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Abstract
This article describes the situation over the last 30 years of women migrants from the Philippines in Italy, who have been caught in what many have called the ‘global care chain’. The pressure to send remittances back home is locking these women even further into the global care chain, with not only economic, but social and cultural consequences. Based on interviews and official data available on Filipina migrants, and learning from the activities of the Filipino Women's Council (FWC), the article relates the story of migrant women's difficulties caring for families across continents. It is important to re-think gender and development by taking into account migration and care work as a transnational reality, which breaks down neat conceptual divides between ‘development’ and ‘migration’.
Notes
1. Quotation taken from one of the interviews in UN INSTRAW (Citation2008).
2. The global care chain has a growing literature: see, for example, the literature review by Bigo (Citation2004) and a chapter discussing the global care chain in Harcourt (Citation2009).
3. As Peggy Levitt, from the Wellesley College and Harvard University, points out: ‘The assumption that people will live their lives in one place, according to one set of national and cultural norms, in country with impermeable national borders, no longer holds. Rather, in the 21st century, more and more people will belong to two or more societies at the same time. This is what many researchers refer to as transnational migration’ (Levitt Citation2004, 1).
4. There is a vast literature (dating from the 1950s onwards) focusing on migration and its implications on development. The traditional 1970s reading of migration as demographic and economic has been replaced in recent years by a more holistic and multidisciplinary approach (Coslovi and Zarro Citation2008). The lack of a holistic reading of the gender, migration and development nexus is largely because of the disconnect among research centres, governments and international organisations. In the last years, migration and remittances have surged to become the new mantra for development, with migrants celebrated as the heroes of development, while the human and social costs that the migration experience has on people's lives seems to be completely disregarded. For a critical review of the current development literature on migration see, for example, Castles (Citation2008), de Haas (Citation2005, Citation2008) and Mazzali et al. (Citation2006).
5. From 2008 to 2010, The FWC in partnership with Atikha, a non-government organisation (NGO) based in The Philippines, has run a series of capacity-building initiatives: ‘Maximizing the Gains and Minimizing the Social Cost of Filipino Migration’ and ‘Mobilizing Migrants’ Resources Towards Agri-based Cooperatives in the Philippines’. Both projects are run with help of the Philippine Embassy and Consulates and their attached Philippine government agencies based in Italy. Their involvement recognises that migration has been a conscious policy of the Philippine Government and that those migrants involved need greater protection and support.
6. The main reason why women decide to migrate is that although they hold a higher education degree than men, they cannot easily find a job locally. Their participation in the labour market is much lower than men, with 48 per cent of women employed as compared with 78 per cent of men (Asian Development Bank Citation2009).
7. This 40 per cent is an aggregate number by the Italian Statistical Office (Istat). Sex ratio measures the number of males per 100 females in the population. The data on the ratio of officially registered men and women migrants from The Philippines is aggregated as 40 to 60 per cent by Istat. This is not as large as other migrant populations such as migrants from Eastern Europe where there are many more women. For instance, there are significant variations between women and men for citizens of Ukraine (107 per cent), Romania (92.5 per cent), Ecuador (105.6 per cent) and Perù (54.6 per cent). These countries reveal a ratio of women:men in favour of women (Istat 2007, 6).
8. There are 32,993 unmarried, 49,543 married and 1053 not classified (Istat Citation2008, Table 8.6).
9. For example, only 12 per cent of children aged up to 2 are able to find places in public nurseries in Italy (Istat Citation2010). There is also a considerable gap between demand and supply of services for older people aged over 65. Regarding social services for migrants, the total expenditure per capita in 2005 was less that €5 per month (Istat Citation2008).
10. These experiences are notably validated by the migrants themselves through seminars and meetings around remittances, migration and development works of the Filipino Women's Council.
11. See Note 11.
12. Barangay (Filipino: baranggay), also known by its former Spanish adopted name, the barrio, is the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and is the native Filipino term for a village, district or ward (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barangay, last accessed September 2010).
13. These issues emerged when discussing with participants in the seminar series of the NGO Atikha on ‘Addressing the Social Cost of Migration’ held in Italy and in the Philippines in 2008. See also Note 5.
14. According to Italian law, children under 18 are entitled to family reunion, even if only one parent is from The Philippines or the parents are not married, with the condition that the parent, if alive, agrees; children over 18 can also apply for an Italian resident permit if they require further economic support from their family (Decreto legislativo 8 gennaio 2007, n. 5, Ministry of Internal Affairs, www.interno.it, last accessed November 2010).
15. The project's training of trainers and capacity-building has involved the embassy, public meetings, and local governments as well as networks of Filipino women and the Italian NGO Comitato Italiano per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli (CISP). Most of the advocates are Filipina leaders coming from different associations.
16. In this project the FWC has partnered with Atikha and the Sorosoro Ibaba Development Cooperative (SIDC), a wealthy Philippine-based agri-development cooperative with support from International Fund for Agricultural Development's financing facility on remittances. The project aims to mobilise 50 million pesos a year with a target membership of 500 member migrants having €100 a month.