How international migration can support development: a challenge for the philippines

In the last thirty years, the Philippines have gained prominence as a major source country of international migrants. From modest beginnings, the Philippines have successfully managed to tap the global labor market as a source of employment for its nationals. This paper examines the factors and dynamics that enabled the Philippines to promote labor migration on the one hand, and to extend protection to migrant workers and overseas Filipinos, on the other. The role of the state is identified as key in institutionalizing labor migration while advocacy by civil society contributed to the inclusion of migrants rights in policy formulation. The next challenge for the Philippines is to explore how international migration may be a vehicle for promoting sustainable development

Living arrangements in four Asian countries: a comparative perspective

10.1007/BF00972034Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology101-2145-16

Transnational families and the family nexus:perspectives of Indonesian and Filipino children left behind by migrant parent(s)

As a significant supplier of labour migrants, Southeast Asia presents itself as an important site for the study of children in transnational families who are growing up separated from at least one migrant parent and sometimes cared for by ‘other mothers’. Through the often-neglected voices of left-behind children, this paper investigates the impact of parental migration and the resulting reconfiguration of care arrangements on the subjective well-being of migrants’ children in two Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia and the Philippines. We theorise the child’s position in the transnational family nexus through the framework of the ‘care triangle’, representing interactions between three subject groups – ‘left-behind’ children, non-migrant parents/other carers, and migrant parent/s. Using both quantitative (from 1,010 households) and qualitative (from 32 children) data from a study of Child Health and Migrant Parents in South-East Asia (CHAMPSEA), we examine relationships within the caring spaces of both home and transnational spaces. The interrogation of different dimensions of care reveals the importance of contact with parents (both migrant and non-migrant) to subjective child well-being, and the diversity of experiences and intimacies among children in the two study countries.PostprintPeer reviewe