Filipino Migrants as Agents of Change
Dr Mina Roces is a Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture at the University of New South Wales
This year marks fifty years since President Ferdinand Marcos signed the labour code that sent Filipino workers all over the world leaving around ten million/ ten percent of the population as migrants today. Since then, migration has been driven predominantly by labour, with both popular culture and scholarship in Philippine migration studies depicting the migrant as a disenfranchised labourer. However, by exploring the perspectives of Filipino migrants themselves, through written sources that I call “migrant archives”, new ways of understanding the migrant experience beyond that of disenfranchised labourer emerge.
After half a century, migrants have become agents of change able to influence the business, economic and cultural landscapes of both their homeland and their host country as well as challenging traditional social norms. Filipino migrants, far from disenfranchised labourers, should be re-conceptualised as critics of social and cultural constructions of gender and sexuality, as consumers, investors, philanthropists and historians of their own past.
Juanita’s Story
After twenty years working as a nanny in Hong Kong, Juanita was disappointed with the cold reception she received from her children when returning on holiday to the Philippines. She made the difficult decision to return to Hong Kong indefinitely where she felt valued and needed as a volunteer with an NGO promoting the rights and welfare of domestic workers. She reflected on the change:
“I hoped and dreamt that I will leave Hong Kong for good. And home I went with all the expectations and I came to realize that to be lovingly welcomed by my family after twenty years of not being with them was an illusion. I thought my children would be happy to be with me. I dreamt of going out with them, playing with my grand children (sic), just doing things together as a family. I guess I spent too long in Hong Kong, I failed to realize that I really don’t know them at all. And they don’t know me at all, too. For them, I was just the mother that sent them their allowances without fail every month.”
Juanita’s account documents the pain she felt when her children took her for granted. Her daughter did not meet her at the airport and was too busy to spend time with her, so Juanita spent her holiday alone. Her own children’s lack of affection for her contrasted greatly with that of her ward in Hong Kong who told her she was very welcome to return there because her cooking was much missed. In despair, she told her daughter:
“I came home to see my kids, I didn’t find them here! I went to Hong Kong to give you a future. I think you already had one. I am going back to Hong Kong so I will have one too!”
Juanita’s story ended with her decision to return to Hong Kong to build her life there volunteering her free time to assist migrants in distress. This was a difficult decision for her because she knew that it was undermining social expectations of motherhood. She confided in her best friend Mary, admitting: “I felt so guilty afterwards but Mary assured me it was nobody’s fault. My children had found a life of their own without me. I need to find one, too.”
What is radical about Juanita’s story?
Sadly, Juanita’s story is not unique. Her decision to embark on a life of her own, separate from her children and family, was a radical move. Juanita rejected the cultural construction of the ideal mother as the suffering martyr who lives only for her offspring. She redefined ‘family’ when she chose to transfer her affection to her ward in Hong Kong who missed her, rather than attempt to win back the love and affection of her own biological children. Rejecting the role of mother, one so intrinsic to Filipino cultural constructions of the feminine, was at the very least controversial. She found fulfilment as an active member of an NGO which she saw as her new ‘family’, challenging the connections between gender and motherhood and altering the definition of the family.
Migrants as agents of change
Shopping and spending are important rituals in the day-to-day affirmation of migrants’ new status as middle class, their purchasing power has a tremendous impact – transforming the Philippine business landscape and generating enormous profits for the lucky businesses that they chose to patronise. For example, Filipina overseas domestic workers’ addiction to romance novels catapulted this genre to bestseller status, forever transforming the history of the genre in the Philippines. Additionally, Filipino migrant subscriptions to The Filipino Channel (TFC) had, by its 20th anniversary (in 2013), accounted for forty per cent of the profits of its mother company ABS-CBN. There is also the invented tradition of sending parcels of gifts (balikbayan boxes) back to the Philippines that has enabled courier companies to thrive and changed social traditions of reciprocity. Whereas previously gifts meant that the receiver was required to reciprocate, migrants now send gifts from overseas without any expectation that the recipients will return the gesture.
Migrants have also been able to alter the host countries where they live and work. In Australia, Filipina activists succeeded in altering migration law relating to domestic violence, demonstrating that policy can be shaped by a marginal minority group.
Filipino permanent residents in the United States and Australia also participate in many philanthropic projects. Philippine International Aid – The Children’s Fund, based in San Francisco, spent around US$90,000 a year for 30 years (between 1986–2013) providing tuition and material support for underprivileged children in the Philippines benefitting around 300,000 families. The Philippine-Australian Medical Association (PAMA) treated around 1,500 patients each time they visited the country, and the Philippine Medical Society of Northern California saw 60,000 patients in the sixteen years leading up to 2003.
Migrants have also become historians of their own past. Filipina/o/x Americans began to write their own histories as a form of advocacy, documenting the contribution Filipinos have made to the US over a century of migration. The Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) which has (as of 2021) thirty-eight local chapters successfully lobbied to have October celebrated as Filipino American History month in the United States, and in 2014 inaugurated its own museum in Stockton, California. The histories published by FANHS members present a counter discourse celebrating the achievements of Filipina/o/x Americans, dismantling the negative stereotypes about this minority group. In their drive to become recognised and to have control over the portrayal of their own past, Filipina/o/x Americans marked themselves as custodians of Philippine history and culture worldwide. They rejected their status as marginal actors developing an alternative narrative in which they are the heroes and the heroines.
Finally, like Juanita, each migrant also experienced their own metamorphosis. Consider the stories of Josie and Carmen. Josie came from a poor family in the province of Pangasinan and was forced to leave primary school in the 6th grade because her family could not afford to pay for her education. She became a domestic worker in Paris in 1994 where she became the first Filipina to take her employer to court for “modern slavery”. She won the case. The French Union who represented her – the CFDT or Confédération française démocratique du travail – offered her a job. In my interview with her in 2008, she told her life story with an enormous amount of pride and a clear self-awareness of her own journey from a domestic worker with primary school qualifications to a union advocate for the rights of exploited workers. Carmen went to Singapore as a domestic worker and joined the NGO – Humanitarian Organisation for Migrant Economics (HOME). In 2010, she spoke in a closed door session of the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation to give testimony on the issue of decent conditions for domestic workers.
Would Josie have been given a professional job as a union advocate and would Carmen have been given the chance to address the United Nations in Geneva if they had never left the Philippines? Filipino migrants have forever changed the status quo in their homeland and their host countries, but each migrant has also experienced his or her own self-transformation.
*The title picture is of Filipino domestic workers meeting at the weekend in Hong Kong’s business district before flying to the Philippines for a holiday.
The opinions expressed are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.
Read more from Dr Mina Roces –
The Filipino Migration Experience: Global Agents of Change
This book introduces a new dimension to the usual depiction of migrants as disenfranchised workers or marginal ethnic groups. Mina Roces suggests alternative ways of conceptualizing Filipino migrants as critics of the family and cultural constructions of sexuality, as consumers and investors, as philanthropists, as activists, and, as historians. They have been able to transform fundamental social institutions and well-entrenched traditional norms, as well as alter the business, economic and cultural landscapes of both the homeland and the host countries to which they have migrated.
