Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the relationship of inhabited spaces and sense of security of its occupants. Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia as well as their families left in their places of origin produce these spaces. Filipino diasporic identities are explored as these localities are produced and reproduced.

Paper long abstract:

From a year long ethnographic study in Saudi Arabia it is observed that the production of neighbourhood succeeds where power is deployed in the colonization of space putting order to those chaotic elements, socio-physical, needing conquest. Although moving from one villa to another is routine, a consequence of "end of contract" with employers or at the start or end of relationships, this move from place to place confirms or demolishes identities which are in the making since with these transitions come violent actions in respect to physical structures or to a hostile environment.

This paper, employing Appadurai's production of locality in delocalized world, compares the process of production of these localities by migrant workers in a foreign soil and that of their own families as remittances provide them the capacity to relocate in new neighbourhoods. As producers of these localities they also evolve into new subjects since their community is built in contrast to or similar to existing neighbourhoods. Be they the migrant worker or their families living in their own homeland, there is an observed alienation from their ethical roots. Their imagined communities come into play, and get embedded into their locality-producing activities.