Abstract
Increasing numbers of independent women labor migrants leave countries in the Global South every year to work overseas. However, our understanding of how exactly gender and migration intersect at the decision-making moment is still inadequate. The new economics of labor migration (NELM) argument that individual migration is a household-level decision has been criticized by feminist scholars for ignoring the gendered social norms and inequitable intra-household power distribution that can make it difficult for prospective independent female labor migrants to leave their homes to work overseas. To reconcile NELM with gender reality, I propose an explicitly gendered, “negotiated migration model” that separates the pre-migratory process into three parts: an individual-level aspiration, the household-/family-level negotiation, and only then, the migration decision. The intermediate negotiation phase is a dynamic, two-sided, discursive site where both the aspiring migrant and her relatives engage in gendering practices and gender performances to bolster their respective positions. Interviews with 139 Filipino migrant domestic workers reveal that successful female migrants win their families' support by coopting gendered scripts prevalent in Philippine society. Rather than attempting to “undo” gender, these women reframe their migration aspirations as a duty, rather than a right, to migrate, and a logical extension of their traditional, supporting roles as daughters, wives, sisters, and/or mothers. Thus, even though these women migrants break gender barriers when it comes to their independent labor migration, they do so by “doing,” rather than “undoing,” gender.
Increasing numbers of women are leaving their families in the Global South to work overseas as independent labor migrants1 (Engle 2004; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2002). The new economics of labor migration (NELM) theory argues that it is households2 that dispatch these women to seek work overseas in order to expand and diversify the household's joint income stream and reduce their relative poverty vis-à-vis other households in their reference group (Findley 1987; Katz and Stark 1986; Lauby and Stark 1988; Stark and Bloom 1985; Taylor 1987). But the classic NELM model of the unified family ignores the gendered social norms and inequitable intra-household power distribution that exist in patriarchal societies and can constrain the opportunities for independent migration among aspiring women migrants (Boyd and Grieco 2003; Chant and Radcliffe 1992; Curran et al. 2006; Folbre 1986; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Kana'iaupuni 2000; Radcliffe 1986; Wolf 1992; Oishi 2005). Newer economic models of intra-family decision-making recognize that “non-cooperative bargaining” often takes place in households (Lundberg and Pollak 1996, 2003). I build on this current understanding of family dynamics to argue that, before any individual migratory action is taken, a household-level migration negotiation has to occur over an individual family member's migration aspiration.
Economic factors such as the relative wages, employment status, occupational status, job stability, and likelihood to remit, of individual members of the household determine their negotiating power during these intra-familial bargaining sessions (Lauby and Stark 1988; Lundberg and Pollak 1996, 2003; Mincer 1978). But there are also cultural conventions about the relative entitlement of different family members to pursue their own preferences and the worth of their relative contributions to the household economy that influence this bargaining process (Lundberg and Pollak 1996; Sen 1990; Cooke 2008). These cultural conventions can make it easier for men to migrate independently (Pfeiffer et al. 2008; Hoang 2011b; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994) or, in the case of family migration, for couples to migrate to suit the husband's preferences rather than the wife's (Cooke 2008; Mincer 1978). The rise in women's independent labor migration appears to go against these cultural conventions, and we do not have a clear conceptual understanding of how independent women migrants navigate these gendered norms about whether women have the “right” to migrate.
Qualitative feminist studies on the “patriarchal bargains” (Kandiyoti 1988) that women pioneers make in male-dominated spheres have much to contribute here (see Pini 2011; Yodanis 2000; Williams 1989). I draw on this scholarship to conceive of the intra-familial migration discussion as a dynamic, two-sided, discursive site where both the aspiring woman migrant and her relatives engage in “gendering practices” (Martin 2003) and gender performances to bolster their respective positions. As they consider whether the aspiring migrant should leave the home country, both sides are negotiating their understandings of appropriate gender roles within their household. But I also find that these women are “doing,” rather than “undoing,” gender (Butler 1988, 2004;West and Zimmerman 1987) by presenting their migration aspiration as a duty, rather than a right, to migrate.
In making this argument, I draw upon in-depth interviews I conducted with 139 Filipina migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in five countries between 2008 and 2011. These interviews revealed that aspiring female migrants had to negotiate gender norms that exist in Philippine society that cast them as the primary caregivers within their households, while their fathers/husbands were seen as the primary breadwinners. In response, my interviewees frequently framed their independent migration aspirations in gendered terms, presenting themselves as dutiful daughters, caring mothers, and/or supportive wives, promising to remit most of their overseas earnings in order to ensure the future livelihood of the family members they left behind. They appropriated Philippine norms about a woman's role as primary care provider in the household and reframed their labor migration (and consequent separation from their families) as a way of fulfilling this role rather than violating it. These women's gender performativity highlights their constrained agency to win their family's support. Rather than seeking to completely upend the gender hierarchy within their families, they instead coopted prevailing gender discourses in order to win over powerful stakeholders. In this manner, women's independent labor migration—enabled by calling upon ideas of women as long-distance “helpers” and “nurturers” for their families—can paradoxically reify the existing gender order in sending countries.
Gender and Migration
Over the past 20 years, an increasing amount of scholarly attention has been paid to the independent labor migration of women. It is now well accepted that women migrants face different drivers and opportunity structures than men (see Boyd and Grieco 2003; Curran et al. 2006; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Morrison, Schiff, and Sjöblom 2008; Pedraza 1991; Pfeiffer et al. 2008). Macro-level forces such as the growing demand for low-wage, pink-collar services in the Global North disproportionately facilitate the outmigration of female labor migrants from the Global South (Lan 2006; Parreñas 2001; Sassen 1988, 2006; Oishi 2005). On the sending country side, female brain drain from developing countries is 17 percent higher than male brain drain (Docquier, Lowell, and Marfouk 2009), possibly because of educated women's frustration with the social constraints and lack of career opportunities they experience in their home country (Kana'iaupuni 2000; Richter and Taylor 2008). At the meso-level, migrant networks have been found to operate in gendered ways, with male migrants facilitating the outmigration of other men, and female migrants helping other women (Curran et al. 2005; Curran and Rivero-Fuentes 2003; Hoang 2011a; Kana'iaupuni 2000). But our understanding of how exactly gender and migration intersect at the decision-making moment is still inadequate (Pfeiffer et al. 2008).
