The social cost of outwards migration

By Belarmino Dabalos Saguing

Rome, Italy 26.09.2013

Philippine outward migration was caused by the chronic poverty in the country . The socio-economic situation during the Marcos era has driven many Filipinos to migrate to other countries to look for a better possibility for their family. This situation was taken advantage of by Filipino heads of state from Marcos to the present regime. The enormous amount of foreign exchange that flows into the country through the remittances sent by the migrant workers has propped the governments in times of crisis, and helped to stabilize the country’s economy.

But the same regimes has turned their back on the migrant workers in times of their setbacks in foreign lands. Instead of assistance, OFWs, as the Filipino migrant workers arte commonly referred to, are ignored, and treated like mere cashcows by every regime that comes to power. The government earns around PhP90M daily from  pre-departure documentation exactions alone not counting the remittances  reaching to US$4.5M daily.

About 70 percent of Filipino migrant workers are women, most of which are mothers and wives. Many of our Filipino female migrant workers are forced to work abroad because of the economic demands and lack of employment opportunities for the father. The phenomenon of the OFW mothers has altered the family landscape in several areas in the country.  

As a result of the gender-oriented migration of the Filipinos, many families have been disoriented, relegating the role normally played by women to the father of the family. Thus many families has lost the guiding light that only mothers could give. Given the chance, an OFW mother will not think twice about dropping everything to come home to a child who is seriously ill. She will email or text reminders for Papa, Kuya, or Ate to make sure that the baby is taken to the health center for vaccination. She will constantly think and worry about her husband’s drinking sprees in the local sari-sari store.  All this as she manages her own sense of yearning, sadness, and guilt for abandoning her wifely and motherly duties in order to make ends meet.

The metaphor “ilaw ng tahanan” assigns the mother to a role that guides her children and her mate. She leads the way, takes part in decision-making on family matters, and acts as a homing beacon for those who need to find their way back home in the dark. She is the one entrusted with the internal needs of the family.

But there is a bright light that shines through these difficult situations OFW families face. In their brokenness, many fathers have realized their own strengths and capacities by going beyond traditional roles in the family. They express this with a clear sense of pride as they see themselves take on both maternal and paternal roles. I witnessed this in the fathers  who dress their young kids and pat them with baby powder and send them out to school. They sat together with their children during meal time making sure each one had enough vegetables on his plate while managing little brewing fights between siblings.

These fathers have learned to rise above their situation and accept their added role with pride. They have found the internal resources to redefine their role. They do not consider it as an exchange or a swapping of responsibilities. They did not appear emasculated by it. They see it as a growth and development of their traditional roles – over and above what they have been conditioned to think and accept simply because it needs to be done.

Fathers and mothers of OFW families, quite often, find themselves in a situation where they still see themselves in their traditional parental roles while they come to terms with the new demands of a transformed family unit. It isn’t really so much a reversal of roles,

In most cases, the father sees no choice but to accept the added role of taga-luto (cook), labandera (laundry man), and tagapag-alaga (caregiver).  He takes this on while still performing his traditional role as income earner (e.g. public transport driver, mechanic, carpenter, part-time or contractual laborer, etc.). He copes with his own sense of inadequacy and failure to bring in enough money for food and other basic needs thereby forcing his wife to take on a role that culture and society have conditioned him to think as traditionally belonging to the man of the house.  Many of them seek relief from a hurt sense of pride by drinking with their friends and reaffirming their male status by engaging in extra-marital affairs. Not all of them become unfaithful but it appears to be accepted as a common occurrence although an unfavorable one.

The ‘pillar’ has risen to the occasion to become the light as well – a very telling sign of how Filipinos are able to reconstruct and redefine themselves in response to the harsh demands of life. Labor migration costs may not justify the social costs to the family unit, but this is the bigger lesson to be learned from the sacrifices made by overseas Filipino workers and from the resilience shown by the families they leave behind.