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Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World
Migrant workers from the Philippines are ubiquitous to global capitalism, with nearly 10 percent of the population employed in almost two hundred countries. In a visit to the United States in 2003, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even referred to herself as not only the head of state but also “the CEO of a global Philippine enterprise of eight million Filipinos who live and work abroad.” Robyn Magalit Rodriguez investigates how and why the Philippine government transformed itself into what she calls a labor brokerage state, which actively prepares, mobilizes, and regulates its citizens for migrant work abroad. Filipino men and women fill a range of jobs around the globe, including domestic work, construction, and engineering, and they have even worked in the Middle East to support U.S. military operations. At the same time, the state redefines nationalism to normalize its citizens to migration while fostering their ties to the Philippines. Those who leave the country to work and send their wages to their families at home are treated as new national heroes. Drawing on ethnographic research of the Philippine government’s migration bureaucracy, interviews, and archival work, Rodriguez presents a new analysis of neoliberal globalization and its consequences for nation-state formation.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 24, 2019
I was really glad I read this book. It is quite academic in style, it reads a bit like a PhD thesis, but I think that is how it started. Because of my current context living in Singapore, the whole thing was really interesting for me, I couldn't put the book down. It filled in a shameful gap in my awareness - I had no idea how ignorant I was! I thought people from the Philippines migrated for work overseas as a personal initiative, arising from poverty and desperate prospects in their own country, and then often landing in even more desperate, vulnerable and exploitative situations overseas.
As ever, it is more complex. I knew it was a nation with a long colonial history, ruled by a series of corrupt governments, servicing awful international debts and under pressure to implement austerity, neo-liberal style. What I didn't realise was the way the government of the Philippines is involved in the systematic brokering of its citizens' labour to the world, under conditions that have very little benefit to the individual but rather serve the interests of global capitalism at its worst, cynically supplying cheap labour to a so-called free market, while failing to protect its citizens' basic and contractual rights.
It was fascinating reading Rodriguez's analysis of the national discourse around migrant identity, and the various ways individuals are shaped to 'choose' to 'invest' their most productive years in this way, not only for themselves, but for their families and their country, before returning home.
The Philippine economy is in desperate shape and doubtless there is need for migration, and there are stories of those who made good as well as the dire stories of abuse. Perhaps it is not wrong for a government to 'manage' migration in such circumstances, to broker opportunities and protective contracts for its citizens. But how do we define 'opportunity' if the very term Filipino/Filipina is overwhelmingly associated with the most menial, demeaning, ill-paid and vulnerable jobs around the world? And what is a protective contract worth if the government is unable or unwilling to enforce it, preferring to keep the market happy with a flow of docile bodies? And what is freedom, where a free market forces migration of the most desperate to provide the services and factory products the rest of the world demands more and more cheaply?
As ever, it is more complex. I knew it was a nation with a long colonial history, ruled by a series of corrupt governments, servicing awful international debts and under pressure to implement austerity, neo-liberal style. What I didn't realise was the way the government of the Philippines is involved in the systematic brokering of its citizens' labour to the world, under conditions that have very little benefit to the individual but rather serve the interests of global capitalism at its worst, cynically supplying cheap labour to a so-called free market, while failing to protect its citizens' basic and contractual rights.
It was fascinating reading Rodriguez's analysis of the national discourse around migrant identity, and the various ways individuals are shaped to 'choose' to 'invest' their most productive years in this way, not only for themselves, but for their families and their country, before returning home.
The Philippine economy is in desperate shape and doubtless there is need for migration, and there are stories of those who made good as well as the dire stories of abuse. Perhaps it is not wrong for a government to 'manage' migration in such circumstances, to broker opportunities and protective contracts for its citizens. But how do we define 'opportunity' if the very term Filipino/Filipina is overwhelmingly associated with the most menial, demeaning, ill-paid and vulnerable jobs around the world? And what is a protective contract worth if the government is unable or unwilling to enforce it, preferring to keep the market happy with a flow of docile bodies? And what is freedom, where a free market forces migration of the most desperate to provide the services and factory products the rest of the world demands more and more cheaply?
September 30, 2010
A dry, straightforward read about the Philippines as a labor brokerage nation. An important book, but I wanted to hear more from the workers' perspective. This is an ethnography of the state, so there's no room for that, but a complementary volume of the workers' voices would be fantastic.
