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Remittances and Returnees: The Cultural Economy of Migration in Ilocos
... The present study recognizes that structural forces have an overriding influence in determining the distribution of economic opportunities in a developing country like Bangladesh, and hence in shaping the macro patterns of migration. Village-level researches conducted in Third World contexts (Cardona and Simmons 1975;Titus 1978;Hugo 1981;Pertierra 1992;Kurien 1994) confirm that structural factors have considerable importance in causing migration. However, these studies also suggest that if one is to understand the migration process, especially the relevant motivational factors, it is important to have an appreciation of the social and cultural contexts within which these forces operate and are perceived by the people involved. ...
... Haque links labour migration to the macro-organization of socio-economic relations, the geographic division of labour, and the political mechanisms of power and domination. Family and village-level research conducted in the Third World context (Amin 1974;Titus 1978;Cardona and Simmons 1975;Hugo 1981;Pertierra 1992) confirm that structural factors are important in causing individuals and groups to migrate. However, it must be pointed out that to understand the migration process, it is important to have an appreciation of the social and cultural contexts within which these forces work and are perceived by the people involved. ...
... Such attitudes may contribute greatly, if not entirely determine, the phenomenon of out-migration. Pertierra (1992) investigated overseas labour migration among students in the Philippines. Pertierra looked at the effects of schooling on the perception of opportunities and meaning in a small rural Ilocano community, and noted that such educated individuals frequently romanticized out-migration. ...
This book examines international labour migrants in the context of South–South migration with a focus on Bangladeshi migration to Singapore. Two principal questions in the South–South migration are addressed: Why and how individuals migrate for work; and what impact this temporary form of migration has for migrants and their families. The book adopts a relatively new methodological approach to labour migration by linking different phases that migrants undergo in the migration process and by combining migrants in the host country with their families in the origin country. This is achieved through identifying and addressing six key areas: (i) migration policy, (ii) social imperatives of migration (iii) recruitment, (iv) social worlds of the migrants, (v) remittance process, and finally, (vi) family development dynamics. This book introduces the bari to migration research as a unit of analysis over and above individual and family units. The book reveals how social and cultural forces both initiate and perpetuate migration, and later on influence bari dynamics.
... The price to pay at the bottom end of the migration chain Because of the pervasive problem of discrepancies between promised wages and entitlements on the one hand and actual benefits received on the other, many migrant workers find themselves caught in a debt trap that takes them years to repay. Indebtedness is a widespread problem among transnational migrant workers across Asia (Pertierra, 1992;Jones and Findlay, 1998: 95;Gamburd, 2000;Afsar, 2005;Hugo, 2005: 73). Family and friends represent an important source of funding, particularly because such loans are often interest free, but this source is often limited unless aspiring migrants are connected to migrant networks with access to remittances (Pertierra, 1992;Rahman and Fee, 2005). ...
... Indebtedness is a widespread problem among transnational migrant workers across Asia (Pertierra, 1992;Jones and Findlay, 1998: 95;Gamburd, 2000;Afsar, 2005;Hugo, 2005: 73). Family and friends represent an important source of funding, particularly because such loans are often interest free, but this source is often limited unless aspiring migrants are connected to migrant networks with access to remittances (Pertierra, 1992;Rahman and Fee, 2005). The lack of easily accessible low-interest loans (bank loans often require collateral) means that many have to turn to moneylenders for loans at exploitative interest rates. ...
... In the Philippines, it was found that almost 90 per cent of migrant workers covered their fees and other pre-departure expenses using loans with interest (Valerio, 2002: 41). In areas with a high incidence of migration, moneylending has become an extremely profitable business (Pertierra, 1992;Gamburd, 2000). In Bangladesh, Afsar (2005: 120) found that 69 per cent of the domestic workers borrowed money from moneylenders at excessively high interest rates. ...
A report commissioned by the World Bank in 2006 suggests that large parts of international remittances, which increased by 58 per cent to USD 232 billion between 2001 and 2005, were associated with the unprecedented rise in international migration from developing countries (Yeoh et al., 2005: 88). The need for foreign exchange earnings together with the pressure to relieve domestic unemployment are two principal reasons for the promotion of transnational labour migration by labour-sending countries (Wickramasekera, 2002: 8). The potential of reaping positive economic benefits from international migration is immense for poorer countries. However, amore important question arising from these facts and figures is whether increased remittances are automatically translated into enhanced wellbeing for migrant families and, if not, why and in what way migration fails to lead to development in its broadest sense.
... The price to pay at the bottom end of the migration chain Because of the pervasive problem of discrepancies between promised wages and entitlements on the one hand and actual benefits received on the other, many migrant workers find themselves caught in a debt trap that takes them years to repay. Indebtedness is a widespread problem among transnational migrant workers across Asia (Pertierra, 1992;Jones and Findlay, 1998: 95;Gamburd, 2000;Afsar, 2005;Hugo, 2005: 73). Family and friends represent an important source of funding, particularly because such loans are often interest free, but this source is often limited unless aspiring migrants are connected to migrant networks with access to remittances (Pertierra, 1992;Rahman and Fee, 2005). ...
