I Am Where I Think I Will Work: Higher Education and Labor Migration Regime in the Philippines

Abstract

The Philippine government has received praises from international organizations for its exemplary management of labor migration. The country has one of the most sophisticated institutionalized mechanisms for out-migration of workers, and it serves as a model of government-led labor migration management. It is, therefore, no surprise that research on labor migration policy of the Philippine government is plentiful. However, there is paucity of research on the role of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) in the Philippine's labor migration industry. In this article, I examine the role of CHED and the Technical Panels (TPs) in the production of the globally competitive Filipina/o worker. For this article, I draw on relevant literature on the topic and take nurse education, which is rooted in the colonial system established during the US-American occupation, as an example of how CHED and the TPs could be more linked to labor migration. By using the colonial difference as a space that offers critical insights and interpretation, this article illustrates how coloniality remains hidden under the cloak of modernity, particularly in the Philippine higher education system.

Notes

¹However, as Grosfoguel (2008) warns, social location is not to be mistaken for epistemic location.

²Ileto (1993) provided an analysis of how different historical interpretations of the 1896 Revolution had shaped political discourses on identity and change in the Philippines.

³The exact count for public HEIs is 227 plus 453 satellite campuses. Source: http://www.ched.gov.ph/index.php/home/media/data/statistic/highereducationdatainforgraphics/

⁴I acknowledge that the term America refers to both North and South Americas. In the context of this article, America and/or Americans refer to the United States of America and/or US citizens, respectively.

⁵See Rodriguez (2002) for critical discussions.

⁶The curriculum did include topics like tropical diseases or conditions on the island. Also, local instructors and nurses themselves directly and indirectly incorporated some local approaches (Choy, 2003).

⁷The moratorium includes teacher education, business administration, information technology, and hotel and restaurant management. The moratorium on the latter three programs was lifted in 2015.