January 17, 2024
3.5. I haven’t read much academic literature that focuses on Overseas Filipino Workers so this was a welcome read. This book details the history of how OFWs were elevated into the national imagination as heroes and how the Philippine state “brokers” their passage into foreign lands as temporary workers. Rodriguez is critical of how the state capitalizes on its citizens by specializing in the process of commodifying them under the pretense of goading them into serving the nation, when in reality their modus operandi of sorts is to form meek and docile workers willing to be exploited in order to extract as much value from them in the form of forced repatriations, while throwing their hands up whenever labor disputes occur.
In other words, human labor is the Philippines’ top export and the state very willingly facilitates this process because they make a lot of money doing so. Laborers seeking to work abroad for higher wages end up having to pay a lot of processing fees and often fall into debt for the “opportunity” to leave the country. And once they’re out the state not only extracts more money from them through miscellaneous bureaucratic fees but by pressuring them send back to the Philippines a large percent of the profits they make into Philippine banks back home, ostensibly to send back money to their families. They use these ideas of family and nationhood to imbue within workers a sense of national duty, but there is actually a huge disconnect between what they condition potential workers to expect from working abroad and how they’re treated.
For example, many of the protected rights and agreements they get workers to sign on to are actually unenforceable in the countries they go to work in. And so the Philippine state is often rendered powerless in disputes between workers and their foreign employers when their contracts are not followed. Workers are at the mercy of their employers without proper protections by the state. This allows them to be easily exploited once they leave our shores, with no effective structures to protect them other than the expiration of their contracts. They’re told to effectively just suck it up because they’re serving the nation and shouldn’t be selfish about it. If they try to resist they will just be deported.
Growing up in the country, stories of horrid abuse by foreign employers towards their domestic Filipino workers are everywhere. Reading this book one gets a sense that all of these issues, including the rampant exploitation that occurs towards Filipinos, is knowingly allowed for by the state itself. It almost prides itself on its ability to form citizens (through POEA training etc.) who will be unwilling to act on any exploitation towards them and will persist until their value is up. Nationalism, Christianity, familial duty, and “utang na loob” are weaponized by the state against their own citizens in order to successfully rent their bodies for labor abroad. The benefits from these disproportionately benefit foreign employers, local labor brokerage agencies, and the Philippine state. And we’re somehow supposed to be proud about all of this.
Apparently that’s our specialty.
I’d recommend reading this alongside studies on multinational corporations and the globalization of work, value chain analysis, and the discourses on “modern slavery”.
In other words, human labor is the Philippines’ top export and the state very willingly facilitates this process because they make a lot of money doing so. Laborers seeking to work abroad for higher wages end up having to pay a lot of processing fees and often fall into debt for the “opportunity” to leave the country. And once they’re out the state not only extracts more money from them through miscellaneous bureaucratic fees but by pressuring them send back to the Philippines a large percent of the profits they make into Philippine banks back home, ostensibly to send back money to their families. They use these ideas of family and nationhood to imbue within workers a sense of national duty, but there is actually a huge disconnect between what they condition potential workers to expect from working abroad and how they’re treated.
For example, many of the protected rights and agreements they get workers to sign on to are actually unenforceable in the countries they go to work in. And so the Philippine state is often rendered powerless in disputes between workers and their foreign employers when their contracts are not followed. Workers are at the mercy of their employers without proper protections by the state. This allows them to be easily exploited once they leave our shores, with no effective structures to protect them other than the expiration of their contracts. They’re told to effectively just suck it up because they’re serving the nation and shouldn’t be selfish about it. If they try to resist they will just be deported.
Growing up in the country, stories of horrid abuse by foreign employers towards their domestic Filipino workers are everywhere. Reading this book one gets a sense that all of these issues, including the rampant exploitation that occurs towards Filipinos, is knowingly allowed for by the state itself. It almost prides itself on its ability to form citizens (through POEA training etc.) who will be unwilling to act on any exploitation towards them and will persist until their value is up. Nationalism, Christianity, familial duty, and “utang na loob” are weaponized by the state against their own citizens in order to successfully rent their bodies for labor abroad. The benefits from these disproportionately benefit foreign employers, local labor brokerage agencies, and the Philippine state. And we’re somehow supposed to be proud about all of this.
Apparently that’s our specialty.
I’d recommend reading this alongside studies on multinational corporations and the globalization of work, value chain analysis, and the discourses on “modern slavery”.