... Indebtedness is a widespread problem among transnational migrant workers across Asia (Pertierra, 1992;Jones and Findlay, 1998: 95;Gamburd, 2000;Afsar, 2005;Hugo, 2005: 73). Family and friends represent an important source of funding, particularly because such loans are often interest free, but this source is often limited unless aspiring migrants are connected to migrant networks with access to remittances (Pertierra, 1992;Rahman and Fee, 2005). The lack of easily accessible low-interest loans (bank loans often require collateral) means that many have to turn to moneylenders for loans at exploitative interest rates. ...
... In the Philippines, it was found that almost 90 per cent of migrant workers covered their fees and other pre-departure expenses using loans with interest (Valerio, 2002: 41). In areas with a high incidence of migration, moneylending has become an extremely profitable business (Pertierra, 1992;Gamburd, 2000). In Bangladesh, Afsar (2005: 120) found that 69 per cent of the domestic workers borrowed money from moneylenders at excessively high interest rates. ...
... Studies that have looked at Ilocano migration to Hawaii have identified two significant social consequences on source communities: social inversion and the accentuation of economic differences (Griffiths, 1988;Lewis, 1971;Pertierra et al., 1992). A social inversion was put in motion by emigration between the landless but "moneyed" Hawaiianos and the Ilocos elites who were increasingly experiencing difficulties as a result of the deteriorating economic condition in the region. ...
... They had access to money to invest in agricultural and other business activities. This created a new form of social distinction as emigration to Hawaii created changes in people's "horizons of expectations" (Pertierra et al., 1992: 2) even as it also exacerbated inequality. ...
... Although San Gabriel is predominantly Roman Catholic, cohabitation is widely practiced and there is very little moral condemnation or even criticism for those who choose to enter into common law relationships and partnerships. Ilocanos have been seen to have a pragmatic and flexible attitude towards moral and sexual issues (Pertierra et al., 1992;Pingol, 2001) but especially with cohabitation linked to migration to Hawaii (Pe-Pua, 1991;cf. Williams et al., 2007). ...
Discussions of a culture of migration in the Philippines present it to mean a predisposition to migrate and focus on the migrants. Through the prism of the experiences of seamen’s wives in an Ilocos town, experiences narrated through interviews, this article aims to cut a conceptual space in which to examine the relationship between left-behind women and the culture of migration. Examining the women’s persistent references to settlement migration to Hawaii against which their husband’s labor migration as seafarers is compared, this article provides a discussion of a culture of migration among Ilocanos that has been vitally shaped by the socio-economic possibilities brought about by Ilocano migration to Hawaii beginning in the early 20th century. Consequently, it offers historical and cultural specificity to scholarly discussions of the Philippines’ culture of migration, which remains pitched at the national level.
... The present study recognizes that structural forces have an overriding influence in determining the distribution of economic opportunities in a developing country like Bangladesh, and hence in shaping the macro patterns of migration. Village-level researches conducted in Third World contexts (Cardona and Simmons 1975;Titus 1978;Hugo 1981;Pertierra 1992;Kurien 1994) confirm that structural factors have considerable importance in causing migration. However, these studies also suggest that if one is to understand the migration process, especially the relevant motivational factors, it is important to have an appreciation of the social and cultural contexts within which these forces operate and are perceived by the people involved. ...
... Haque links labour migration to the macro-organization of socio-economic relations, the geographic division of labour, and the political mechanisms of power and domination. Family and village-level research conducted in the Third World context (Amin 1974;Titus 1978;Cardona and Simmons 1975;Hugo 1981;Pertierra 1992) confirm that structural factors are important in causing individuals and groups to migrate. However, it must be pointed out that to understand the migration process, it is important to have an appreciation of the social and cultural contexts within which these forces work and are perceived by the people involved. ...
... Such attitudes may contribute greatly, if not entirely determine, the phenomenon of out-migration. Pertierra (1992) investigated overseas labour migration among students in the Philippines. Pertierra looked at the effects of schooling on the perception of opportunities and meaning in a small rural Ilocano community, and noted that such educated individuals frequently romanticized out-migration. ...
