eight - The Overseas Contract Workers (OCW) Phenomenon

Summary

Together with the collective struggle against the Marcos dictatorship, no other phenomenon has so deeply touched the Filipino psyche and consciousness as the Filipino labour diaspora of the last three decades. This same phenomenon has forced the authorities to rethink its long-term implication on the survival of the Philippines as a nation and people.

During the first decades of the American colonial era, the migration of Filipino labour took shape with the recruitment of workers into the plantations of Hawaii and California and the canneries of Alaska. This was the first large-scale wave of labour migration out of the country. The second wave took place after World War II, during the fifties and sixties when Filipino professionals, mostly doctors and nurses, constituted the core of this labour export. During this period, the Philippines served as the biggest exporter of nurses to the United States and was the second biggest source of foreign doctors after India.

The first and second wave of labour migration stood out for two reasons: first, the destination was almost exclusively the United States; and secondly, after decades of struggle for citizenship, those who went to the United States almost always ended up as American citizens or permanent residents. The significance of this Filipino migration is dramatized by the fact that by the start of the twenty-first century, the Filipinos will have become the biggest Asian community in the United States, replacing the Chinese as the most numerous Asian grouping.

This current third wave of Filipino migration is distinguished by the fact that most of the individuals are contract workers whose destinations span literally the whole world, although the overwhelming majority have ended up working in the Middle East. A combination of push and pull factors have provided the basis for this massive labour export. In the Philippines, the economic crisis particularly during the decade of the eighties pushed both skilled and semi-skilled workers to look for jobs abroad.