Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Colonial history, racialisation in the global scene, and colorism within the Philippines compel Filipinos to whiten. This article broadens the conception of whitening based on skin bleaching by introducing the notion of Filipino ‘cultural whitening’ and examining its consequences on social mobility and differentiation. It contributes to the literature on Asian racialized identities and processes on postcoloniality, migration, and whitening. Borrowing from Pierre Bourdieu [1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. Richardson, 241–258. Westport, CT: Greenwood] on cultural capital, I conceptualise cultural whitening in the embodied, objectified, and institutionalised states, and provide empirical evidence drawn from my ethnographic study on the lived experiences of Filipinas married to white men. The study finds that Filipino wives experience varying degrees and contexts of cultural whitening and mobility afterward. Their cultural whitening is a complex process of differentiation from Filipino traditional norms to align with whiteness, involving compulsive desire and some resistance to become white. I suggest that the institutionalisation of whitening among Filipinos enables whiteness to become part of the norm and alter the cultural constitution of ‘Filipino’.

Cultural whitening, mobility and differentiation: lived experiences of Filipina wives to white men