Sin ga pore is a ma jor re ceiv ing coun try for Bangladeshi mi grant workers. Since the end of the Second World War, the international migration of labour has grown in volume and changed in character (Castles and Miller, 1998). It has also been observed that there are two main phases in post-Second World War migration (Castles and Miller, 1998, p.67). In the first phase, from 1945 to the early 1970s, large numbers of migrant workers were drawn from less developed countries into the fast-expanding industrial areas of Western Europe and North America. However, the organized recruitment of migrant workers by industrialized countries ended in the early 1970s owing mainly to the fundamental restructuring of the global economy and the politicization of migration (Castles, 2001). The second phase began in Asia in the mid-1970s. The phenomenal rise in oil prices since the end of 1973 generated a huge demand for temporary migrants in Middle Eastern countries. This massive demand for temporary migrants resulted in an enormous flow of labour to oil-rich Arab countries. In addition, since the mid-1980s the demand for temporary migrants grew in the prosperous countries of East and South-East Asia and a large number of migrants migrated to these countries for temporary employment. Bangladeshi migrants are found in both destinations. Since the mid-1970s the Middle East has been the most popular destination for Bangladeshi migrant workers. As the attractiveness of that region for unskilled labour declined in the late 1980s, coupled with the social and economic uncertainties caused by the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991, labour migration from Bangladesh diversified in the 1990s to include the much vaunted "dragon economies" of East and South-East Asia. Among the new destination countries of this part of Asia, Singapore is a major receiving country for Bangladeshi migrant workers. It is estimated that there are about 50,000 1 Bangladeshi migrants in Singapore. According to one estimate, foreigners constituted 30 per cent of the total workforce in 1999 (Yeoh, Huang and Gonzalez, 1999). Lum (1995), based on a 7 per cent annual growth rate, calculated that in the most favourable scenario, the number of foreign workers required by Singapore was about 17 per cent of the total labour force in 1995, increasing to about 27 per cent in 2000. Those figures were projected to increase to 44 per cent in 2010 and 61 per cent in 2020. Therefore, it is expected that Singapore's heavy dependence on foreign human resources will continue over the next few decades. The literature on labour migration is replete with explanations of the causes, consequences and, most recently, factors contributing to the perpetuation of labour migration (Abella, 2000; Skeldon, 1997; Battistella and Asis, 2003; Debrah, 2002; Athukorala and Manning, 1999; Iredale, Hawksley and Castles, 2003). However, a field of inquiry that has not been overly researched by migration scholars is that of the circumstances in which foreign migrant workers work and live. Maltreatment and unsatisfactory working and living conditions are major factors that induce migrants to return home prematurely and this is generally a costly move for migrants and their families at home. This paper explores various aspects of the social life of Bangladeshi migrant workers in Singapore. For reasons of clarity the presentation of the materials is divided into four sections: the first deals briefly with the work permit procedures for foreigners in Singapore; the second, with sociodemographic profiles of Bangladeshi migrants; the third, with their socio-economic experiences; and the fourth offers conclusions and recommendations for policy purposes.
... Norte (Pertierra 1992). Moncada and its residents rode on the tide of what many Filipinos from communities across the archipelago have been doing the past three decades: seek overseas employment and permanent residency opportunities. ...
... San Nicolas had more migrants who work as "professionals," while Moncada had a slightly higher number of "technicians and associate professionals" than San Nicolas. In terms of destination countries, to the US since the early 1900s (Pertierra 1992). Network migration had also led San ...
This thesis investigates the household, institutional and locational factors influencing the productive use of overseas remittances in two rural municipalities in the Philippines: San Nicolas (Ilocos Norte province) and Moncada (Tarlac province). Set a year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this mixed methods research provides a baseline of how different rural origin communities of overseas migrants maximise remittance inflows for local development. This research also tests an exploratory theoretical framework, the Behavioural Economics of Remittances, to determine what processes migrant households undergo when dealing with local people and institutions as they use their remittances productively.
Migrant and non-migrant household surveys (N=905) were implemented households in the two home towns. A rapid qualitative inquiry (RQI) was also conducted, under which key informant interviews (N=163), object-centred interviews (N=59), secondary data collection and participant observation were executed. The study found that migrant households from San Nicolas invested, ran enterprises and owned savings accounts within their home town more than migrant households from Moncada. San Nicolas is balancing agriculture with urbanisation, with the town having a shopping mall in its premises. Moncada is predominantly an agricultural municipality, but has not much available land for commercial spaces. San Nicolas also has more financial institutions (especially commercial banks) than Moncada, though the latter has a decades-long history of cooperativism and houses the two biggest cooperatives of its province.
San Nicolas and Moncada are also run by municipal governments that were recognised for “good local governance” by the national government. This recognition has led to reforms in public services, including services for the local business and investment climate. It is also easy to do business in both municipalities in terms of procedures to get business and occupational permits. As a result, San Nicolas had more registered business than Moncada, with the former also getting increased local revenues over the past 17 years to 2019. Moncada, for its part, is part of a province that runs pro-active financial inclusion programs that benefit farmers, cooperatives and local entrepreneurs.
