Robyn Rodriguez,
"Domestic Debates: Constructions of Gendered Migration from the Philippines"
(page 5 of 8)
Gendered Migration and the Philippine Nation
Alongside the concerns about the consequences of women's migration on
their families were concerns about the consequences of women's migration
on the nation more broadly. In the same "Public Attitudes" survey,
gauging respondents' perspectives on the impacts of Filipina migration
within the context of the family, the SWS also asked respondents to what
extent they agreed or disagreed with the test statement, "Women working
abroad bring shame to our country."[22]
That alongside questions on
women's migration and family was a question on national shame relates to
McClintock's argument that, "nations are figured through the iconography
of familial and domestic space."[23]
The questions on the "Public
Attitude" survey rest on the logic that women's employment as low-wage,
low-status workers has negative implications for the global
representation of the Philippine nation-state.
While the "Public Attitudes" survey results revealed that there was
little consensus amongst respondents across gender, class and region,
the SWS came to the following conclusion:
[O]n the statement that women workers overseas bring
shame to the country, the predominant position is disagreement (47
percent). Still, the percentages who outright agree (21 percent) and
those who neither agree nor disagree (32 percent) are, uncomfortably
high.[24]
By discussing the findings in this way, SWS effectively colludes in
producing women's migration as a national shame even as the "objective"
figures do not indicate that the feeling of nationalist shame is
widespread. Indeed, it can been argued that the SWS' findings reveal
that most people (79 percent) either do not believe that women's
migration is shameful or are ambivalent, even as they may be concerned
about its effects on families. Yet, the SWS concludes that people's
sense of shame is "uncomfortably" high. By highlighting the
uncomfortable "fact" of nationalist shame, the SWS ultimately produces
it as an issue.
Radcliffe notes how, "social identities, including national
identities, are constituted through relations of intersubjectivity, that
is the (partial) internalisation of others' images of oneself."[25]
Survey respondents' (and survey researchers') beleaguered sense of
nationalism is shaped by this intersubjective process, but within an
international arena. As Neferti Tadiar argues, the migration of
domestic workers produces nationalist anxieties about the Philippines'
global status.[26]
The hypervisibility of Filipinas abroad as domestic
workers and their invisibility at "home" (that is, the household and the
nation-state) raises concerns about the gendered representation of the
Philippine nation-state in the global context. Though Filipina migrants
work overseas as caregivers to other children, what is more desirable is
that they act as caregivers to their own children in their homes in the
Philippines. It is precisely because Filipina migrants care for the
children of other nations as low-status domestic workers that anxieties
about the Philippine nation emerge.
In a dialogue organized by migrant advocates (which was comprised of
both migration scholars and staff members of migrant-serving NGOs) aimed
at offering policy recommendations to migration officials who were also
participants, concerns about the migration of women as domestic workers
and its impact on the nation's subject-status emerged. A representative
from Kanlungan, a migrant NGO bemoaned, "More female workers are now
going out and what kind of jobs do they get? Domestic helpers."[27]
Implicit in this NGO staff member's critique of the Philippine
state's export of domestic workers is a critique of the nature of this
particular form of work. Though migrant women activists have often
called for the valuation of domestic work, indeed, Filipina migrant
activists have frequently called less for the banning of domestic work
but instead for better terms of employment, this NGO staffer ultimately
shares the perspective that domestic worker is "shameful."[28]
The issue of Filipinas' sexuality is of particular concern in
relation to migrants employed as entertainers. Indeed, the dialogue I
discuss above was initiated precisely out of a concern that, "the
country has been demeaned as the global supplier of maids, entertainers,
and in Japan, specifically of prostitutes."[29] In the case of
entertainers who are characterized as no different from prostituted
women, the nation-state is shamed because it cannot control its women,
whose fate is in the hands of foreign men.
In either case, whether women work as domestic workers or as
entertainers, the state is shamed for its inability to ensure that women
live up to idealized notions of femininity and sexuality. Even when
shame is not at issue, but rather concern for victimized women, civil
society actors come to the same conclusion, that is, that the state must
better protect women migrants.
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