Independent labor migration can certainly hold much appeal to women. It is seen as a means of supplementing their personal/family income, and escaping unhappy/abusive marriages and familial/societal expectations (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Lan 2006; Parreñas 2001; Oishi 2005). However, living apart from their families often forces migrant women to renegotiate, rather than completely escape, normative ideas of femininity, motherhood, and domesticity (Hofmann and Buckley 2011; Lan 2006; Parreñas 2001). Women have to find new ways to fulfill their roles as wives, mothers, and daughters when they are located in a different country/continent from their family (Parreñas 2001). Pei-Chia Lan discusses how the feminization of overseas domestic work has led to the emancipation of Filipina and Indonesian women but also served to sustain notions of “gender subordination” (2006, 126) because their overseas work reifies traditional notions of the woman as caregiver and nurturer. These scholars focus on the patriarchal bargaining that migrant women have to engage in when they are already working overseas. In contrast, I look at the bargaining that begins even before any migration has occurred, when it is still only an idea that is being discussed within the aspiring migrant's household/family.
In outlining the nature of the intra-household bargaining that aspiring women migrants undertake, I draw on studies of opposite-sex pioneers in heavily gendered work sectors. Women undertaking gender-atypical work often justify their incursion into male territory by framing it as a natural follow-on from their existing roles as mothers or wives. See Pini (2011) about women's farm networks, Williams (1989) about female military officers, and Yodanis (2000) about fishing women. Meanwhile, men entering female-dominated fields (such as nursing or music teaching) adopt masculinizing discourses in their at-work manner and attire in order to de-emphasize the feminized reputation associated with their new job (Roulston and Mills 2000). These men and women are not performing their gender in a vacuum. Rather, as social actors, they are engaging in dialogue with existing, hegemonic societal narratives about appropriate gender roles and also with resistant/disapproving discourses they may encounter at an interpersonal level. In all cases, however, these female and male pioneers opt to “do” their ascribed gender, rather than “undo” it to justify their incursion into a gender-atypical occupational field. This literature informs my analysis of my interviewees' gender performances when negotiating with family members over their migration aspirations. But first, I outline what the existing literature on household-level bargaining has to say about the migration decision.
Households and Migration
The New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) emphasizes the role of households/families in the migration decision, viewing the household unit, rather than the individual migrant, as the primary migration decision-maker. NELM theorists have proposed several household decision-making models.
The “Unified Household” Approach
The intra-household decision-making model most associated with NELM is that of a “unified household” reaching a common consensus as to which family member to send overseas. This model assumes a moral economy (or a joint utility function and common preferences) existing across the family (Lacroix 2010; Stark and Levhari 1982). Feminist migration scholars have routinely criticized this approach for ignoring the unequal distribution of power between men and women in patriarchal households and the ideological constraints on women's independence that can severely limit potential women migrants' ability to garner support from family members for their migration aspirations. Studies of women migrants from contemporary rural Brazil, rural Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia, rural Bangladesh, Vietnam, and the Philippines have found that these women encountered varying degrees of pushback from parents, husbands, and fiancés when they first announced their desire to migrate (whether overseas or to urban areas within their own country) in order to seek employment (Afsar 2003; Aguiar 1975; Arizpe and Aranda 1981; Hoang 2011b; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Lan 2006; Stichter 1990; Wong and Ko 1984). In some cases, these young women had to delay their migrations until their parents relented and permitted them to leave home (Aguiar 1975). In other cases, parents vetoed certain destinations as being too dangerous, too licentious, or simply too far away (Arizpe and Aranda 1981). Husbands can also resist their wives' independent labor migration (Gamburd 2000; Hoang 2011b; Lan 2006).
The “Household Dictator” Approach
The “dictator” model takes as given that power hierarchies along gendered and generational lines exist within most families. This model assumes an all-powerful head-of-household who commands complete obedience from and makes migration decisions on behalf of the entire family. Such a despot might decide to send a family member overseas because he—and the head-of-household is usually a “he”—can force that individual to send remittances back to the family (Lauby and Stark 1988). Or he sends away a family member whom he sees as potential competition (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991).
This view of household decision-making explains the resistance many aspiring women migrants encounter. But some NELM theorists use this model to argue that independent women labor migrants may be consciously dispatched by their household heads. Stark, Micevska, and Mycielski (2009) find that the eventual household member to go abroad is usually the one who stands to earn the most from working overseas and is therefore potentially able to remit the most money to the remaining members of the household. Following this line of thinking, if a gendered overseas labor market exists that provides more lucrative job opportunities for women migrants, a household head might decide to send a female relative—a wife or daughter—overseas. Households might also send forth their daughters, rather than sons, if the former are expected to remit a greater proportion of their earnings (Lauby and Stark 1988). But both sets of authors draw their conclusions using only survey data about migration flows and remittance levels without directly investigating the internal family dynamics they hypothesize about. The individual agency of these female independent migrants is also not taken into account, and it is assumed that families are completely swayed by economic reasoning, without any influence from socio-cultural norms.
The “Super-Trader Family” Model
The third model of family decision-making recognizes at least two autonomous decision-making entities within the household—the potential migrant and other relatives—each with their own distinct preferences and differentiated capacity to act (Stark and Bloom 1985). Model proponents argue that, before any migration occurs, the potential migrant and her family enter into an agreement involving “intrafamilial trade in risks, coinsurance arrangements, devices to handle principal agent problems, moral hazard problems […] and contract enforcement problems […] and, overall, striking a mutually beneficial, intertemporal, self-enforcing contractual arrangement” (Katz and Stark 1986, 136). Amartya Sen has satirized this model as the “super-trader family” but, at one level, this view of household decision-making makes intuitive sense because it recognizes both an agentic individual migrant and the existence of multiple decision-makers within a household.