The Behavioural Economics of Remittances is a multi-level theoretical model that sees remittances interact with the people, social structures and institutions which are directly and indirectly affected by these monetary flows. Remittance usage under these circumstances is bounded by the make-up of a place where people, institutions and remittance owners meet. This model has three zones where involved players interact with each other: the sanguinity zone (members of the migrant household), the estimation zone (the migrant household and local entrepreneurs and financial institutions), and the affinity zone (the migrant household and the community’s organised institutions, residents and local norms and practices). In applying the theoretical model to this study, involved players in each zone make financial decisions and use measures to mitigate risks when transacting with each other (such as remittances, family relationships, regulations, etc.). Processes happening under the Behavioural Economics of Remittances help explain the different outcomes of remittances that were saved, invested and used as business capital in overseas migrants’ communities of origin. These outcomes are even rooted in geography.
To facilitate overseas migrant households and their rural home towns to optimise the productive outcomes from foreign remittances, this study suggests the pressing need of: financial education programs for rural residents (including remittance owners); improvements in the rural home towns’ investment climates, overall public services, and financial products and services; and achievement of sound relationships between and among remittance owners and the people and institutions in rural home towns. These efforts also become relevant as the world hopes to move forward from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
... The prevalence of either macro or micro level analysis is partly a function of methodological assumptions formulated for relatively stable populations anchored at a particular time and geographic space. The age of supersonic transport systems, which allows a migrant to traverse great distances in short time periods, and of communications technologies (e.g., broadband technologies and web-based cameras), which compress time and space, gives rise to the "absent" but "present" migrant household member(s) who can simultaneously affect and be affected by the dynamics of several households in different parts of the globe (Castells 2004;Pertierra 2002). The blurring of boundaries between the physical and virtual realities presents some dilemma in units, levels, and parameters of analysis. ...
... Overseas work does not necessarily increase available resources, but brings in the cash that initially enables a few families to monopolize existing resources. This outcome increases economic stratification and impels other families to send members abroad and remit the needed cash (Pertierra et al. 1992). Globalizing tendencies are also inscribed in the everyday life of the remittance-receiving household through the acquisition of symbols of modernity (e.g., mobile phone for sending text messages to the absent member; Internet connection and broadband web camera). ...
... El proceso de externalización y mercantilización del cuidado hacia las mujeres inmigrantes plantea al mismo tiempo la problemática de como éstas afrontan sus propias responsabilidades en la producción doméstica de sus familias, tanto las que se encuentran en sus países de origen como las que se reagrupan en los países de destino (Pingol, 2001;Pertierra, 1992). A menudo ha supuesto para las mujeres inmigrantes que realizan servicios domésticos, como en el caso de las mujeres filipinas en Cataluña, dejar a cargo de sus familias de origen el cuidado de las personas dependientes de las cuales son responsables ellas y sus parejas. ...
... En las últimas décadas se ha ido consolidando un modelo de contratación basado en reclutar mujeres extranjeras (Hochschild 2008;Orozco, 2007;Ehrenreich 2003;King i Zontini 2000), estableciéndose una estrecha relación entre la feminización de la inmigración y la incorporación de las mujeres españolas y catalanas en el mercado laboral (Parella, 2003;Ribas, 2000;Cruz y Paganoni, 1989 (Hochschild 2008;Orozco, 2007;Ehrenreich 2003;Parreñas, 2001;Pingol, 2001;Ribas, 1999Ribas, , 1994Pertierra, 1992 En estos casos, una forma de apoyo es solicitar a algún familiar, por ejemplo una hermana, que viaje hasta Cataluña para dedicarse al cuidado de la criatura durante un tiempo, mientras la madre busca la forma de combinar su propia tensión entre la actividad profesional y la familiar. ...
En este texto analizamos una cadena de externalización del cuidado y su conversión en servicio desde Barcelona (Cataluña, España) hasta Manila (Filipinas), identificando los cambios de posición de género para las mujeres implicadas: desde las empleadoras catalanas hasta las trabajadoras domésticas filipinas. Así mismo, señalamos los límites ambiguos y difusos que se establecen entre las relaciones de cuidado y servicio bajo relaciones mercantiles. El trabajo de campo se realizó tanto en Barcelona y cercanías como en Manila y los lugares de origen de las personas entrevistadas (en Filipinas), mediante entrevistas biográficas, entrevistas a personal experto, análisis documental y estadístico. Para el objeto de este artículo nos apoyamos principalmente en las entrevistas realizadas a trabajadoras domésticas filipinas, a empleadoras catalanas de trabajadoras domésticas, y a personal experto sobre migración, género y trabajo doméstico de Cataluña y de Filipinas. Las técnicas de análisis usadas han sido el análisis de contenido y el análisis del discurso.
... Differences were observed between the towns suggesting that the recording of finances varies geographically (Table 1). Ilocanos (the ethnic group of Ilocos Norte, plus some from Tarlac) are known to be frugal: kuripot, in the Ilocano dialect (Pertierra 1992). ...
