Anna Guevarra
UCSF Dept. of Social and Behavioral Sciences
ASA 2003 Submission
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Governing migrant workers through empowerment and sustaining a culture of labor migration: the
case of the Philippines
INTRODUCTION
“While recognizing the significant contribution of Filipino migrant workers to the national economy through their
foreign exchange remittances, the state does not promote overseas employment as a means to sustain economic
growth and achieve national development.”
(Section 2C, Republic Act No. 8042, Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act of 1995, emphasis added)
“19% of Pinoys
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want to leave, say RP
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hopeless”
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(Front page story HEADLINE in the Philippine Daily Enquirer, 6/26/02)
The Philippines has had a long history of migration long before the official proclamation of the
1974 Labor Export Policy which placed it in a strategic and important position of providing a steady labor
pool to more developed nations. This policy reflected the former dictator’s, Ferdinand Marcos’s intention
to promote overseas employment and encourage Filipinos to take advantage of job opportunities abroad.
Following the Marcos regime, the prominence of the idea of migrating outside the Philippines coupled
with a growing sense of national hopelessness are now characteristic of Philippine society which has an
unemployment rate of 11.1% and an underemployment rate of 17.1%. It is a kind of hopelessness that
perhaps drives a teacher or a nurse to work as a domestic worker or a couple to leave their children and
work as caregivers of other people or that which leads young women to apply as dancers and performers
(officially categorized as “entertainers”) despite an awareness that their job will likely involve sex work.
It is a kind of hopelessness that enables the phrase “Mag-abroad na lang tayo” (let’s just go overseas) to
become a popular subject of conversation and that which has transformed Philippine society as a place
which promotes labor migration. Private employment agencies mushrooming on the streets of Manila,
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Abbreviated term for “Filipinos”
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Republic of the Philippines
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According to the article, a survey conducted by an organization called Pulse Asia Inc. revealed that 19% of Filipinos agreed
with the statement that “This country is hopeless and if it were only possible I would migrate to another country and live there.”
Survey points to unemployment and an executive, judicial, and legislative system weakened by political corruption. It also
points to the State as a motivating force for encouraging labor migration.
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