Rethinking Philippine Labor Export – Analysis

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8c5de1e220d5e99f1ad0adcb7e75b0af Rethinking Philippine Labor Export – AnalysisThe Archipelago’ Rodrigo Duterte. Photo by Keith Kristoffer Bacongco, Wikipedia Common.

The Philippines has a culture of politics-induced office migration. It relies heavily on labour commodity and remittance money but that has resulted in galore negative consequences for the country’s economic and collective development. Notwithstanding President Rodrigo Duterte’s say-so on changing this situation, no imminent replace is expected.

By Arunajeet Kaur*

Despite his stated interest in changing Filipino attitude on abroad employment, it does not look like Prexy Rodrigo Duterte is making inroads on this anterior. Indeed, it does not look like the game plan on Philippine labour export will transform in the foreseeable future. So far President Duterte is qualification headlines more for his foreign engagements with Chinaware, Japan and the United States than closest through with his declared interest on reversing the abroad employment policy.

Since the 1970s, the Archipelago has supplied skilled and low skilled workers to the globe’s more developed regions. By 2050, the Archipelago, projected to be the tenth most populous sovereign state in the world, will also be the fifth maximal supplier of emigrants to OECD (Organisation for Financial Cooperation and Development) countries. This Philippine culture of migration entails the outflow of the youth (55 percent from age group 25-39 second childhood); highly educated (64 percent school graduates); highly skilled (nurses, IT professionals, doctor); and predominantly female service workers (caregivers and trained helpers).

Enter Duterte

Rodrigo Duterte was elective President of the Philippines in May 2016. He is predicted to act otherwise from his predecessors as he is the first Filipino Chairman not from the traditional land owning aristocrats with a power-base in Manila. Duterte’s establishment has been portrayed as a fresh break from by governments. His electoral campaign was focused on pet concerns; progressive social ordinances and the pass down on drugs. He promised change on a subject scale. On the issue of Overseas Filipino Woman (OFW), Duterte has pronounced that working afield should become ‘optional not a necessity’.

Duterte’s post on OFW is a marked change from the attitude of late Filipino presidents, beginning with Ferdinand Marcos in 1974. Marcos issued the Office Code which was to promote overseas shrink work and reap whatever economic aid could be gained from the outflow, principally in terms of foreign exchange and employment. Terminated the presidency of Marcos and his successors the Philippines was to go a specific case study whereby occupation export was adopted as a government policy.

During Prexy Corazon Aquino‘s era, in the 1980s, the Filipino politics began to legislate social justice and man rights for local and overseas labour. The 1995 analysis and execution of the Filipina domestic worker, Flor Contemplacion in Island, turned the protection of migrant worker’s rights into a flaming political issue. This was to spur the endorsed Philippines Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to polestar further on migrant worker welfare and rights which still failed to satisfy many of the government’s critics in the secular society.

Remittances and its Social Dimension

Inside the scale of the family unit in the Philippines, those who enjoy family members sending remittances invest in home have a more elastic disbursal ability on higher education, health anxiety, housing, recreation activities, durables, and carry and communications. Labour migration for the Philippines is a major means in alleviating poverty and inequality. Withal, it has an adverse impact on human capital cush and social dimension.

Brain drain has remained a dominant concern for the Filipino employment and education sphere. Due to limited domestic job opportunities, the educated may judge to withdraw from the Filipino job market and rather embark on a protracted job search process to assure a foreign job. Percentages whereby Filipino alumnus pl alumni fail to find local jobs are highschool and incidence of Filipino graduates finding berth abroad below their skill judgement and educational qualifications is indicative of the de-skilling of office.

Over-education is the over investment in higher tutelage fuelled by the expectation of a higher return in alien jobs. Since the objective is to land a alien job, the investment will be made regardless of the job locale in the domestic economy causing a mismatch ‘tween the skills training of higher education postgraduate and actual skills required by the Philippine manufacture.

The Filipino nursing sector is an apt example of this happening. The steady supply of Filipino nurses dazed is assured by the sustained enrolment in nursing scheme, the opening of more nursing schools and the district nursing labour market which look after the needs of as training ground for future overseas director. As a result, the Philippine health care development is characterised by the high turnover rate of nursing department, acute shortage of skilled nurses, declining benchmark in nursing education and health care and underneath remuneration of nurses and nursing educators in the territory.

The social dimension of labour migration exit in the Philippines consists of the breakdown of traditional sept life, high divorce rate, unmarried parenthood, infidelity and wayward children. For the wanderer workers themselves, unexpected working state that compromise on health, basic busyness and women’s rights result in a state of sufferer-social stress. The need for psycho-communal intervention is necessary as many migrant workman return home with enduring impression and pessimism having undergone low pay, long workings hours and oppressive contracts.

What the OFW Look from Duterte

‘Kabayan4Change’ was launched in the Common States with Filipino migrant woman presenting their aspirations for change covered by the first 100 days of the Duterte management. Through ‘Kabayan4Change’, overseas Filipinos are connection with progressive organisations, sectoral assembly, indigenous people and the struggling majority dorsum home in demanding an economic transformation that builds it unnecessary for Filipinos to seek work publicly to survive.

Initiated by ‘Migrante International’, the rostrum calls for the implementation of a national industrialisation syllabus and genuine land reform to end the current and unsustainable signification dependent and export oriented economy of the Archipelago.

The ‘Kabayan4Change’ movement also cry out on the Duterte government to address the socio fiscal roots of armed conflict, social inequality and forced migrations. In early 2016 it was according that a fall in oil prices and the general lag in global trade might render the OFW sphere as a sunset industry that the Philippine authorities needs to get rid of. This requires Duterte to carry forward keeping his eye on the domestic front and implementing fit measures to lay the foundation for a strong capital comprehensive domestic industry that fuels an bent for entrepreneurial venture.

However, this is not matter-of-fact. Most accounts on the Philippine economy see OFW settlement and business processing operations as the two dominant contributors to public GDP (US$26 billion and US$23 billion mutatis mutandis) for many years to come. At the moment, the adulthood of other revenue generating and job creating sectors is not relinquishment the outcome desired by the policy planners. Inasmuch as, reliance on the contributions of the OFW will remain censorious.

*Arunajeet Kaur PhD is a Visiting Research Partner with the Centre for Non Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at the S. Rajaratnam Cultivate of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Discipline University, Singapore.

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