6

Trading Labour: Socio-economic

and Political Impacts and Dynamics
of Labour Export from the
Philippines, 1973-2004
Rochelle Ball

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 econ-
omy 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.

Introduction
The Philippines is one of the major contemporary countries of migration -
perhaps even the largest migrant nation with Filipino migrants found in
more than 181 countries. As a labour-exporting nation the Philippines ranks
second in the world, next only to Mexico (Carlos 2002:81). For over thirty
years now, since the OPEC oil crisis of 1973, the Philippines has been a
labour-exporting nation that has supplied workers to labour-deficit and/or
capital-rich nations. While the export of labour was promoted by the state as
a temporary measure for over twenty-five years, this phenomenon has not

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© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2006
116 Rochelle Ball

only persisted but greatly expanded over the last three decades. In fact, this
migration has experienced sustained growth for almost the whole period
from 1973 to 2002, except for the years 1984-86 when significant changes in
the demand for workers began to occur, and in 2003 (see below).
This chapter examines international labour migration from the
Philippines primarily from the 'supply side'. The overall context of the
labour trade from the Philippines is provided through a brief history of con-
tract labour migration beginning with the OPEC oil crisis of early 1970s. The
chapter then turns to examine the globalisation of labour from the Philippines
in terms of its historical and contemporary magnitude, its highly gendered
nature, and occupational segregation by destination. The importance of
remittances from overseas workers for the Philippine economy is then dis-
cussed in terms of the massive dependency of the Philippine state on labour
export for economic survival. The final section of the chapter examines
some of the transformative impacts that labour migration has had on
Philippine society and polity, and inter-state relations between labour-
exporting and importing nations.

The magnitude of labour export

The growth of the overseas employment industry has been remarkable.
International contract labour migration from the Philippines has wrought
substantial changes on Philippine society and economy. Exactly how many
Filipinos are working abroad is unclear. In 2001, the Commission on
Filipinos Overseas and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration
(POEA) (http:/ /www.poea.gov.ph) estimated that almost seven and a half
million (7 .4 million) Filipinos live abroad. Of these the majority (3.1 million)
are temporary overseas contract workers, followed by 2.7 million permanent
migrants and 1.6 million undocumented migrants (such as overstaying
tourists working illegally in Japan or Sabah).
Since the OPEC oil crisis of 1973, which catalysed the Philippine government's
labour export programme, the Middle East has been a major Filipino labour-
importing region, although its relative dominance in the early 1990s
(employing 300,000 or 60 per cent of the 500,000 workers deployed in 1993)
has been weakened due to the expansion of other markets for Filipino
labour. So while the volume of workers being deployed to the Middle East
has remained steady with between 280,000 and 300,000 being deployed
there annually, this number now accounts for about a third of the
Philippines' annual labour export (2002). Since the late 1980s, the first and
second tier newly industrialising nations have been increasingly experienc-
ing serious labour shortages due to their high economic growth rates. For
example, Taiwan emerged as a new market in the 1990s, but recently recruit-
ment declined because of the transfer of industries to mainland China
(Battistella 2002:114). Overall however, East and Southeast Asia, particularly