Economists had initially assumed that this intra-household bargaining was cooperative, which would ensure that families would always choose the most “efficient” outcome in their intra-household decision-making about the allocation of resources, despite holding different preferences (Manser and Brown 1980). If this were the case, then irrespective of which family member was offered a better-paying job in another location, the family would make the moving decision that brought the highest net utility to the household as a whole. However, empirical data on US family migration shows that non-egalitarian families typically do not move if it is the wife, as opposed to the husband, who is offered a better job elsewhere (Cooke 2008).
Today, economists accept that non-cooperative bargaining, influenced by non-economic conventions, often takes place within households, resulting in families making “inefficient” decisions (Lundberg and Pollak 1996, 2003; Sen 1983, 1990). Different family members' perceptions about the proper role of women in the intra- and extra-household division of labor, the kinds of contributions women should make to the household economy, and the amount of benefits (and rights) women are entitled to, all influence intra-familial negotiations on a range of topics. Even if it is in a family's financial best interests to send one of their womenfolk overseas to work, other family members may still not support such a move if it runs counter to their views about a woman's proper role in the household.
Several studies have highlighted the strategies adopted by aspiring women migrants to navigate around this familial resistance (see Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Lan 2006; Oishi 2005), but Lan Anh Hoang's (2011b) work on male and female internal migration in Vietnam comes closest to recognizing this process as an intra-familial negotiation. Hoang identifies four patterns of household-level decision-making among her sample—uncontested, consensual, negotiated, and conflictual3—but classifies the vast majority (81 percent) of her migrant interviewees as having undergone a “consensual” decision-making process with their family members, where “household consensus was obtained prior to migration” (1446), while a mere 3 percent of her respondents reported having “negotiated” with household members to “resolve [any] conflict of preferences” (1446) prior to migration. Little detail is provided to clarify this demarcation between consensual and negotiated decision-making, and I take issue with how Hoang categorizes the household decision-making processes that her interviewees described to her. This categorization appears to contradict her own account of the gendered ideas that pervade Vietnamese rural society about women's normative role as primary caregivers within their families. Hoang writes that the women migrants she interviewed “almost always made their migration decisions in consultation with families, particularly with the husband if they were married—and with parents if they were not” (1450) If aspiring migrant women adopt gendered strategies to neutralize any potential resistance from relatives, even before it manifests itself, how should this “consultation” be classified? As Hoang herself notes, married female migrants believe familial consensus to be “essential” (2011b, 1450), and so they may have tried to present their migration aspiration to family members in a manner so as to curtail any potential resistance. Meanwhile, Hoang's male migrants—almost all of whom are categorized as having undertaken “consensual” household-level decision-making—relied on gender norms about their role as family protectors and breadwinners to such an extent that their wives did not voice any concerns/complaints about their migration even though these women were unhappy about their husbands' departure (1451). Again, I do not think such cases should be classified as “consensual” household decisions.
Instead, I argue that all intra-household migration decision-making is negotiated, with variations in the degree of overt resistance/support posed by family members. Aspiring migrants may not be in explicit conversation with family members about their migration preferences and roles, but they are continuously grappling with the gendered norms that pervade their society that either support or constrain their mobility.
Studying Filipino Migrants
The data used in this article are drawn from a larger study investigating destination decision-making among international labor migrants (Paul 2011, 2013). Within the global population of international migrants, I chose to focus on Filipino migrants because the Philippines is a major supplier of temporary labor migrants in a range of occupations for the world market. More than 1.8 million Filipinos left their home country in 2012 as temporary migrant workers (POEA 2013). Among land-based Filipino migrant workers, domestic workers form the single largest occupational category, with more than 95 percent of them being women (POEA 2010). Filipino MDWs can be found in over 100 countries and territories around the world. I designed the study to compare the destination decision-making processes and strategies of Filipino MDWs in four popular destinations: Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States, and Canada.
Pressure on Filipinos to seek work abroad comes from the high rate of under-employment in the country, reaching 19.5 percent of the employed in January 2014,4 and the high individual poverty rate of 24.9 percent in 2013.5 This is especially true for Filipino women, who are typically employed in lower-paid, lower-status positions. The female “vulnerable employment” rate was 46.1 percent in 2009.6 Women's careers are also considered less important (Medina 2001), which can make it easier for women to jettison their local jobs and seek work overseas. Pei-Chia Lan (2006) writes that the steady decline in real wages has made overseas employment more tempting, even for middle-class families. For Philippine families with college-age children, the failure of credit markets to make tertiary education more affordable (Kitaev et al. 2003) may also propel one or both parents to consider overseas work.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Philippine government actively promoted the outmigration of Filipinos. Labor migrants were socially constructed as national heroes and martyrs, sacrificing their personal comfort for the sake of their families and the nation (Rodriguez 2010; Tyner 2004). More recently, this labor migration policy has been called into question as grassroots organizations have highlighted the toll that women's labor migration has taken on Philippine families (Rodriguez 2010).
There are other countervailing forces that can inhibit Filipino women's ability to seek work abroad. The Philippines is a patriarchal society, with men seen as the natural heads of households (Chant and McIlwaine 1995; Eder 2006; Eviota 1992; Roces 2000). Even as more Filipinas take on formal employment outside the home, their intra-household status remains second to that of their menfolk, and they are still expected to be the primary care providers at home. Philippine husbands have more authority to override joint household decisions they had previously made with their wives, and Filipina wives often give in to their husbands' wishes for the sake of family harmony (Medina 2001). Filipino daughters (and sons) are also very filial, demonstrating great respect for and deference to their parents' wishes (Chant and McIlwaine 1995; King and Domingo 1986; Medina 2001; Trager 1988). But before presenting how my interviewees' families responded to their migration aspirations, I first discuss how I collected my data.
Data and Methods
Between 2008 and 2011, I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 139 Filipinos in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada about their decision to work overseas as temporary domestic workers.7 In each study site, participants were recruited by directly approaching Filipino migrant workers in public places that were popular weekend gathering spots for these migrants and by snowball sampling. I also posted flyers advertising the study in these weekend gathering places, in the offices of local NGOs that work on MDW issues, and at maid recruitment and placement agencies. Given that I was studying destination decision-making, the sample was constructed to allow comparisons between the experiences of migrants who had traveled to different countries. As such, the sample did not allow for a comparison between male and female migrants (as most Filipino MDWs are women), or between voluntary migrants and involuntary non-migrants. The implications of these limitations are discussed later.
