EVERY seventh of June, a Southeast Asian archipelago commemorates the
"heroism" of compatriots who have been a visible reason for the
steady growth of their motherland's economy. The celebration is National
Migrant Workers Day, and the passage of a law to protect the rights and welfare
of overseas Filipinos and their families brought about the date's historicity.
That law, currently coded as Republic Act 10022 (Migrant Workers and
Overseas Filipinos Act, revised twice), spells out regulations for labor
migration and lays out the bureaucratic structure—found at home and abroad—that
ensures safe and orderly overseas migration. The original law, RA 8042, was a
result of the execution of a domestic worker in Singapore, Ms. Flor
Contemplacion, in March 1995. That episode created diplomatic tension between
the two countries, as well as national shame for a country that then had no
enabling law for migrant workers' protection.
The said law helped the Philippines lay out a program on labor export that
(explicitly) facilitates Filipino workers' overseas placement in destination
countries requiring certain skills. Decades hence, to include the hard lessons
learned since Ms. Contemplacion's execution, the Philippines has now
"excelled" in migration management.
Filipinos are now in over-200 countries and territories, in all sorts of
occupations, with their migration status either legal or irregular. Filipinos
have contributed to countries' economic growth, especially countries facing
demographic shortfalls and labor shortages. The estimated 10.3 million overseas
Filipinos have (unfortunately) become the Philippines' top export. Their
overseas migration is a response to the search for more gainful opportunities,
what with the country's agriculture and manufacturing sectors still struggling
and services being the top draw for homeland employment for nearly two decades.
Remittances have been the reason for overseas Filipinos' symbolic tag as
heroes since a formal labor export program (given the passage of a Philippine labor
code) began in 1974. Form the 1970s to the mid-2000s, remittances have helped
shore up the homeland economy's fiscal issues, mitigated the impacts of
domestic unemployment, and somewhat help buoy the Philippines' gross national
product. That period, spanning just over three decades, saw the Philippines'
macro-economic growth performance as "boom and bust"—like a roller
coaster, going up and down. Meanwhile, there is rising overseas migration
(including that for overseas permanent residency, depending on the migration
pathways countries offer to foreigners) and a concomitant rise of labor,
welfare, human rights and criminal / civil cases affecting Filipinos in various
host lands. So, with rising migration and remittances is a perceived growing
number of problems facing Filipinos abroad, and the corollary family-level
social costs.
However, there is a change in the plot: since the 2008 global economic
crisis, the Philippine economy is now one of the top economic performers in the
world. Sustained gross domestic product growth, with an annual average of some
6 percent, these past ten years is slowly buoying the Philippine economy.
Coinciding that is what some demographers perceive to be a demographic
transition, where old and young dependents are lesser and the working force is
bulging in numbers. That situation gives the Philippines a chance—a 30-year
window, says some demographic projections—to drum up as many savings and
investments and have these parked at home. Overseas migration and remittances
have been contributing their share to this ongoing demographic transition,
currently through buoying local consumption.
Yet one wonders why the stories are still the same sordid ones? The recent
episode the Philippines faced was a diplomatic standoff with Kuwait, with the
former demanding certain protections and employment regulations for Filipina
domestic workers. This four-month saga started off with the discovered
massacre—body chopped into pieces, placed in a refrigerator for a year— of
Joanna Demafelis, angering the tough President Rodrigo Duterte. After a
deployment ban and Kuwait's own issues with Philippine diplomatic authorities, both
countries signed a memorandum of agreement on hiring domestic workers just last
month and, which, restored diplomatic relations. Implementation by Kuwaiti
authorities is another matter.
For decades now, the world still sees Filipinos abroad as those women who
have found dates online and migrated for economic security; of women as
"lowly" domestic workers or as abused spouses even after they got
permanent residency; of men who are trafficked into occupations different from
what was initially in their work contracts. They also see Filipinos as the
bearers of the Christian faith; the workers with a more caring attitude; the
workforce who can endure tough work conditions just to earn more and please
employers; as the behaved foreigners in certain host country societies.
Yet, what is baffling is that a lot of people still perceive the storylines
of the Filipino migration saga to be the same even in the age of social media. Philippine
real property companies luring Filipinos abroad is so 2000s. The sending of
boxes with souvenir items (called balikbayan boxes [balikbayan is
"returning home" in Filipino]) is already a generation old. Some
Filipinos abroad continue to display pity at their compatriots who are in less-skilled
occupations in certain host countries, with pity masqueraded as empathy.
Filipinos' overseas migration has already brought about socio-cultural,
economic and institutional changes in Philippine society, sociologist and
historian Filomeno Aguilar, Jr. writes in his anthology The Migration
Revolution (2014). Class structures have been reconfigured. That is the current
scene of the Filipino migration phenomenon.
Given the current era of a Philippine economy that's in a demographic
transition which runs side-by-side with overseas migration, what can be the new
Philippine future beside the exodus? Can we tell new stories about Filipinos
abroad instead of sticking to usual tales?
Will Filipino food, for example, become mainstream in host societies and
capture the imagination of nostalgic and curious foreign taste buds? Will there
be more of a new breed of Filipino migrant entrepreneurs braving the riskier
agricultural sector back home, while Filipino banks are averse in handing out
credit to that sector?
With social media easily bridging transnational Filipino families, what
kinds of family rearing tales have we not heard from those who endured parental
separation and found successes? In some Filipino rural communities, kinship and
community embeddedness mitigate the risks of migration's family-level social
costs. With Japan having a long history of Filipinas going there as
entertainers in night clubs, and that migration pathway stopped over a decade
ago, have the Japanese of today looked at Filipinos differently?
How many more Filipinos will become elected leaders in countries that
realized these first elected migrant leaders, like the United States, New
Zealand, Korea or Canada?
Have you heard of a deeply affected full-blooded Australian by the ongoing
Philippine war on drugs and helping resolve a Filipino relative's drug-related
woes? Or what about some Filipinas, already permanent residents and naturalized
citizens in a destination country, dating with compatriot seafarers docking on
some ports?
There can be a myriad of good and bad tales about the overseas Filipino.
People aspire for more pleasant stories, especially since Filipinos are known
for extending their personal boundaries and fits of empathy. Filipinos also
aspire for less of the tear-jerking stories—from abused domestic workers to
Filipino permanent residents who are duping compatriots on temporary work
visas. With Filipinos abroad now an influential force for their motherland, and
with their exposure to better systems abroad, how can we change gruesome
migration tales for the better?
The homeland and its institutions, especially the Philippine government,
have their work cut out to fulfill ambitions of comfortable living for
Filipinos. But so do Filipinos abroad: they can chart newer tales and tumble-down
ageing stereotypes of themselves. That will be through the love they usually
show to their families, through better remittance management, through improved
and sustained relations with locals in host countries, and through a renewed sense
of Filipino citizenship even while they're away.
(Mr. Jeremaiah Opiniano is a
doctoral student (geography) at The University of Adelaide in Australia. He
also handles a nonprofit research group on migration and development issues in
the Philippines: The Institute for Migration and Development Issues (IMDI).
Correspondence: ofw_philanthropy@yahoo.com.)
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