the concerns of the resident Philippine population regarding shortages of medical personnel—concerns to which the government was compelled to respond. Migrant workers, however, are not passive actors but actively intervene, at times successfully, to reshape immobility policies. Both the Philippine state and the migrant workers engage above all through narratives, pushing for public accounts that align with their respective interests. In this sense, migration governance involves not only the regulation of movement but also the management of the meaning and implications of immobility.
Ortiga highlights two key themes within this mechanism: narratives and skills. The book traces both the individual and public narratives that shaped experiences of immobility during COVID-19. In the case of nurses, the government initially developed a narrative depicting nurses’ immobility as an emergency and short-term measure to prevent the loss of essential skills. In response, nurses who opposed the deployment ban constructed an alternative narrative, grounded in the losses they had already experienced as health care professionals within the Philippines. This counternarrative mobilized some public support, though it ultimately fell short of its goal: the complete removal of the ban. Taking advantage of divisions among nurses regarding the government’s proposal that they serve in local hospitals, state institutions were able to frame the immobility of health workers as a form of heroism, while portraying those who refused to exercise their skills in the Philippines as selfish.
In the case of cruise workers, by contrast, the government framed former migrants’ immobility as an opportunity to rebuild their lives at home and as a chance for permanent resettlement. The Philippine government promoted a reintegration policy based on reskilling, which assumed both the willingness and the possibility of cruise workers to acquire competencies in other fields. At the same time, it implicitly reinforced the perception of the uselessness of the skills these workers already possessed. Confronted with a labor market that largely devalued their capabilities, cruise workers rejected this narrative, which failed to recognize their professional experience, and in the majority of cases returned to employment on cruise ships as soon as possible.
What especially contributes to the divergent outcomes of these two groups is the way their skills were defined and valued in the pandemic context. For nurses, state authorities portrayed medical expertise as an indispensable national asset that could not be allowed to leave. By contrast, the service competencies of cruise workers (already subject to limited recognition within the Philippines) were rendered even more marginal and easily disregarded.
While the book presents interesting and original arguments that open the way for unconventional lines of research on migration and mobility policies, I had hoped to see a stronger effort to render the discussion more generalizable. This could have been achieved through a deeper theorization of immobility as a site of negotiation across the book, as well as by drawing more systematically on cases from other contexts, which would have made its arguments and narratives more broadly applicable. For example, a stronger engagement with the scholarship on “(im)mobility regimes” would have further highlighted the book’s originality. Likewise, brief comparisons with other major sending states could have underscored the extent to which the Philippine case reflects wider global dynamics.
These criticisms should not, however, be read as diminishing the accomplishments of the volume. Ortiga’s book is well organized, is clearly written, and makes particularly effective use of interviews. Although the research was for the most part conducted remotely, the descriptions of contexts and participants are sufficiently rich and informative—an especially crucial feature in a study centered on narratives. I found the style of writing both clear and engagingly narrative, making Stuck at Home a pleasure to read. For these reasons, the book is suitable not only for specialists in migration and mobility studies but also for a wider audience interested in labor, globalization, and the social consequences of the pandemic.