This paper analyzes differences in attitudes and strategies for investing and entrepreneurship among families receiving remittances from their overseas emigrants at two rural communities in the Philippines. It examines how these households in the origin country determine how to invest remittances, and the extent to which these decisions are influenced by topographical, socio-economic, political, and cultural factors in their local spatial
contexts. How do individual behaviors, along with risk appetite and financial capabilities, interact with such contexts as origin households assess the hazards and likely returns of investing locally? Primary data collected through household surveys in 2018–2019, and a rapid qualitative inquiry methodology, enable us in this mixed methods research to explore the interplay between individual financial behaviors and spatial factors affecting decision making. We can report that migrants’ origin households, and local financial institutions and entrepreneurs, employ relevant costing in reaching economic decisions, and assess favorable and adverse investment considerations explicitly. Remittance-supported economic development in origin communities relies on enhancements in household financial knowledge, and on interventions —through policy and regulation— to sustain
and improve the local investment climate. If these conditions are met, households and local investors and entrepreneurs will make productive decisions through this relevant costing strategy and will contribute resources that promote microeconomic development. Relevant costing is thereby vindicated as a valuable concept, in attempts to unravel besetting complexities in the migration–development nexus.
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... Moncada, for its part, is a first income class municipality that is some 30 km distant from Tarlac City. San Nicolas belongs to a province with a century-long history of emigration of residents to the USA (Pertierra, 1992). Moncada belongs to a province that is a melting pot of local ethnic groups, but the predominant group is Ilocano (mostly originating from the Ilocos geographic region, where Ilocos Norte belongs). ...
This exploratory mixed methods study sought to determine the financial capabilities of remittance-receiving households from two rural municipalities in the Philippines: San Nicolas in Ilocos Norte province and Moncada in Tarlac province. The broader concept of financial capabilities not only looks at people’s financial literacy but also their financial inclusion (access to financial products) and financial functionings (actions on finance). Quantitative household surveys and qualitative data gathering methods that fall under a rapid qualitative inquiry (RQI) design were employed. Results and findings show that more remittance households from San Nicolas saved, invested, and did business in their hometown compared to counterpart migrant household respondents from Moncada. Differences in migrant households’ levels of financial literacy, as well as the geographic make-up and economic activities of the two municipalities, may help explain why one municipality had more migrant investors, savers, and entrepreneurs over the other.
... The first recorded Filipino labor migration in the 20th century was from Ilocos Norte in 1906, when sugar plantations from the US state of Hawai'i recruited workers in Ilocos Norte. To this day, "Hawaiianos" (Ilocanos who went to that US state) play a major demographic and cultural influence across the province, including Dingras (Pertierra 1992). The province's governor even said that her province mates are "a bunch of remittance addicts" (Edwards 2015 Philippine telecommunications companies. ...
Rural communities of origin play an important role in harnessing the development potential of overseas remittances. This role is to enable and ensure an economically competitive locality for all entrepreneurs and investors (including town mates working and residing abroad). This qualitative case study research illustrates the local economic competitiveness conditions of two rural municipalities in the Philippines. Assessing local economic competitiveness will help ascertain the roles being played by local communities and their authorities. Findings here can also provide indications on how overseas town mates' remittances have changed in response to prevailing local competitiveness conditions.
Qualitative findings here were part of a mixed methods tool, called the Remittance Investment Climate Analysis in Rural Hometowns (RICART), which employed the rapid rural appraisal (RRA) method. A global framework and a nationally applied index on local economic competitiveness were used as guides to analyze RRA findings. It was found that these municipalities have prevailing bottlenecks that limit the economic competitiveness of the locality-and the situation may deter prospective migrant town mates abroad from investing and doing business in their hometowns. Not surprisingly, interventions of local governments to improve their local investment conditions matter.
... First, this literature situates Filipino migrants within capitalist-dominated labour flows and distributions of global economic power. The analysis highlights the growing dependence of the Philippines (and other developing Southern States) on migrants' remittances, arguing that the state creates and then super-exploits a feminised and unskilled migrant workforce (Parreñas 2003, Pertierra 1992, Stasiulis and Bakan 2005, Weekly 2004, c.f. Gibson, Law and McKay 2001. Second, it explores critically the complex bureaucratic structures and discursive practices that have evolved within and across sending and receiving states to ensure the production of such compliant and self-disciplining subjects. ...
... There has been some patchy evidence pointing to the significance of debt in transnational families due to the substantial costs of transnational labour migration (cf. Pertierra, 1992;Jones and Findlay, 1998: 95;Gamburd, 2000;Afsar, 2005;Hugo, 2005: 73), yet it is unclear how debt-related economic stress affects both migrants and families who stay behind. Drawing on their mixed-method research project in Vietnam, Hoang and Yeoh reveal how indebtedness caused by exploitative practices of commercial brokers leads to disruptions in family organisation and relations. ...
