Trading Labour: Socio-economic and Political Impacts and Dynamics of Labour Export from the Philippines, 1973–2004

The international labour migration of temporary and contracted foreign workers has become one of the most important contemporary labour supply systems for labour-deficit nations and a critical source of foreign exchange earnings for labour-exporting nations. No region in the world has been more profoundly affected by the rapid growth of global demand for migrant workers than in South East Asia. Since the early 1970s, the Philippines has been the dominant labour exporter in the region in terms of the magnitude of its labour trade. Both ordinary Filipinos and the Philippine State have increasingly embraced labour export as a palliative against an ailing economy and extensive poverty, to the extent that even contemplating a future without exporting workers would be untenable for the livelihoods of millions of people, and for national economic and political security. In fact, the Philippines has actively globalised and transformed its economy and society through labour export as a quasi-development strategy, despite the fact it is highly contentious and fraught with political difficulties for the Philippine state resulting from wide-ranging levels labour and human abuse of its nationals working overseas.