January 4, 2024
A short, concise and informative read on the Philippines as the labor brokerage state that uses a neoliberal strategy that is comprised of institutional and discursive practices through which it mobilises its citizens and sends them abroad to work for employers throughout the world while generating a “profit” from the remittances.
Makes excellent use of qualitative methods including ethnographic research of the government’s migration bureaucracy, interviews with state officials and migrants, and archival work of government documents to examine the mechanisms by which the Philippine state mobilises, exports, and regulates migrant labour to meet global gendered and racialised labor demand as well as examining how the state has reconfigured Philippine citizenship and invoked Philippine nationalism to normalise its citizens’ out-migration while simultaneously fostering their ties to the Philippines
Particularly good analysis of the role of the Philippine state’s migration agencies in assessing global labor market demands and initiating different kinds of formal and informal relations with foreign governments to ensure out-migration
Makes excellent use of qualitative methods including ethnographic research of the government’s migration bureaucracy, interviews with state officials and migrants, and archival work of government documents to examine the mechanisms by which the Philippine state mobilises, exports, and regulates migrant labour to meet global gendered and racialised labor demand as well as examining how the state has reconfigured Philippine citizenship and invoked Philippine nationalism to normalise its citizens’ out-migration while simultaneously fostering their ties to the Philippines
Particularly good analysis of the role of the Philippine state’s migration agencies in assessing global labor market demands and initiating different kinds of formal and informal relations with foreign governments to ensure out-migration
April 28, 2024
A very interesting and important read. Had to read this for my essay regarding migration, so I found this very informative and useful. I've learnt a lot about the colonial history of the Philippines and how the state is brokering labour - would recommend.
October 3, 2023
really good. explains a lot
March 8, 2023
Really dry/academic in style, but was really interesting nonetheless! It’s especially sobering to read as a fil-am, considering the privileges and autonomy I have as a citizen/passport holder in a labor-receiving, imperialist state like amerika.
“Global capital continues to rely on national boundaries even as neoliberalism demands the diminishing of these boundaries.” This contradiction regarding continued exploitation of OFWs by labor-receiving countries is precisely where the labor brokerage system comes in to mediate.
Prior to reading this, I assumed that Filipinos sought out work abroad on their own accord (sorta). I didn’t realize that the state plays such an active and decisive role in practically every aspect of migrant worker deployment and return abroad. Despite the Philippine government’s seeming incompetence in other areas of work, the labor brokerage system is an extremely efficient machine.
From the text, at the time (published in 2010) the Philippine state was lauded as the model of migration management and had increasing influence on other labor-sending states. I’m not sure how that has developed, but it’s nasty to think about the effectiveness this neoliberal model has within a global imperialist context.
Also, seeing how the state has reframed the exportation of human capital (i.e., OFWs) into a new category of citizenship is so incredibly fucked up. By controlling and shifting this discourse, the Philippine state is able to paint OFWs as national heroes, as opposed to super exploited laborers.
It was also noted that the state also recognizes labor brokerage as a tool to prevent communist insurgency, since they are literally shipping potential recruits to faraway countries
“Global capital continues to rely on national boundaries even as neoliberalism demands the diminishing of these boundaries.” This contradiction regarding continued exploitation of OFWs by labor-receiving countries is precisely where the labor brokerage system comes in to mediate.
Prior to reading this, I assumed that Filipinos sought out work abroad on their own accord (sorta). I didn’t realize that the state plays such an active and decisive role in practically every aspect of migrant worker deployment and return abroad. Despite the Philippine government’s seeming incompetence in other areas of work, the labor brokerage system is an extremely efficient machine.
From the text, at the time (published in 2010) the Philippine state was lauded as the model of migration management and had increasing influence on other labor-sending states. I’m not sure how that has developed, but it’s nasty to think about the effectiveness this neoliberal model has within a global imperialist context.
Also, seeing how the state has reframed the exportation of human capital (i.e., OFWs) into a new category of citizenship is so incredibly fucked up. By controlling and shifting this discourse, the Philippine state is able to paint OFWs as national heroes, as opposed to super exploited laborers.
It was also noted that the state also recognizes labor brokerage as a tool to prevent communist insurgency, since they are literally shipping potential recruits to faraway countries
December 14, 2012
I read this for an Asian American Studies course. I found it both educational and compelling. Our class discussed how it would be better if the author included the worker's voices and stories and I couldn't agree more.
May 26, 2016
Such a great and informing book about Philippines migrants. Shocking information!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews