The Creepy Globalization (Part 3)

We ask ourselves why do we migrate to other countries? Why is it that according to the Pulse Asia survey of 2005 one out of five Filipinos expressed their desire to migrate? According to an article titled “Globalization and Migration”: “In the last 30 years, a “culture of migration” has emerged, with millions of Filipinos eager to work abroad, despite the risks and vulnerabilities they are likely to face.”

Moreover, more recent Pulse Asia in 2005 found an increasing percentage of adult respondents — 26 percent in July and 33 percent in October — agreeing with the statement, “If it were only possible, I would migrate to another country and live there.” Interest in leaving the country is not limited to adults. In a nationwide survey in 2003 of children ages 10 to 12, 47 percent reported that they wished to work abroad someday. Sixty percent of children of overseas foreign workers said they had plans to work abroad. Let me take the country’s history in terms of its migration, “Since the 1970s, the Philippines…has supplied all kinds of skilled and low-skilled workers to the world’s more developed regions. As of December 2004, an estimated 8.1 million Filipinos — nearly 10 percent of the country’s 85 million people — were working and/or residing in close to 200 countries and territories. “

This rate of migration is actually increasing every year so that in 2004 alone, 933,588 OFWs left the country. What would be its implications?

Simple. The citizens of our country, especially the migrants and those who expressed their interests to migrate, have lost their trust to the state being an institution that would provide basic and other essential needs to its people. The push and pull theory of migration will explain this: People moved either because social and economic forces in the place of destination impelled them to do so, or because they were attracted to places of destination by one or more social and economic factors there. In the case of the Philippines, the first premise of the theory is true: Filipinos migrate because economic forces in here in our country impelled our citizens to do so. Why do this happen? Again, the issue will run in a cyclic manner. Why can’t our own country provide us with all our needs? Simple. The reason we Filipinos developed a “culture of migration” is the very “culture of corruption” that is creeping from one generation to the next. Kaya nga tayo di umuunlad, eh. This is, I believe, the very reason why we Filipinos go the same flow to what is “fashioned”, to what is “dominant.” The reason why we now are attached to globalization so deeply that even our concept of migration has gotten to the nerves of our people – even compromising family and societal relationships with one another – is that we think that because the United States head this, and because we think that US is strong and dominant and has a stable economy in a sense, we deduced that globalization is thus essential and inevitable and is therefore good; so why not adopt it and go where the orientation is so we’ll eventually be a super-power like the US? The sad fact is that it brings no good to us, no good to me and definitely no good to my family. Yes, I concede that it brings money to the family of the migrant and to the nation as a whole in the form of remittances, but it actually don’t do us any good more than the money it can offer. As a Filipino critic said it, “All over the world, dehumanization serves the interests of the multinational capitalists who regard people as human resources…to secure a condition of perpetual servitude, poverty, and exploitation for the next generations of Filipinos.”

So what are we going to do about this? To be honest? I don’t know. It would be hard if only dots of the whole imagery are only the ones working to whatever desirable change we can think of for our country. Our main problem here as I have pointed out earlier is the incompetence of our country’s leaders in running the government. So how can we address this? Change the set of leaders we currently have? Change the system of government? Then this will be another story all together. Then let’s go more specific. The very basic problem we have right now is the incapacity of the state to literally feed all its citizen (the very reason why Filipinos migrate – for survival, for greener pasture). Therefore, if we see it this way, then I think the best way to address this problem is for the government to adopt reforms in their programs that would address the basic needs of the citizens. Moreover, since migration has been a trend, the government therefore should establish programs that would promote and protect the rights of the migrants. I say not just establish programs that are beautifully written in paper but I mean programs that will be properly implemented for the protection of these unsung heroes. After all, they bring pride and extra help to our nation’s economy.

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The Creepy Globalization (Part 2)

There have been tons of reading materials on globalization from all sorts of perspective but all of these perspectives boil down to its grass root level of definition, that is, globalization is a politico-economic strategy. Of who will benefit globalization, the perspectives have different stands on this. What my stand therefore will be based from Alice G. Guillermo’s definition on globalization:

“…globalization is not a diffuse universal trend, but is constructed from within the hub of American imperialist power from which it expands to cover the rest of the globe, particularly the developing, countries of Asia and Latin America..”

What is so bad about globalization is its implied way of how we are molded to live like Americans: that in the long run, despite the leading technologies they have, we will, like them, become totally strangers to one another. I always hate the idea of how, for instance, they “slowly kill” their olds. I mean sending them to home-for-the-aged makes me so sick.

Moreover, considering Dr. Jane Kelsey’s definition as cited by Guillermo, globalization for her is “the community of economies:” “it excludes from consideration any ‘non-economic’, social and political issues like human rights, poverty, employment, unless they are redefined in trade-related terms…States, governments, indigenous peoples, paid and unpaid workers, women, children, communities, and ecosystems are all irrelevant, except as vehicles to promote the interests of capital or resources to fuel production and profits.”

