The Philippine Migration Trail - Seminar on migration and reproductive health

THE PHILIPPINE MIGRATION TRAIL

An IPS project with financial support from the

In one of Nadine Sarreal's stories, a Filipino domestic worker who has been physically and sexually abused by her employers in Hong Kong, says

Ay, I have to work.
I have to hold on.
I can cry later, maybe at night.
But while there is light,
I must keep on working.''
(...)
''I eat curses for breakfast
and breathe humiliation through the day
Before noon
I must
Sweep the floor and polish windows
Dust the furniture
Wash the dog
Hang out laundry
Run up and downstairs twelve times. . . ''

Check this
interesting site:

Our Own Voice:
Filipinos in the Diaspora

An IPS Book
OFF THE PRESS SOON!
April 2002
Risks and Rewards:
Stories from the Philippine Migration Trail.
Published by IPS Asia-Pacific
Bangkok-Thailand.
Click!

		SINGAPORE Seen Everywhere, but Little Heard They cook, they clean, they help the children with homework and perform a myriad of roles around the home. They are Singapore's 140,000 foreign domestic workers.

		PHILIPPINES Children of Migrant Workers Feel Lost at Home ''On the day my parents left for Italy, I must have been three years old. There we were at the airport. They bought my brothers and I toys and told us to play,'' recalls 16-year-old Filipino student Wilma Palejon about her separation from her migrant-worker parents.
PREVIOUS STORIES

	MALAYSIA Pregnancy a Work Hazard By the time Janice, a Filipino domestic worker in Malaysia, found out she was pregnant, her partner, a fellow Filipino worker, had returned to the Philippines. ITALY Migrants Embrace Second Culture Filindon was four years old and his mother Perlita, 27 when the glass doors of the Manila airport closed behind her, leaving him outside. They would meet again four years later. MALAYSIA Fishing for a Better Deal Rugged-looking and tanned from exposure tothe tropical sun, Pepe (not his real name) and his friends speak in a surprisingly gentle tone about the woes that come with their jobs as fishing boat workers. HONG KONG The Call of the Sea (and its Men) It is Sunday night in one of the nightspots in Hong Kong's entertainment district of Wan Chai, and the place is thumping.
	Crossing the Line Marie is seated at a corner table, her profile flickering amid the confusion of lights at a popular disco where she works. She is the latest recruit in a virtual army of heavily made-up young Asian women that enlivens Hong Kong's entertainment district of Wanchai.
	SOUTH KOREA More Income, but Split Families During the six years she worked in South Korea, Connie (not her real name) sent 400 U.S. dollars every month to her family in the Philippines, so they could invest it in a store that would finance their daily needs and help secure her children's future.
	Dreams for a High Price They have just had a baby girl, but Mark and Hanna (not their real names) are hardly the portrait of ecstatic first-time parents. A mere three weeks after their daughter Nicole was born, they had to send her home to the Philippines, where their parents would look after the tiny infant.