The unprecedented rise in both the volume and the velocity of transnational labour migration in and from Asia in recent decades has led to significant social and economic changes not just on the scale of nation-states and communities but also within the most immediate core of human experience, the family. As people become increasingly mobile in response to the restructuring of the global economy, the family – and the accompanying processes of formation, maintenance and dissolution – continually adapts itself to changing or emerging livelihood strategies and the resultant shifts in living arrangements. New concepts such as the “transnational family” and “global householding” have been developed within migration scholarship to capture ongoing transformations of the Asian family as a result of migration. The “transnational family” is broadly defined by the notion that the family continues to share strong bonds of collective welfare and unity even though core members are distributed between two or more nation-states (Yeoh, 2009), while “global householding” emphasises the view that the formation and sustenance of households are increasingly reliant on the international movement of people and transactions among household members who reside in more than one national territory (Douglass, 2006).
... There has been some patchy evidence pointing to the significance of debt in transnational families due to the substantial costs of transnational labour migration (cf. Pertierra, 1992;Jones and Findlay, 1998: 95;Gamburd, 2000;Afsar, 2005;Hugo, 2005: 73), yet it is unclear how debt-related economic stress affects both migrants and families who stay behind. Drawing on their mixed-method research project in Vietnam, Hoang and Yeoh reveal how indebtedness caused by exploitative practices of commercial brokers leads to disruptions in family organisation and relations. ...
... Several scholarly works have discussed the hero-martyrism of OFWs by analyzing how specifi ideological notions of race and gender condition their experiences (Aguilar et al. 2009;Choy 2003;Constable 2007;Guevarra 2010;D. McKay 2013;Ong 2006;Parreñas 2008;Pertierra 1992;Tyner 2000). Other works have highlighted the process by which state policies on labor migration craft, or even compel, specifi commitments to the nation (Franco 2011;Hau 2004;Rodriguez 2006;Tadiar 2009). ...
In this essay I examine how a Catholicized economic ethos in the Philippines is promulgated by rhetorical pronouncements about the positive value of sacrifice that rationalizes the cultivation of so-called export-quality martyrs. In the state's discursive linkage of transnational capital to heroism, Filipino Catholicized neoliberalism is operationalized as an affective space in which the generation of remittance capital is branded as a legitimate return on the Overseas Filipino Worker's moral and ethical investments. In this scenario, the Roman Catholic institution exerts a distinct yet complementary form of governmentality. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork on Roman Catholic Passion rituals in the Philippines in focusing on two embodied arenas of labor power: (1) a labor brokerage regime in which transnational agents have been trained to externalize certain ethical and corporeal disciplines as forms of export capital; and (2) the self-mortifying body able to craft and sustain transnational agency through a renegotiation of the soteriological promise of Christian salvation.
... A number of respondents also observed changes in the nature of social relationships in their communities which, they thought, had become less united. Scholars of migrant communities in the Philippines had observed increased social differentiation which could have relational implications (Vasque , 1992;Pertierra, 1992;Griffiths, 19,67). For example, Griffiths (1957) found that non-migrants in an Ilocos village felt some envy towards those who were "ordered" (petitioned) by their relatives in the United States. ...
International labor migration has been a persistent feature of Philippine society since the 1970s. While the economic impact of overseas employment has been found to be generally beneficial to families and households, social impact of the phenomenon is less understood. Social transformation in four communities which have experienced large-scale and sustained international labor migration is discussed in the article. Economic prosperity for these communities, particularly for the families with migrant work was the most significant and most tangible impact attributed to oven employment. The negative aspects of overseas employment were related to perceptions of family problems and changes in the character of migrant and members of their families. In general, the nonmaterial changes triggered by overseas employment are still evolving, and changes in social forms or actors filling social roles are not necessarily to be viewed as negative effects of migration.
... Within that literature, international women migrant domestic or service workers and carers are situated within unequal flows of people and resources. These highlight the new structures of economic dependency that enable more powerful and affluent countries to exploit a feminised migrant workforce from less powerful ones dependant on cash remittances (Anderson 2000;Constable 2007;Ehrenreich & Hochschild 2003;Faier 2009;Gamburd 2000Gamburd , 2002Parreñas 2001Parreñas , 2008Pertierra 1992;Stasiulis & Bakan 2005;Tyner 2004;Weekley 2004). One key hurdle that migrants in many countries face is the denial of naturalisation and citizenship rights (Bakan & Stasiulis 1997;Ball & Piper 2006). ...
This issue highlights recent ethnographic work that discloses migrant women's creative engagements with the people and landscapes in the places they migrate to. We challenge a dominant view that construes women international migrants from Asia as docile bodies shaped and constrained by their transnational (re)productive labours. And we reject simplistic contemporary formulations of transnational migration that posit a singular, homogeneous 'transnational social field'. Three key processes, relatively ignored and under theorised are interrogated: diaspora formation, ritual performance and changing normativities. A focus on diaspora encourages us to move beyond a political and economic analysis to consider cultural practices, continuities and discontinuities in migrants' relationships with the people and places they travel to, as well as those left behind. A focus on ritual emphasises the significance of religious performance in the making of place and convivial sociality. A focus on normativity foregrounds the ways that people's affective relationships are performatively reworked and transgressed within and across discrepant diasporic spaces.
