'Translate Me Not': The Invisibility of the Filipino Queer Immigrants in the Dutch Society

Abstract

This research project entitled: Translate Me Not: The Invisibility of the Filipino Queer Immigrants in the Dutch Society explores the travels and travails of Filipino gays and Filipina lesbians who have migrated to the Netherlands during their adult lives. It follows the queer methodology that Judith Halberstam designed which means that it respond to any materials, sources, and methods relevant to the knowledge claim being pursued. It employed in-depth interviews with selected respondents composed of 5 Filipino gay men and 3 Filipina lesbians; analysed the underlying meaning of media representations both mainstream and otherwise; engaged with the rhetoric of right-wing politicians and its implications; and a close reading to academic text in which the Filipino queer immigrants are employed as objects of enquiries. Although the theoretical frameworks are as diverse as its methodology, its unifying concept is intersectionality that Kimberle Crenshaw coined. Overall, this study postulates that the Filipino queer immigrants in the Netherlands are rendered invisible in the host country because first, they are unrepresented in the Dutch mainstream media because the Filipino community is always represented in the light of heterosexuality; second, their voices are excluded from the political debates around Dutch gay politics which focuses more on the exclusion of Muslim minorities; and third, they are misrepresented in the academic discourse on gender, sexuality and migration who tends to homogenize homosexual identity in the Netherlands. However, the above main claim is not entirely complete because it does not yet address the experiences and predicaments of those who are made invisible, namely, the Filipino queer immigrants and the Filipino community in the Netherlands at large. The second facet of the main claim argues that, the community being studied is not bothered by the ways in which they are rendered invisible, because their invisibility does not impede the full realization of their lives, hopes and happiness in the host society. The invisibility in which they find themselves has been particularly helpful in redefining and reinventing themselves of what it means to be Filipino and queer at the same time in a predominantly white society.