Every country in the world has its own range of social phenomena which makes its culture unique; in the Philippines, it’s the same as well. As reported by the Philippine National Police, approximately 78,359 “Tambay” were arrested in the month of July 2018 in Metro Manila alone. Thousands of Filipino Youth dwell outside their homes at night seeking for either dangerous fun or simple chitchats and drinking with friends and peers. Labelled by the Philippine Statistics Authority, these individuals are popularly known as out-of-school juveniles or in Tagalog: “Mga Tambay”.
Tambay is a vernacularized word for “standby”, which over the years developed a set of odd characteristics. It is a term used to describe individuals who are always seen along the streets with peers doing nothing but vices, gambles and chitchats. “Mga sitting pretty” may be one of the alternative general descriptions for their daily routine.
To understand more about the phenomenology of “Tambay” and how they become as such, we must look into the general situation of these young individuals from how they were raised and how they were treated by society. By using the Labeling theory as basis for analyses, this will suspends one’s judgement, which points to individualized and generally negative stereotypes that Filipinos are experiencing this state of inactivity.
There is a huge possibility that the behaviors of these individuals were affected and influenced by how society describes them in a stereotype manner. When a person is academically challenged, the person might experience a harsh road up ahead. This situation could become a source for the self to embrace his/her weakness and become a street-person at the end. When students with Academic Challenge fail, as observed, parents now only laugh about it and just train their son/daughter to accept what they got and do the same thing — just laugh about it. As members in society begin to treat these individuals on the basis of their labels, the individual begins to accept this label him- or herself. In other words, an individual engages in a behavior that is viewed by others as inappropriate, others label that person to be deviant, and eventually the individual internalizes and accepts this label.
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