... Cela concerne surtout les femmes, philippines et indonésiennes, employées comme domestiques ou artistes, comme le soulignent Yeoh et Huang dans leur étude des migrants à Singapour (Yeoh and Huang, 1998). L'exception à cette règle serait les Philippines où un certain nombre d'ouvrages traitent du phénomène à travers l'expérience des ouvriers rentrés au pays, et l'impact des migrations sur les populations qui sont restés au pays (Griffiths, 1988 ;Banzon-Bautista, 1989 ;Pertierra, 1992) ...
Dans les annees 1980, au Vietnam, le voyage en direction d'un pays ami du bloc socialiste (Allemagne de l'Est, Russie, Bulgarie et Tchecoslovaquie pour l'essentiel) representait un des plus beaux achevements de la reussite sociale et politique, ainsi qu'un gain economique appreciable. Cet article se penche sur les ouvriers migrants, dont le nombre est estime a pres de 300 000, ainsi que sur leur reinsertion a leur retour au Vietnam. L'accent est mis sur les consequences economiques de ces migrations, tant pour les migrants eux-memes que pour la societe vietnamienne
... By the 1960s Philippine men were also becoming prominent in international seafaring labour markets (Go, 1997). However, the scale and nature of Philippine international migration shifted dramatically during the 1970s as demand for male construction workers in the Middle East accelerated and swelling numbers of Filipinos responded to their domestic economic disadvantage by taking on overseas con-tract work (Margold, 1995; Pertierra, 1994). By the mid-1980s, as the economy worsened, Filipinos turned to Asian labour markets, encouraged by official policies that realized national economic benefit from labour export through the processing of documents and receipt of remittances and by the easing of local unemployment (Catholic Institute for International Relations , 1987; Chant & McIlwaine, 1995). ...
This paper adopts a transnational, ethnographic vantage point in examining cultural politics, gender, and class relations in the provisional Philippine diaspora constituted through women's labour migration. Emphasis is placed on women's agency and how their experiences are embedded in layers of economic and social support flowing from and to female kin. Cultural capital is acquired from the migration experience, but domestic service migrants remain subject to what Bourdieu calls symbolic violence, both in their places of work and through conventions of Philippine femininity. Diaspora formed by the potentially permanent migration of Philippine women to Canada is fraught with tensions from Philippine familial expectations and, in this sense it remains provisional.
Today close to half of the world’s migrants are women and their numbers are rising (Morrison et al., 2007). Indeed ‘women are on the move as never before in history’ (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2002, p. 2). In 2010, the female migration flow was estimated to comprise over 104 million women out of the total estimated 213 million international migrants (UN, 2008). Many women follow a migration flow that their country folk have taken over time, and others are forging new paths—clandestine and legal. Like those who migrated before them, they hope that migration will provide opportunities for education and employment, and allow them to support their families financially, and in some cases escape the hierarchical structures and discriminatory practices and policies in their post-independence home countries.
Migration has arguably been the definitive feature of Philippine experiences of globalization. Beginning with the adoption of a labour export policy by the government during the 1970s, by the end of the twentieth century the nation had the largest flows of migrant workers in the global economy (Tyner and Donaldson 1999, p. 217) and the largest per capita number of female contract workers overseas (Boyle 2002; Mills 2003). This export of female workers on a temporary basis exemplifies a historic trend for labour markets across Southeast Asia. While rural women have moved to relatively nearby urban centres for work since the colonial era (mid-1800s–1930s), the global economic restructurings of the 1970s saw this practice extended across national borders. Throughout the region, significant numbers began to move between countries on short-term contracts, taking advantage of the relatively higher returns for labour offered by uneven development (Hugo 2002). Women from the poorer nations, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, went to Singapore, Hong Kong and urban Malaysia. Female migrants from the Philippines used these Southeast Asian cities as entry points for global labour markets, with many moving on to work as domestics in Europe, Israel and North America.
Drawing on longitudinal and multi-sited ethnographic research conducted in Italy and the northern Philippines, this chapter describes and analyzes how 1.5-generation Filipinos in Italy have experienced their own movements, and those of their families, and how they have (re)constructed their social relations and sense of self in the course of family migration. It illustrates the mobilities of these migrant children, growing up within transnational families, across familial, material, social, and political contexts. It unravels not only how migrant children are acted upon by, but how they too act on multiple and multi-layered contexts. The chapter thus emphasizes the need to focus on the agency of migrant children embedded within the interconnections of different spatial and contextual mobilities occurring in different temporalities.