During recruitment, I introduced myself as a student researcher from the United States studying the migration and destination decisions of Filipino MDWs. Participation was restricted to Philippine nationals, 18 years old and above, who were former, current, or prospective overseas domestic workers. Even though participation was not restricted on the basis of gender, all but two of my interviewees were women, given the heavily gendered nature of paid domestic service. All interviews were conducted in English, with only two participants requiring an interpreter. All names have been changed. Table I provides some descriptive data about the interviewees.
Characteristics of Sample, by Country
| Hong Kong (n = 28) | Singapore (n = 41) | Philippines (n = 26) | Canada (n = 44) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Migrant characteristics | Percentage of population | |||
| Age (in years): | ||||
| 18–25 | – | 5% | 23% | 5% |
| 26–35 | 43% | 41% | 15% | 45% |
| 36–45 | 36% | 34% | 38% | 27% |
| 46 and above | 21% | 20% | 23% | 23% |
| Gender: | ||||
| Male | 7% | – | – | – |
| Female | 93% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Marital status: | ||||
| Never married | 50% | 32% | 35% | 35% |
| Married | 46% | 54% | 35% | 43% |
| Separated | 4% | 10% | 15% | 21% |
| Widowed | – | 5% | 15% | – |
| Education: | ||||
| Less than high school | 11% | 5% | 8% | – |
| High school | 18% | 29% | 38% | – |
| Some college | 36% | 41% | 35% | 22% |
| College and above | 36% | 24% | 19% | 78% |
| Departure from Philippines: | ||||
| 1970s | 7% | – | – | 5% |
| 1980s | 14% | 17% | 19% | 5% |
| 1990s | 36% | 41% | 23% | 14% |
| 2000s | 43% | 41% | 58% | 77% |
| Hong Kong (n = 28) | Singapore (n = 41) | Philippines (n = 26) | Canada (n = 44) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Migrant characteristics | Percentage of population | |||
| Age (in years): | ||||
| 18–25 | – | 5% | 23% | 5% |
| 26–35 | 43% | 41% | 15% | 45% |
| 36–45 | 36% | 34% | 38% | 27% |
| 46 and above | 21% | 20% | 23% | 23% |
| Gender: | ||||
| Male | 7% | – | – | – |
| Female | 93% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Marital status: | ||||
| Never married | 50% | 32% | 35% | 35% |
| Married | 46% | 54% | 35% | 43% |
| Separated | 4% | 10% | 15% | 21% |
| Widowed | – | 5% | 15% | – |
| Education: | ||||
| Less than high school | 11% | 5% | 8% | – |
| High school | 18% | 29% | 38% | – |
| Some college | 36% | 41% | 35% | 22% |
| College and above | 36% | 24% | 19% | 78% |
| Departure from Philippines: | ||||
| 1970s | 7% | – | – | 5% |
| 1980s | 14% | 17% | 19% | 5% |
| 1990s | 36% | 41% | 23% | 14% |
| 2000s | 43% | 41% | 58% | 77% |
Characteristics of Sample, by Country
| Hong Kong (n = 28) | Singapore (n = 41) | Philippines (n = 26) | Canada (n = 44) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Migrant characteristics | Percentage of population | |||
| Age (in years): | ||||
| 18–25 | – | 5% | 23% | 5% |
| 26–35 | 43% | 41% | 15% | 45% |
| 36–45 | 36% | 34% | 38% | 27% |
| 46 and above | 21% | 20% | 23% | 23% |
| Gender: | ||||
| Male | 7% | – | – | – |
| Female | 93% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Marital status: | ||||
| Never married | 50% | 32% | 35% | 35% |
| Married | 46% | 54% | 35% | 43% |
| Separated | 4% | 10% | 15% | 21% |
| Widowed | – | 5% | 15% | – |
| Education: | ||||
| Less than high school | 11% | 5% | 8% | – |
| High school | 18% | 29% | 38% | – |
| Some college | 36% | 41% | 35% | 22% |
| College and above | 36% | 24% | 19% | 78% |
| Departure from Philippines: | ||||
| 1970s | 7% | – | – | 5% |
| 1980s | 14% | 17% | 19% | 5% |
| 1990s | 36% | 41% | 23% | 14% |
| 2000s | 43% | 41% | 58% | 77% |
| Hong Kong (n = 28) | Singapore (n = 41) | Philippines (n = 26) | Canada (n = 44) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Migrant characteristics | Percentage of population | |||
| Age (in years): | ||||
| 18–25 | – | 5% | 23% | 5% |
| 26–35 | 43% | 41% | 15% | 45% |
| 36–45 | 36% | 34% | 38% | 27% |
| 46 and above | 21% | 20% | 23% | 23% |
| Gender: | ||||
| Male | 7% | – | – | – |
| Female | 93% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Marital status: | ||||
| Never married | 50% | 32% | 35% | 35% |
| Married | 46% | 54% | 35% | 43% |
| Separated | 4% | 10% | 15% | 21% |
| Widowed | – | 5% | 15% | – |
| Education: | ||||
| Less than high school | 11% | 5% | 8% | – |
| High school | 18% | 29% | 38% | – |
| Some college | 36% | 41% | 35% | 22% |
| College and above | 36% | 24% | 19% | 78% |
| Departure from Philippines: | ||||
| 1970s | 7% | – | – | 5% |
| 1980s | 14% | 17% | 19% | 5% |
| 1990s | 36% | 41% | 23% | 14% |
| 2000s | 43% | 41% | 58% | 77% |
A significant portion of each interview was spent discussing the mechanics of migrants' initial migration decision-making process. In all country sites, I asked each respondent: “How did you come to decide to leave the Philippines and work overseas? Did anyone express reservations about this idea?” If the migrant answered “yes” to the latter question, I asked for details and asked how she had managed to overcome this resistance.
