Deirdre McKay, BA (Hons), MES (Dal), PhD (UBC)
Research Fellow, Department of Human Geography

Email: deirdre.mckay@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

My current research focuses on connections between rural communities in developing nations and global cities. Building on previous work on agricultural systems in indigenous communities in the rural Philippines, I am tracing the gendered links created by female labour migrants between Asia and remittance landscapes at home. With Katherine Gibson (Human Geography), Kathryn Robinson (Anthropology, RSPAS) and Andrew McWilliam (Anthropology), I am working on an ARC Linkage Grant on diverse economies and alternative community development strategies in the Philippines and Indonesia.

Research Interests

Household economic strategies and agroecosystems in the Philippines; local histories and narratives of development; Filipino translocalities and overseas/immigrant lives; theories of place and subjectivity; diasporic Filipina identities; emotions, embodiment and the affective experiences of transnationalism.

Key Publications

• (with K. Gibson and L. Law) 'Beyond heroes and victims: Filipina contract migrants, economic activism and class transformations', International Feminist Journal of Politics, 3(3), 365-386, 2001.
• 'Filipinas in Canada—deskilling as a push toward marriage', in N. Piper and M. Roces (eds.), Wife or Worker? Asian Women and Migration, Rowman and Littlefield, Oxford, 23-51, 2003.
• 'Cultivating new local futures: Remittance economies and land-use patterns in Ifugao, Philippines', Journal of South East Asian Studies, 34(2), 285-306, 2003.
• (with K. Robinson, K. Gibson and A. McWilliam) 'Negotiating alternative economic strategies for regional development', Development Bulletin, 65, 46-51, 2004.
• 'Migration and the sensuous geographies of re-implacement in the Philippines', Journal of Intercultural Studies, 26(1-2), 75-91, 2005.
• 'Reading remittance landscapes: female migration and agricultural transition in the Philippines', Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography, 105(1), 89-99, 2005.
• 'Rethinking locality in Ifugao: tribes, domains and colonial histories', Philippine Studies, 53(4), 459-89, 2005.
• 'Success stories? Filipina migrant domestic workers in Canada', in S Huang, B S A Yeoh and N A Rahman (eds), Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers, Singapore, Marshall Cavendish Academic, 305-341, 2005.
• (with C. Brady) 'Practices of place-making: globalisation and locality in the Philippines', Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 46(2), 89-102, 2005.
• 'Introduction: Finding "the field": the problem of locality in a mobile world', The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 7(3), special issue 'Place in motion: new ethnographies of locality in the Asia-Pacific', guest editor, Deirdre McKay, 197-302, 2006.
• 'Translocal circulation: place and subjectivity in an extended Filipino community', The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 7(3), special issue 'Place in motion: new ethnographies of locality in the Asia-Pacific', guest editor, Deirdre McKay, 265-278, 2006.

Career Highlights

Association of Pacific Rim Universities Fellows Program (2001); Social Science and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia (1999-2000).