Conclusion: Retirement Landscapes and the Geography of Exception

The conclusion explores the process through which the tourism industry has conjoined itself with the retirement and health care industries to provide balikbayans with a solution to their incessant anxiety around returning and settling back home in the Philippines. Retirement villages represent the contemporary amalgamation of these diverse intersections. Adopting Aihwa Ong’s conception of “neoliberalism as exception,” this chapter describes how special economic zones throughout tourism hubs around Metro Manila operate outside of the norms of local governance. In order to provide their guests with an abundance of unique luxuries, these retirement villages afford residents with a number of exceptional privileges that are inaccessible to local Filipinos.