While I was familiar with the ongoing debates over NELM, I had no starting hypothesis about what actually happened within female migrants' families prior to their migration. Instead, I adopted an inductive, discovery-driven approach (Burawoy 1998; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Kleining and Witt 2001). It was only during the coding of the interview transcripts that I detected a pattern of two-sided, intra-household negotiations over gender norms taking place. Phrases such as “I said, ‘I am doing this for you,” “for the family,” and “I want to help” made regular appearances in the transcripts as interviewees recalled how they presented their migration aspirations to relatives. These interview transcripts were then coded using both closed and open coding techniques for any mention of familial resistance (or lack thereof), and different approaches for overcoming said resistance.
Findings: Negotiating Migration
My interviews made clear that independent labor migrants' migration decisions almost always started out as an individual-level idea that was then presented to various family members for consideration and approval. Only one of my interviewees spoke of having jointly considered the idea of labor migration with her husband from the very start. All others spoke of first concluding that they wanted/needed to work overseas—often through the influence of network contacts who were already overseas MDWs—and only then broaching the topic with their immediate family to gain their relatives' support. (Figure 1 provides a pictorial representation of the three-step pre-migratory process of (1) aspiring, (2) negotiating, and then (3) decision-making that most of my interviewees went through.) I posit that the intensity of the negotiation phase of this pre-migratory process is dependent on the gendered context (at both the household and the societal level) in which the aspiring migrant lives, setting aside resource and policy considerations. In situations where there are well-accepted norms of female independent migration, reduced patriarchy, and a skewed overseas labor market that privileges female workers, the negotiation process should be less fraught for aspiring migrant women. Likewise, aspiring male migrants should face limited resistance to their migration dreams in societies marked by high levels of patriarchy and entrenched tropes about the male provider (Hoang 2011b). It is these familial and societal gendered norms, more so than individual relatives, that all aspiring migrants negotiate.
A negotiated migration model
A negotiated migration model
My hypothesis is supported by the fact that only 55 percent of my interviewees recalled encountering overt resistance from one or more of their immediate relatives: their parents, husbands, older siblings, or children.8 Over half of these interviewees encountered overt resistance to their migration aspirations from their parents, either both or just one parent. Among married participants, 49 percent faced resistance from their husbands. These relatives' overt resistance manifested itself in various ways, including a refusal to cover the costs of recruitment agency fees and travel costs, a refusal to care for the aspiring migrant's children during the time period she wanted to be overseas, the barring of daughters from leaving the country, and the withholding of verbal support and approval.
Even in cases where female migrants did not face overt resistance, women spoke of “asking permission” from parents and/or husbands before going abroad. Their choice of words demonstrates the unequal power structures (along generational and gendered lines) that prevail in Philippine households and how aspiring women migrants needed to prepare for potential resistance to their migration aspirations. For young, unmarried women, household authority was vested in their parents, while for married women, their husbands were the heads of the household.9 But married women migrants still often sought their parents' blessings in addition to their husbands', partly because they craved the emotional reassurance of knowing their parents supported their decision, but also because they often relied on their parents to help look after their children while they were away (see also Hoang 2011b).
Parents who expressed explicit resistance to their daughters' migration aspirations justified their position mostly by raising concerns about their daughters' safety, regardless of how old these women were at the time. The isolation their daughters would experience overseas was another common concern. Desiree, who had left the Philippines when she was 25, recalled how her father told her that “it is too far away and then you are alone.” Ariel in Singapore remembered her mother telling her, “No, you just work here [in the Philippines] because, when you go to other country, you don't know what might happen to you.” Parents (such as Matilda's father quoted below) were also more likely to directly raise their daughters' normative role in the household as justification for withholding support:
My father doesn't want me to go abroad. “Because,” he said, “it's not you to go anywhere. It should be your husband. He is the man. He should be the one to give you everything you need.”
Likewise, Aisha's father had no issues with her brother working overseas but balked when Aisha first raised the notion of working in Brunei as a domestic worker:
Of course, I'm not the first one in the family to go [overseas]. My brother is in, at that time, Saudi. But he's a guy, so [my father] won't mind. But I am a girl, so it's a big issue.
Several interviewees echoed Aisha's matter-of-fact statement about her father's double standards. It was taken for granted that parents would worry more about the safety of their daughters, and that parents should have more say in their daughters' migration decisions.
Husbands, meanwhile, often argued that their family's existing standard of living in the Philippines was already comfortable and did not require raising. Other migration scholars have also noted husbands' resistance to their wives' potential new status as family breadwinners and the change in their own status to that of “househusband” (Gamburd 2000; Lan 2006; Parreñas 2001; Pignol 2001; Hoang 2011b). Christine, who worked first in Hong Kong and then Canada, recalled how her husband said there was no need for her to work overseas:
But, for my husband, at first, he really don't want me to leave. He said, “We have our daughter and I can still provide you our needs.” But I said, “Yeah, you can provide me the needs right now. But how about if we have more children? If I give birth again?” I said that for the future of our family and the future of our children, in case we are going to add more, then I really need to go. I really need to go abroad.
For women with children, relatives used explicitly gendering discourses about interviewees' roles as mothers to try to convince them not to leave. Marnie, a domestic worker in Singapore whose four children were between 10 months and seven years in age when she left the Philippines, encountered such resistance from her mother. Marnie's husband was a farmer in the Philippines whose earnings were minimal at best, but Marnie recalled her mother telling her “that ‘I can't do anything’ because I have my own family already.” Lena, who had also been a housewife in the Philippines before she left for Hong Kong at the age of 25, spoke of her parents telling her that “it is very hard to leave [your] child with another,” implying that her husband or her parents would not be adequate substitutes for Lena's own presence. Linda, a domestic worker in Singapore, told me how her relatives criticized her for abandoning her children, who were all girls. “They say that it is hard to leave them. ‘Who can teach them? Who can guide them? That is what a mother should do,’” Linda recalled them telling her. All in all, women migrants' relatives adopted gendering discourses to emphasize women's primary nurturing roles in the home, their vulnerability overseas, and their secondary status in relation to their brothers, husbands, or fathers, in order to bolster the argument that these women should not be allowed to work overseas.
