Week 7-1

Migrants for
Export
INTD 200
February 13, 2024
Kazue Takamura
Essay
Writing
Support on
February 16
by Student
Partners with
McGill Wring
Center
A labor brokerage state?
Organization of the lecture
today

Labor Institutiona
brokerage l Discursive
"migrant
A neoliberal “bureaucracy citizenship"
strategy? ”
Robyn
Rodriguez.2010.

Migrants for
Export
What is a labor-brokerage state?
Why does the study matter?
Why does the study matter?

A
neolib
Labor-
eral
export
econo
policie
mic
s
strate
gy
 Labor brokerage – a neoliberal
strategy
“Labor brokerage is a neoliberal
strategy that is comprised of
institutional and discursive
practices through which the Philippine
state mobilizes its citizens and sends
them abroad to work for employers
throughout the world while generating
a ‘profit’ from the remittances that
migrants send back to their families
and loved ones remaining in the
What are the key
ingredients for
successful labor
brokerage?
 A labor brokerage state
Key attributes

Instit Disc
ution ursiv
al e

Bureaucracy Migrant citizenship

Facilitation + (moral norms)
regulation
Top destinations for
Filipino migrant workers?
Remittances
– COVID 19
History of labor brokerage
50 years
 Remittances - ”mandatory”

By 1983, with Executive Order 857

required that remittances be sent
through the Philippine banking
systems. Different groups of
workers were required to remit
different percentages of their
salaries.” (Rodriguez p81)

Domestic workers: How much

percentage of the salary was
required to send back home?
 Balikbayan (nation returnee)
program

The ability to bring in two duty- and

tax-free balikbayan boxes in lieu of
luggage upon returning to the
Philippines, the opportunity to
purchase up to $1000 worth of duty-
free merchandise upon arrival…
(Rodriguez p81)
Labor brokerage system:
Institutional forms
Philippine Overseas
Employment
Administration (POEA)
Bureaucracy

Deployme
Training
nt

Border
Welfare
control
 Bureaucracy
Philippine Overseas
Employment
Administration(1982
)

Technical Education
and Skills Department of
Development Foreign Affairs
Authority 1994

Overseas Workers
Welfare
Administration
(1977)
 Commodification
Promotion of “Able and
productive workers”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr2o
xSPNn4I

• What are the key messages of this

video?
• Promotion of OFWs - “Skilled, qualified,
adaptable, professional, trust-worthy”
• The role of the state – regulation,
certificates, authorization, monitoring
 Dual mandate

Philippines – “Our foreign policy been

reduced to one item: promoting the
export of our workers and securing
their welfare abroad.”
 Bureaucracy
Border control
 Bureaucracy
the authority to control mobility
“States have ‘monopolized the
authority to legitimately control the
movements of people across national
borders;”

“labor-sending brokerage states are

able to play a role in the global
regulation of workers in a way
nonstate actors simply cannot”
(Rodriguez p.xxiv)
OFW counters at the Manila
Airport
A transnational space of
migrant surveillance?
Labor-
receiving

Middleme Labor-
n sending
 Brokerage state
uthorization of middlemen (brokers)
 Training:
Authorization of skills

Technical Education and Skills

Development Authority (TESDA)

http://www.tesda.gov.ph

Promotion of “able and disciplined

bodies”
Protection
(welfare)
 Discursive forms
“migrant citizenship”
 Moral economy
OFWs as “heroes”?
Migrant nationalism?
 Promotion of new
citizenship
Promotion of new citizenship
(migration as a citizen’s right as
well as an obligation)
• Promotion of “national heroes”
(rewards)
• Promotion of existing religious and
family values to migrant workers
• Rhetoric of “a good Catholic”, “a
good mother/father”, “a good
Pre-departure workshops
 Forced repatriation
as a tool for citizen worker discipline?

“they are willing to

discipline those who
threaten the Philippines’
relations with foreign
employers and host
countries through forced
repatriation” (Rodriguez
p.xxvii)
 Duterte’s discipline of a Taiwan-
based Filipina domestic worker

“The Philippine government’s accusation of a

Taiwan-based Filipina migrant caregiver, Elanel
Egot Ordidor, for committing a crime of cyber libel
under the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. The
Philippine government asked Taiwan to deport
Ordidor for her cyber law violations. According to a
press statement issued by the Philippines
Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on
April 25, 2020, Elanel Egot Ordidor posted a
series of videos criticizing Duterte’s lockdown
policy in the Philippines in April 2020. “
 A trade-off?

Risks/
costs
Opportun (brain
ities drain,
left-
(remittan
behind
ces)
families,
care
deficits)
 A legal human trafficking?

“the Philippine state engages

in nothing more than ‘legal
human trafficking” (Rodriguez
p.x)