Overseas Contract

Mia Alvar

There are over two million Filipinos overseas scattered at nearly every corner of the world. Mia
Alvar's Overseas Contract is a literary depiction of how the overseas migration phenomenon has been
animated in Filipino society. Going overseas is a reactionary result of Filipino working class due to poverty
and joblessness during Martial Law era. The story resonates the uncertainty of one's future in a foreign
land. This literary text is a social analysis of the effects of uprooting oneself from one's native place and
cultural identity. It is arguably a story about class dynamics, migration and kinship.

The story started by introducing the main characters Andoy and his sister who live in the slums.
Andoy is working as a live-in chauffeur to a rich family in the suburbs. He would always drop off and pick
up his sister from campus in Cadillac. Despite their family’s financial incapability, Andoy still tries to send
his sister to an elite school

Class Mobility

“Love’s a miracle, not a disaster.” For Ligaya, a woman of elite background, to fall in love with Andoy, a
low class citizen, is socially unacceptable as the social elite sees it as shameful and disgraceful. Ligaya
being identified as an elite should have had a promising future. Her beauty could have been her assurance
of her high social status, yet, she opted to have an affair with Andoy which would eventually lead her
living in a swamp. On the contrary, Andoy’s sister despite being economically disadvantaged studies hard
to get out of the poverty cycle. Here, education is depicted as an equalizer for the poor. However, it would
take enormous effort for Andoy’s sister to achieve what they are dreaming of---a comfortable and better
quality of life.

With Andoy's sister going to college and her girlfriend impregnated with his twins, he was compelled to
look for a job with a higher paying salary. The unfavorable economic environment in the Philippines has
brought him to look for job opportunities abroad—in the Middle East. He got lucky with his employer who
trusted him with his car collections. Andoy was paid well which was a great relief for his family especially
his sister as she can now enjoy a full-time college education. The remittances of Andoy alleviated his
family's poverty and now have the convenience to make their ends meet. According to Resto S. Cruz I:

Today, class and status continue to be salient in the context of overseas migration, as
class and status anxieties emanating from the Philippines’s upper and middle classes
inform representations of migrants. These anxieties are partly responsible for the
negative representation of overseas migrants, both male and female, accordingly bear
testament to how migration provides material and symbolic challenges to prevailing
socioeconomic hierarchies. More generally, these anxieties index how structures of class
and status may be shifting in the contemporary Philippines (Cruz 532-533).

The interplay between the rich and the poor are clearly indicated by the desire of people on the lower
class like Andoy who are financially challenged to achieve a higher socioeconomic class or status. The story
provides us with the lens that ascribed statuses are not permanent. Social and economic privileges can
give a person an advantage, however, it does not instantly equate and assure a successful future. On the
other hand, people with contrived social class and status often those who come from the lower class need
to struggle and work harder to achieve the same success as to those with ascribed class and status. With
more Filipinos working abroad, more Filipino families will have the chance to leap from lower class to
middle or upper social class challenging the present socioeconomic hierarchies.

Labor Migration as Threat to Family

The story unfolded as

Globalization

Commodification of People

Migration

Poverty (Class Struggle)

Urbanization

Hybrid Identity