Findings: Doing Gender
In response to this overt familial resistance or to neutralize any potential resistance, aspiring women migrants adopted several strategies. These involved a very particular performance of gender in these women's discursive presentation of their aspiring migrant self to relatives. Interviewees emphasized their gendered identities as dutiful daughters, caring mothers, and/or supportive spouses, framing their desire to work overseas as an exclusive act of intra-familial loyalty and self-sacrifice. They highlighted how labor migration would allow them to fulfill their roles as mothers, daughters, and sisters through the greater income they could make available to their families. They also emphasized the negative consequences of inaction, in terms that made it clear that not migrating would make them less-than-adequate mothers, sisters, or wives. What they never mentioned to resistant family members were the more self-directed motives behind their migration aspirations, such as their desire to see the world, be independent, live in the West, escape a failing relationship, or jumpstart their careers. (These more self-directed motivations were, however, mentioned to me). They also did not argue that they had a right to migrate.
The migrant as dutiful daughter
In trying to convince their parents to support their migration aspiration, unmarried interviewees often framed their reason for migrating as a desire to meet family-based needs. Twenty-four of my unmarried interviewees adopted this “dutiful daughter” approach. In so doing, aspiring migrants were assisted by the Philippine tradition of never-married women taking on the responsibility of caring for their parents and supporting their younger siblings' education (Chant and McIlwaine 1995; Lan 2006; Lauby and Stark 1988; Medina 2001).
Desiree pointed out to her reluctant father that working overseas would allow her to fund her siblings' university educations, something that her father was unable to do:
He doesn't like me to go here. He said it is too far away and then you are alone. And so I said, “If you want help to finish all my brothers' and sisters' education, let me go.” Because my two brothers, the two younger brothers, they are so clever. They say they want to learn, to study.
In this manner, Desiree couched her migration aspiration in the accepted language of familial duty, presenting herself as the filial daughter who would be helping her father fulfill his responsibilities as household head. Likewise, 44-year-old Aisha, who left the Philippines for Brunei at the age of 28, explained that her father eventually agreed to support her labor migration only after she convinced him that she could help raise the entire family's living standards:
I say … at least, I can help out the family. And I say, we can raise up the living condition. And I tell him, “Didn't you want to have our own house? Buy a small land?” And he smiled bitterly. But I know. He's a father. Then, after that, he said okay.
Another migrant, Rory, who was about to commence her second contract in Saudi Arabia when I interviewed her, recalled how she won over her parents in a similar manner:
My father … does not like I go to other country because he has heard about, through the television, about accidents. … But, for me, I am decided. So I told my father, “I want to go, I want to help all my family.”
Interviewer: Your mother? Was she okay with you leaving?
No, at first, it's not okay. She is not okay. But after that, I ask my mother, “I want to go, I want to go. Not only for myself. It is just only for you.” [And] after two years [overseas], I have no money now. […] My money, all my salary in two years, I give it to my family. I give all to my family.
The migrant as caring mother
The criticism typically leveled at aspiring migrants with children was that they were being irresponsible mothers, abandoning their children to go gallivanting overseas. Interviewees tended to respond by emphasizing how working overseas (on a temporary basis) was in fact the exact opposite of irresponsibility, but rather the best way for them to fulfill their role as mothers. Thirty-four of my interviewees who had young children when they first left the Philippines adopted this strategy.
Linda, the domestic worker in Singapore with three daughters, emphasized how it was her concern for her daughters' education and day-to-day standard of living that compelled her to seek work overseas. Diane, a married mother of two, recalled how she had to convince her husband that her overseas domestic work was the only way for them to provide for their children:
My husband is very reluctant for me to leave. But I said, “If I stay here [in the Philippines], what will happen?” It's not that we will go hungry. We won't become like that. But we have got two kids and the kids are growing. So I said, “If we stay with this income, more likely the future of the kids will be a question mark. So maybe if I go there, maybe I can give our children a brighter future.”
Diane did not want her husband to think she saw him as an inadequate provider. At the same time, she emphasized how the financial cost of a tertiary education in the Philippines was too burdensome for a single local income—even two local incomes—to cover. A similar situation occurred with Millie, a trained midwife who first worked in Singapore for two years, then returned to the Philippines and sought to go overseas again to Hong Kong but was initially not allowed to do so by her husband:
After I went back home, my husband doesn't allow me to work [overseas] anymore. Yeah. So I look after my children for two years. But, because of the economy, I really need to come abroad and to look for work again.
Interviewer: How did you convince him to let you go again?
I just talked to him nicely. “You know, life here is so difficult and we want that the children, after growing up, to go to college or universities. But if I'm just here to look at you, look at each other's face, nothing will happen for us. And then our children won't go to—we cannot send them to school, you know.” So he think it over and let me come again.
The migrant as supportive wife
In the account above, Millie's choice of words—about talking to her husband “nicely”—highlights how married women had to tread lightly when negotiating prevalent gender norms about the male breadwinner. In such cases, interviewees framed their desire to work overseas as a common-sense response to the gendered overseas labor market that was geared toward Filipino women rather than Filipino men. Sometimes interviewees (like Matilda, below) had to use this argument with their parents rather than their husbands:
I told my father that I think I need to work because [my husband] is not required for any job going abroad. He is not skilled. That's why I preferred to just go abroad and then he [my husband] will be the one to look after my children.
Several other married migrants, like Janelle (below), presented similar arguments, emphasizing that they had no ambition to usurp their husbands' head-of-household role:
For a man, there's not really a lot of opportunity that time. It was always the woman who was faster to, you know, to leave the country. [So] I was only the one [to apply]. I said we cannot do both, because of the financial, you know? The financial cost of applying [for an overseas job]. If I will go faster, then just I will try. Because, you know, if I go faster, then I could start to earn [faster].