Personally, I don’t think globalization will bring any good to us, especially here in our country, a still-developing country, to put it in a beautiful term. Globalization is as if everything is run by trades, nothing more, nothing less. How about other aspects in our society? How about our interpersonal, political, social, moral development? We cannot risk these dimensions and say, “Hey, let’s unite and think in an economical sense. With this, everything good will follow.” This is impossible.

Though I concede that globalization, one way or another, has brought good to the lives of some of the migrants and their families in terms of uplifting their families’ economic capacity (including my family’s), and in the broader sense has actually helped the country’s economy in the form of remittances, it actually is in fact not a strong excuse for us to undermine other institutions in our society that basically weighs as important as improving the economy of one’s country and of the world as a whole.

If globalization has brought good to our country then why are we experiencing the dilemmas it has brought as an effect of its presence? On the next issue, I will be considering more issues on migration— on why Filipinos escape our country and move abroad.

(to be continued…)

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The Creepy Globalization (Part 1)

Let me start this essay by saying that my mother is an Overseas Contract Worker (OCW) in the Middle East. She has been practicing her profession as a nurse for around eighteen years in Saudi Arabia. Since her contract is renewable every ten months, she gets to go home on the eleventh and the twelfth months respectively which is actually equivalent to a fifty day-vacation here in the Philippines. That means we in the family get to see my mother 50 days out of 365 days a year. And numbers will not lie that of my nineteen years now in this world, I have just lived with my mother physically present in our home for about 900 days only, equivalent to even less than three years.

I have one aunt and one uncle who happened to be younger siblings of my father. No kidding, I only saw them every time they get back to the Philippines. And how are they visiting the Philippines? Well, every five years. So that means I only saw them for less than five times in my whole life.

All because the three of them migrated abroad. All because of globalization. There were so many times I am saddened by the truth that my mother isn’t with us for almost twenty years. During my childhood, during my high school days, I had always wanted to understand the feeling of a home having a mother physically present to guide and take care of the three of us, her kids – to help me in my puberty stage (because I am the only girl in our house aside from our house help), and to manage my two younger brothers who always engage in so many fights simply because at times my father cannot handle them both. I mean, there’s always a big and clear distinction on how a father and a mother trains and manages the household, right? But then again this thinking has always been overruled by the fact that it is but about family survival and “good” living that pushed my mother for this option. Let me also stress that my father never wanted this idea of my mom leaving us to find a higher-compensated job abroad. My father had been the Chief Executive for 12 years and now a local legislator in one of the towns in Bohol. This idea of average and simple living in terms of economic wealth (because a town in the provinces is really poorer as compared to the towns and cities here in the Metro) yet living in a community where people get to respect you because of the family’s political background is still not a weighted reason for my mom not to leave the country. After all, how much does a local official get as compared to an OFW’s monthly salary anyway? My mother cannot just swallow in the idea of poverty creeping into all Filipinos as our country’s economy continues to flunk each day. On the other extent, I can’t blame my mother if she opts to work abroad for I know that all she is thinking right now, her very reason of leaving us and working overseas, is that she wants to give us fairer lives, better lives as compared to how people live in towns and provinces. I realized, I would not have been in UP right now if it isn’t because of my mom supporting me. The cost of living here in Manila is far more expensive than in my province. For instance, a meal here in UP would cost me P35-80 whereas that same delicious meal can only be bought for only P15-25 in my province. And this has been manifested through all other forms of living here in Manila as compared in the provinces so to say.

On the other hand, looking at my mother’s perspective, I cannot fully imagine how she basically was able to survive working in Saudi alone for almost two decades already. I can still recall when she experienced her biggest problem she encountered there as an OCW about five years ago. This experience she had is in fact a problem not just to her but mostly to all non-Arabian workers. In the case of the nurses there, miscommunication between nurse-patient will surely arise if for instance there is a culture gap (and obviously there’s really a culture gap knowing that my mom is a Filipino and all her patients aren’t). Some patients may not understand them the way others do. Some patients especially the natives of Saudi are really abusive to their rights as citizens of the country. Once these patients will actually file complain to the management to any non-Arabian nurse (mainly because of miscommunication), the Arabian government, without further and thorough investigation will automatically lean on to the side of the Arabian patient complaining so that the one non-Arabian individual will only have 25 per cent chance to win the case. Luckily, my mom has gained the administration’s trust thus she was able to win the case otherwise she would have been whipped 150 times or more if she had lose the case. This is only one of the many horrible stories our migrants experience abroad. The *** thing here is that my mom cannot actually do anything about it other than to abide more strictly to the country’s laws because obviously she cannot move and work here in the Philippines because of a very relatively low compensation here not even enough to pay for my college education. In other words, all these sufferings from culture discrimination, all these pains she experienced because of the fact that she is away from us, her family, all of these, she actually ate it all up for us, for her family. Never mind her condition there as long as she can bring hope and inspiration to her family, to me.

Needless to say, the impact of globalization on the very medium of migration has its pros and cons. But I would say more on the cons, as based to my experience.

On the next issue, I will be talking more on the definition per se of the term globalization and more on its impact in the migration side.

(to be continued)

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