UCLA

This thesis examines the investor recruitment programs of two Philippine real estate developers, investigating how these programs exploit the socioeconomic precarity faced by overseas Filipinos in order to prompt them to engage in high-risk, speculative activities. Building upon previous state efforts to solicit remittances from overseas populations, investor recruitment programs transform overseas Filipinos into new diasporic subjects that take responsibility not only for their own financial futures but also for the speculative futures of the nation itself. I explore how these programs employ neoliberal discourses and disciplinary incentive mechanisms to mold overseas Filipinos into speculative investors and entrepreneurs. My analysis is attentive to how the socio-spatial positioning of diasporic Filipino groups influences their inclusion in speculative real estate markets, as well as how these recruitment programs are run by marketing managers and financial advisors who themselves were recruited from the diaspora as investors and entrepreneurs. This research demonstrates how speculative urbanism can be articulated through diasporic nationalisms and the making of financial subjects, examining how overseas Filipinos – motivated by their sense of precarity in an increasingly volatile global economy and their affective attachments to an imagined homeland – are fashioned into risk-taking, speculative subjects whose labor and investments fuel and finance neoliberal urban development.