In such cases, women migrants were able to win their husbands' support by emphasizing that they were just trying to help. Twenty-four of my married interviewees used this kind of language. As Amarilla, in Singapore, put it: “I talk to my husband that I want to help him. First time, he do not want [me to go]. But maybe he realized that he needs my help. That's why he allowed me to work here in Singapore.”
These married migrants stressed that so-called “neutral” market forces, rather than any personal preference on their part, were dictating which spouse should go overseas. In this way, both wives (and husbands) could argue that the decision to send the wife overseas was simply a reaction to social forces that favored a woman's departure from the Philippines over a man's. Couching the migration decision in these terms made it clear that it was not that husbands were blasé about their children's future or that wives were feminist pioneers. Rather, the decision to let the wife work overseas was the most pragmatic option available to a family and simply a way for a wife to support her husband in his role as family head.
Other Tactics
A smaller subset of interviewees described adopting tactics that were not explicitly gendered. Among younger, unmarried interviewees, one popular tactic was to avoid any mention of their migration plans until all the arrangements had been made (see also Oishi 2005, 105). This tactic worked for aspiring migrants who possessed sufficient funds to cover the cost of their migration themselves without having to rely on relatives. Interviewees who used this approach fixed their departure date and then, a week or two before leaving, announced their decision to their family. Jessica, who had worked in Manila before finding a job in Hong Kong, asked her parents (who lived on another island in the Philippine archipelago) to visit her in Manila a few weeks before her departure and told them then of her plans to go overseas. “If that's your decision, we cannot stop you,” she recalled them telling her, despite being upset by the news. “Because you have already your visa, you have your tickets, and you are ready to go.”
Eight other participants invoked the role of “fate,” “luck,” or “God” in shaping their future, making the argument that if they were destined to encounter difficulties, it would happen to them wherever they were. By placing their future in the hands of some higher authority, they were trying to alleviate any sense of personal responsibility or gendered concern their relatives might have felt.
Taking an opposite tack, other interviewees gave relatives a say over select parameters of their labor migration. These women spoke of changing their planned destinations because family members vetoed particular countries or regions as being too risky, delaying their departure for several years, or promising to return to the Philippines after only two years abroad. Still, most interviewees used these tactics in tandem with specifically gendered strategies in order to convince their relatives. For instance, Millie, the MDW mentioned earlier who talked “nicely” with her husband, also allowed him to veto any jobs in the Middle East, as he did not want her working for an Arab employer.
Discussion
The negotiations between aspiring women migrants and their families described in this article were almost always gendered and gendering in the scripts being called forth by both sides. The household discussion over labor migration was thus, at its heart, not simply a conversation over money—where to earn it, who should earn it, what it should be used for—but also a debate over gender expectations and roles. Families framed their resistance using normative beliefs that still enjoy wide circulation within the Philippines about a woman being primarily responsible for all social reproductive functions within her household and about her subordinate status vis-à-vis the male head of household and purported breadwinner of the family. Aspiring women migrants also called upon prevailing gender ideology in the Philippines but reworked it to support their migration dreams. They did make an economic argument à la NELM, pointing out the additional revenue stream they could provide their households and/or the straitened economic circumstances their families would have to endure if they did not work overseas. But these economic arguments only helped justify a household-level migration decision to send someone—anyone—from the family overseas. Migrants' gendered self-presentations as dutiful daughters, supportive spouses, and caring mothers were necessary to justify why they should be the family representatives to be sent overseas.
These intra-familial bargaining sessions do not match the unified household or dictatorship models of household decision-making, given that household authority figures—whether parents or husbands—had to be convinced that independent female labor migration was appropriate. The gendered and gendering negotiations that migrants engaged in do not match the third “super-trader family” model either. There may have been some bargaining over the amount of remittances to be sent back home each month or the allocation of these funds across various family members but, in essence, aspiring migrants were bargaining with the system of patriarchy that existed within their households and societies. During these negotiations, most interviewees “did” gender rather than attempting to “undo” it (West and Zimmerman 1987). They framed their migration as a way to “help” their families, rather than “provide” for or “protect” them. The former term is gendered as female, while the latter terms are male (de Beauvoir 1989[1949]; Smith 1987; Martin 2003). These women did not attempt to claim the mantle of family breadwinner in their migration negotiations even though that was what they would effectively become once they were overseas.
Conclusion
The concept of a negotiated migration decision that distinguishes between the individual-level aspiration to migrate and the household-level negotiation that needs to be successful before any migratory action can occur helps extend migration theory and align it with gender reality. This model of a negotiated migration decision parallels Everett Lee's (1966) classic push-pull model of migration, which highlights that, between the migration aspiration and migratory action, there can exist “intervening obstacles” that prevent a desired migration from taking place. Lee highlighted the financial cost of migration, the distance between origin and destination, and the presence of dependent children as examples of intervening obstacles. More recently, Jørgen Carling has highlighted the role of capital and policy constraints in creating what he calls “involuntary non-migrants” (2002). My negotiated migration model focuses exclusively on the gendered cultural constraints on women's independent labor migration aspirations. But it also squarely places a degree of agency, albeit constrained, back in the hands of these aspiring migrants as they attempt to navigate around these obstacles.
That is the second contribution of this article: conceiving of these intra-familial negotiations as dynamic, two-sided, discursive sites where both migrants and their relatives engage in gendering practices and gender performances. Given the gendered, socio-cultural constraints on their freedom of choice and movement, aspiring women migrants agentically reframe their migration aspiration as a logical extension of their supporting roles as daughter, wife, sister, and/or mother, rather than attempting to completely upend the gendered and generational power structure in which they are embedded. I am not the first migration scholar to note how independent women labor migrants from developing countries adopt gendered negotiating strategies with their families (see Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Hoang 2011b). But what my article does is take these empirical findings and incorporate them into a conceptual framework that explains the underlying processes at work.
