All my life I have been witnessing my parents and relatives’ lives as Overseas

Filipino Workers (OFW). Nonetheless, never in my existence I had the guts to ask them

their personal reasons of working overseas. Growing up with both parents abroad, I was

able to scrutinize some factors that may have led them to choose the path of being an

OFW. Aside from the personal speeches that they tell my sister and I regarding our

situation, where we are apart from them, in which the gist is that they do it so we could

have a better life, I know to myself that there are much more technical factors that

pushes them to work abroad, this also applies to my relatives. I can say that in both

sides, my father’s and mother’s, there are more people who chose to go abroad than

staying here for work. As migrants, they tend to be affected by different factors whether

it could be political, economic or cultural.

In my personal experience, it is very evident that, economically-speaking, our

country’s economic condition is unstable. Having a government that is not able to

provide the basic need of its citizens as well as the low rate of economic development.

Due to this, people tend to choose to leave the country since there are more

opportunities there. Nevertheless, the global movement of OFW is also affected by

cultural factors. One example is the culture of Filipinos being so much family-centric,

wherein we tend to put our family first no matter what for the sake of their benefits. And

sometimes it may result to family and peer pressure. Knowing that some of their

relatives or friends work abroad and seeing their standard and quality of life improving,

Filipinos are likely to try their luck for the sake of their families.

Despite the different factors that affects the global movement of OFWs, there are

still people who disregard these circumstances and sees OFWs as people who has less
problems and more money. They tend to be blinded with the fact these workers had the

ability to move in and out of the country and ignoring the process. Thus, people need to

be knowledgeable with the possible factors whether it may be political, economic or

cultural, and how these factors affect OFWs which in fact contributes to the economic

development of out own country.