Feminization of labor migration: female migrant domestic workers from the Philippines in Turkey

Abstract

Today, migration is inevitably a global practice for many Filipina domestic workers. Therefore, it offers a dynamic profile of Filipina migrant domestic workers with myriad motivations and experiences through various destinations before entry to Turkey and now here, which especially rooted in the colonial histories of the Philippines. However, the main focus of the article is to explore Filipinas’ decisions to migrate and their experiences as migrant domestic workers in Turkey, and also sometimes their previous experiences. This paper also presents the experiences of Filipina migrant domestic workers with the employers and intermediary agencies directly from their perspectives. In short, the research gives a brief analysis of female labor migration from the Philippines to Turkey. In order to understand how and why women’s labor migration from the Philippines has historically been became prominent in the employment of migrant women as domestic workers, we also need to be aware of the historical construction of domestic work as women’s work. In other words, there could be several factors, but the most important is the ability to teach English to the children, and also the colonial history of the Philippines. However, the case of the Filipina migrant domestic workers considerably differs from the other foreign domestic workers in Turkey since the employers seem to be more inclined to prefer Filipina domestic workers based on these factors I mentioned above. And the main method was the feminist anthropology including participatory-observation, interviewing, meetings, etc. Then the field work is based in the in-depth interviews with twenty people that I conducted in Istanbul.

Keywords

• Feminization of Migration
• Migrant Domestic Workers from the Philippines
• Multiple Colonial History of the Philippines

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