Robyn Rodriguez,
"Domestic Debates: Constructions of Gendered Migration from the Philippines"
(page 2 of 8)
This article offers a discussion of domestic debates in the
Philippines, mapping out how civil society and state actors construct
the issue of women's employment as domestics in different, yet sometimes
overlapping ways. Indeed, civil society actors, including feminist and
women-centered NGOs, during the height of the debates produced
representations of migrant women that drew on patriarchal logics in
their bid to effect reforms to Philippine migration policy. Their
constructions of migrant women resonate in important ways with those
produced by Philippine migration officials themselves. As a consequence,
civil society actors find themselves unwittingly colluding with the
state in enacting laws that only serve to discipline women and to
conform to dominant notions of gender and sexuality.[3]
Without denying
the very real conditions of exploitation and violence Filipina women
face while working in low-wage, low-status jobs as foreigners overseas,
this paper aims to critically evaluate different migrant advocates
attempts at struggling against those conditions. As Na Young argues in
her study of an anti-trafficking campaign on behalf of Filipina
prostitutes in South Korea:
If we continue to position women as vulnerable victims to
be protected, women's symbolic position within a patriarchal capitalist
society cannot be challenged. The images of helpless exploited
prostitutes may reproduce pre-existing gender ideologies to fulfill
masculinist national interests, where a woman serves as the symbolic
boundary marker of nation and gender. Therefore, we must keep in mind
that the feminist task should be to produce critical, radical, and thus
subversive theories other than those of oppression—not only to see a
more comprehensive picture of transnational prostitution, but also to
decolonize the allegories of woman.[4]
Lee's argument is relevant to the this study, as public sentiment
around women employed as foreign domestic workers often elicits
responses similar to those elicited by sex work.
It is my hope that the research presented here can open up new lines
of sociological inquiry on gender and migration. Specifically, there
continues to be a paucity of scholarship examining the gendered
consequences of migration for the societies that women leave behind.
This paper attempts to address this lacuna through an examination of
contestations over women's migration in the Philippine context.[5]
The research discussed here draws from a range of methods including
interview and archival research, as well as secondary research to
analyze what I am calling the domestic debates. I conduct a
discursive analysis of empirical studies done by the Social Weather
Stations, a non-profit survey research center, and survey and interview
research conducted by migrant worker NGOs. While on their own these
studies offer important empirical and analytical insights on women's
migration from the Philippines, I examine this scholarship,
alternatively, to track the ways in which they discursively constructed
women's migration.
The SWS was, and continues to be, important in shaping public
discourse about specific state policies, and Philippine politics
generally, through its sponsorship of major national opinion surveys.
Between the years of 1991, when Maricris Sioson was murdered, and 1995,
the year Flor Contemplacion was hanged, the SWS conducted several
surveys on the issue of international migration more broadly, and
women's migration specifically, and published eight reports detailing
their results. Though the first set of surveys during the early part of
the period that demarcate the domestic debates, were focused
mainly on the economic aspects of international migration, that is,
whether workers sought work abroad, or whether migrants engaged in
self-employment or entrepreneurial activities when they returned, the
SWS surveys later became more focused on the public's perceptions of
women and international migration. Moreover, the surveys
concerned themselves with assessing whether the state was regulating
women's migration well enough.[6]
During the same period, a range of migrant workers' NGOs, including
church-based and self-described feminist NGOs, conducted and published
social scientific research to advocate for migration reforms. While
there are dozens of migrant worker NGOs in the Philippines, I focused on
three NGOs that exhibited closer ties to state officials, and were
therefore arguably more influential in shaping state policy. The Women
in Development (WID) Foundation's research for instance, was actually in
their words a, "GO-NGO (Government Organization-Non-Government
Organization) collaborative project," with the purpose of enabling WID
to help the government craft "gender-sensitive" programs.[7] The
Philippine Overseas Employment Administration allowed WID access to over
three thousand domestic workers over the course of six months to conduct
its research.[8]
SENTRO (Sentro ng Manggagawang Pilipina or Women
Workers' Center), was amongst the conveners of two networks of
migrant-serving NGOs including the Women Overseas Workers NGO Network
(WOW-NET) and the Philippine Migrants' Rights Watch (PMRW). SENTRO
conducted its own research as a means of advocating for women migrants
and involved key migration officials in the publication of their
research. SENTRO claimed, "This book is part of our advocacy ... aimed at
influencing public response and policy for the sector".[9] Alongside
social scientific research, NGOs like the Kanlungan Center, participated
in policy discussions with migration officials, with transcripts later
published.[10]
To understand the state's roles in shaping the domestic
debates, I draw on archival research of governmental documents,
both internal and public, from 1991 to 1995, to which I gained access
during the course of fourteen months of field research in the
Philippines from 2000-2001. During my time in the field, I conducted
interviews with several dozen migration officials of different ranks
throughout the migration bureaucracy. My aim was to understand how
bureaucrats interpret and implement different migration policies and
laws. I use some of my interview research here.
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