Robyn Rodriguez,
"Domestic Debates: Constructions of Gendered Migration from the Philippines"
(page 6 of 8)
Vulnerable Women and the Paternal State
If the SWS survey constituted and reflected gendered notions of
women's labor in families and constructions of Philippine nationalism in
a global context, it also produced gendered understandings of the
state's relationship and responsibilities toward women migrants.
Returning to the 1994 "Public Attitudes" survey report, it states:
[T]he character of female emigration has changed. There
are many more young and single women, originating from further flung
Philippine provinces. Hired as housemaids, singers and dancers, these
women work at jobs that are inherently difficult, dangerous and are
unprotected by labor law in many receiving countries.[30]
In this quote, migrant women are characterized as innocent, young and
nubile. The report appears to suggest that because the profile of
migrant women is younger and more rural than previous cohorts, they have
less control over their migration decisions because they lack experience
and skills.
Migrant-serving NGOs produced similar constructions of women
migrants. Amongst the conclusions SENTRO makes in its study of migrant
women is that they suffer from "values disorientation." They suggest
that the "adverse effects on the migrant workers and his/her family can
be minimized if they have the necessary skills and competencies to deal
with the challenges and situations they are confronted with."[31] Despite
the seeming gender neutrality (he/she) of this recommendation for
reform, SENTRO was quite specific in other parts of this report (which I
cite earlier in this article) that migrant women were the ones who
suffered from "values disorientation."
In a study included in WID's published collection of research on
women's migration, a similar observation is made by one researcher. The
study notes that women migrating as domestic workers overlook the
psychological costs their work overseas have for their children.
Instead they chose to "advance a rationalization by entertaining the
emotional pain by those grandiose visualizations of material things at
that moment (similar to applying an emotional band-aid over a deep
emotional wound)."[32]
These constructions of Filipina migrants are aimed at compelling the
state to respond with migration reform. They rely, however, on specific
gendered logics. Because women choosing employment abroad do so either
out of youthful and/or rural ignorance or as a consequence of
deficiencies in their values systems, they ultimately require
intervention by the paternal state to prevent them from harming their
families and the nation.[33]
Whether women lack moral gumption or are
simply infantile, the state must assume better paternal custody over
them. It must control its innocent, if sometimes wayward, daughters.
State actors, however, were initially ambivalent about the domestic
debates produced and circulated by civil society actors and continued to
be fairly ambivalent when the Flor Contemplacion case first erupted in
public protests. A policy analysis produced by the Department of Labor
and Employment, in response to the initial news about Contemplacion's
imminent hanging, states:
It is the exception to the norm that makes the news, and
in recent days we have been flooded with media accounts of the travails
of some of our overseas workers. But the truth is that only a very
few—less than one thousand—of all our migrant workers ever get into
trouble. The great majority are an unalloyed benefit both to their host
countries and to their homeland.[34]
Here, the state characterizes Contemplacion's case, and other similar
cases, as anomalous and not a consequence of inherent problems with
women's out-migration. Moreover, state officials believed that
communist insurgency would have a greater impact on the Philippines:
At present the country is reeling from the political
fallout of the Flor Contemplacion case.... Against these headaches, however,
there is one major political benefit that is well-nigh uncalculable.
And this is that overseas employment—in mopping up part of our labor
surplus—provides for greater political and social stability in the
country. One study of the effect of the OCW program on the Communist
insurgency notes that the program has deprived the movement of many
recruits. And the misery index, which the insurgents count on, has been
immeasurably affected by the remittances of OCWs to their families and
their communities.[35]
Here the state takes a very different understanding of the Filipino
family and national stability. Whereas for civil society actors,
Filipino families, and the nation more broadly, are destabilized by the
absence of women, for the state, the presence of remittances in the
family is what secures the nation's stability. Families are the
nation's bulwarks against the threat of communism.
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Next page
|