However, the absence of interviews with involuntary female non-migrants makes it hard to ascertain what makes for a successful negotiation from the point of view of aspiring migrants. It is possible that involuntary non-migrants presented gendered arguments when attempting to leave the country, but that for some reason they were unable to persuade their relatives to support their migration aspiration. A follow-up study is being planned that will involve interviews with both involuntary non-migrants and voluntary migrants to contrast their respective negotiation experiences with their families in order to identify the factors that contribute to successful outcomes for aspiring women migrants. This study will also incorporate supporting interviews with other household members to verify migrants' accounts of their negotiation experiences and address concerns regarding retrospective interviewing as a research method. Still, the present study is useful in clarifying how successful migrants employ gender performance to frame and supplement the economic arguments they make for migration.
Other readers might take the opposite tack and argue that familial resistance would not have made any material difference to my interviewees' decision to migrate and that these women would have left the Philippines regardless. This would be a misreading of gendered family dynamics in the Philippines and elsewhere (see Aguiar 1975; Arizpe and Aranda 1981; Hoang 2011b). Several of my interviewees recalled how their first attempts to leave the Philippines failed because of stiff resistance from assorted family members. These interviewees used strong language such as “my parents did not let me go” or “my husband did not allow me to leave,” indicating the coercive power these relatives had over their migration decision. This was not always a direct veto power; sometimes it was more akin to ensuring compliance by expressing disapproval. A couple of interviewees did leave the Philippines without informing their family members beforehand, driven by a fear that their parents would not support their migration decision. These women then called their parents a few weeks after they started their jobs to explain what they had done. But deciding to run away was not common among my sample. Instead, most interviewees tried to win their family's support before leaving. As Hoang (2011b) also notes with her Vietnamese women interviewees, it was important for my Filipina interviewees to feel that they had the backing of their husbands or parents in order to maintain their peace of mind while overseas by themselves, or because they needed these relatives to look after the children they left behind.
A final question remains: What about aspiring male migrants? Does the negotiated migration model apply to men? I say it does. Thinking of the intra-household migration discussion as a negotiation over gender norms/roles explains the greater ease with which aspiring male migrants are able to move, setting aside capital and policy considerations (Cooke 2008; Hoang 2011b). From a young age, men are traditionally granted much greater autonomy and freedom of movement by their families and society at large. In several cultures, the outmigration of young males from their villages is seen as a rite of passage and male non-migrants are publicly shamed for not undertaking this journey (Jónsson 2008; Lan 2006). Aspiring male migrants are also able to call upon well-established gendered tropes—such as the “male breadwinner,” the “authoritative male” who does not need to ask for permission from others, and the “risk-taking adventurer”—from their “cultural toolkit” (Swidler 1986) to stave off potential resistance. These presentations of their gendered selves to relatives help aspiring male migrants avoid possible overt resistance from their family (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Hoang 2011b).
By deploying these gendering narratives with their families, male and female migrants inadvertently bolster conservative views about appropriate gender roles within a family. Even as women migrants carve out a figurative space for themselves as independent wage earners overseas, they cement the traditional view of Filipina women as self-sacrificial, self-effacing, and always putting their family's needs before their own. This bind is apparent in Rory's lament (mentioned earlier) that “my money, all my salary in two years, I give it to my family. I give all to my family.” Other interviewees spoke of the constant, never-ending demands for remittances from family members who took for granted that these migrants would send them money to meet all their needs all the time. Other scholars of Filipina migration have also observed these migrants' practice of remitting practically all their earnings back to the Philippines (Lan 2006; Oishi 2005; Parreñas 2001). Interviewees spoke of how they were constantly inundated with demands from family members in the Philippines for more money. I posit that their sense of responsibility to send regular remittances was compounded by the Faustian/patriarchal bargain that these Filipina migrants had undertaken in order to win their family's support in the first place. In this manner, interviewees' pre-migration arguments paralleled the model of “Asian feminism” that is promoted by the patriarchal governments of modern Asian countries. These governments encourage women's labor-force participation (whether domestically or abroad) to boost the national GNP of their countries but, at the same time, they continue to expect women to hold a subservient position in their households vis-à-vis their husbands and fathers (Afshar 1987; Brooks 2006; Chant and McIlwaine 1995; Lazar 2001; Roces and Edwards 2000, 2010; Sen 2004). Even as these pioneering women migrants break gender barriers when it comes to their labor migration, they do so by reinforcing the gendered and generational power hierarchy within their own homes.
About the Author
Anju Mary Paul is an assistant professor of sociology at Yale–NUS College in Singapore and an international migration scholar with a research focus on emergent patterns of international migration to, from, and within Asia. She studies both high- and low-skilled migration, from migrant domestic workers to nurses to bioscientists. She has published articles in the American Journal of Sociology, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Notes
I define “independent labor migration” as the setting forth of an individual from their hometown/village by themselves in order to seek work elsewhere, but without the benefit of a family member in the destination sponsoring them for a visa or a family member from their home accompanying them on their journey.
I use “family” and “household” interchangeably in this essay, though I recognize that they represent different living arrangements and family structures.
According to Hoang, “uncontested” situations are where the migrant decides to leave without any consultation with family members. In “conflictual” situations, migrants reported leaving despite unresolved disagreements with family members (2011b, 1446).
The original sample consisted of 160 Filipino MDWs, including 21 US-based interviewees. However, the vast majority of the US-based interviewees had not left the Philippines intending to be domestic workers. Instead, most left the Philippines having been sponsored for permanent residence in the United States. As such, they would not qualify as independent women migrants, and so their responses are not included here.
Being married with children, belonging to an earlier cohort of migrants, and being less educated all positively correlated with the manifestation of overt familial resistance within my study sample. However, due to space constraints, I do not discuss this variation in familial resistance across my sample. I do so in a separate paper currently in preparation.
There were some exceptions to this rule, for instance, in cases where husbands were deceased, unemployed, or earned significantly less than their wives.
References
Author notes
The research that is the basis of this paper was funded through a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation [grant number SES 1028932] and by grants and fellowships from the University of Michigan, the Ford School of Public Policy, and the Center for the Education of Women. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at conferences organized by the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, and the International Migration Institute at Oxford University. The paper has benefited from comments and suggestions from audience members at these conferences, and also from Alexandra Killewald, Jessi Streib, Jane Rochmes, Deborah Davis, and several anonymous reviewers. All remaining errors are the author's.