Although informal caregivers are the main caregiving workforce, there is an increasing reliance on immigrant professional caregivers in developed and developing countries. Few studies have examined the impact of caregiving on leisure for professional caregivers. Most professional family caregivers in Taiwan, working alone at the employers' home, are from Indonesia. The present study explored the work and leisure of Indonesian paid live-in family caregivers. A time budget approach was employed to collect data during May 2010. Forty female caregivers participated, resulting in 13,873 diary events divided into three categories: committed activities; obligatory activities; and discretionary time activities. The results revealed that the respondents: (1) worked extremely long hours, lacked leisure and felt lonely and tired; but (2) were nevertheless able to experience leisure during their work, obligatory and discretionary time. The line between work and leisure was blurred, and respondents' lives in Taiwan revealed a complex picture of leisure and caregiving. For the female professional caregivers in the present study, leisure must be understood within the context of caregiving and family obligations. Research implications are discussed, recommendations to policymakers and employers are offered and directions for future research are canvassed.
As migration and mobility produce new subject positions, they transform and extend locality and create both new subjective experiences of place and new subjectivities. This paper explores the culture of circulation that emerges between a migrant sending village in the Philippines and Hong Kong, as it is created through the mobility of female contract workers.
International labour migration remains a staple feature of the global economy. Especially since the early 1970s, many governments throughout south and southeast Asia have embarked upon overseas employment programmes in an effort to facilitate economic growth and development. In response, a sizeable body of work has emerged to ascertain the effectiveness of overseas employment. Whereas considerable work has examined the volume and destinations of international labour migration, decidedly fewer studies have analysed the origins of migrant workers from labour-sending states. As such, policy formulation is potentially jeopardised, as governments are ill-prepared to specify with any certainty whether migration ameliorates or exacerbates regional inequalities. Using special data-sets provided for the author, this paper examines the regional origins and attributes of overseas contract workers from the Philippines. In the first analysis, the relative contribution of overseas employment is examined. In the second analysis, migrant labour-force participation rates –disaggregated by age, educational attainment and geographic region – are calculated. Findings from the first analysis suggest that regions adjacent to, and including, the National Capital Region are over-represented in their overall contribution to international labour migration. Findings from the second analysis suggest that the labour-absorptive capacity of the Philippines is less for those with some college education, and that the greatest impact of labour export is felt in the areas adjacent to the National Capital Region. Moreover, patterns of migrant origins are contingent upon structural, institutional and social factors. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Abstract This paper aims at examining the influence of the migrant-host group relations on migration networks by analyzing the case of Filipina migration as domestic helpers to Hong Kong. Since the stability of the migrants' relationship with their host group members is a crucial factor in the formation of migration chain, focus is put on the face-to-face relationship between Filipina helpers and Chinese employers.
In regard to the type of helper-employer relationship, two different aspects have been suggested; one is exploitative and the other genial. The exploitative relationship develops when employers take advantage of 'the migrants' less protected legal status, but it is a threat to sustaining stable, long-term employment of the helpers. The genial relationship develops from concern, but it also has the danger of deteriorating the basic employer-employee relationship. In order to avoid these two extremes, the adjusted form of relationship develops, which reduces the strain in the employment relationship by the genial atmosphere, and prevents it from collapsing by providing employers with senior authority in their quasi-familial relationship with their helpers.
This transformed relationship keeps the helper-employer relation stable. preventing it from being endangered by its limited geniality, while encouraging them in mutual trust through moderate friendship. Being based on mutual trust, it also facilitates the development of migration networks by duplicating itself through the kinship networks of both parties.
International labour migration has increased in scale and scope during the past three decades. Concomitant, a copious body of work has examined the causes and consequences of these migratory systems. Missing, however, have been empirically-grounded studies of migration fields, linking migrant origins within a sending country with destinations. In part, this lack of detailed studies results from the paucity of geographically-sensitive data. Using special tabulations provided for the lead author, this paper is able to overcome these difficulties. Specifically, in this paper we document and empirically analyse, by sex, the spatial and occupation patterns of Philippine international labour migration. Findings suggest that female migrant workers, regardless of regional origin within the Philippines, tend to be more spatially and occupationally channellised than their male counterparts. Moreover, more peripheral locations throughout the Philippines indicate more highly channellised flows, suggesting the importance of both recruitment-related networks as well as social networks among migrants and their families.
This article is based on 18 focus group discussions (FDGs) conducted among elderly and adult children in varying urban/rural and class contexts. According to most participants, the majority of Filipino elderly prefer co-residence. Co-residence involves various types, each of which is defined according to the resources, needs, and life stage of the family. Although co-residence benefit the elderly and younger family members, it also entails some costs. Mechanisns supporting and weakening co-residence are also discussed in the article. Social change seems to have both positive and negative implications for living arrangements. Further research is needed to specify which conditions lead to which direction and nature of change.
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