Summary

February 22, 2001

"News about migration tend to touch on migrant worker issues as police or consular issues -- when something bad happens to them, when they are blamed of they are blamed for crimes -- or report on them as faceless economic and labour resources,'' Johanna Son, regional director for IPS Asia-Pacific, said in opening the seminar, 'On the Philippine Migration Trail: Migration and Reproductive Health', held in Bangkok in late February. "This is often also how many host governments view migration for work."

Thus, she said, the IPS writing fellowship project, supported by the Ford Foundation, aims to highlight the often under-reported human challenges that come with migration and its link to reproductive health.

She explained the concept behind the project, saying that using the Philippine migration phenomenon as a means to look into reproductive health and sexuality issues of migrants was a "logical" choice because it is one of the biggest exporters of human labour in the world. It has millions of people in more than 120 countries and one in five seafarers today, for instance, is Filipino.

"The human stories of the daily lives of Filipino migrant workers - their need for health services, loneliness, adjustment, laws that treat them as little more than economic resources, sexual behaviour, lack of social support systems and dealing with alien cultures in foreign lands - these do not get discussed enough," she said. "Yet migrant workers are no less the people they were when they were at home - they need communities, they need friends."

Yet many countries want the economic benefit that labour migrants bring, but develop an "allergy" when talk goes to migrants' rights, including health rights. So, some government countries consider pregnancy a breach of contract, frown on migrants marrying their nationals, or require yearly testing for diseases and send those who are found to have them, home.

The situation is riskier for women, who make up most of Asian migrant labourers today. If a Filipino documented worker already has little access to health services and has nowhere to run to if she gets pregnant, at risk of losing her job, she is probably forced to get abortion. Things are even tougher for illegal or undocumented workers, she added.

Rex Varona, executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asian Migrant Centre, drew a picture of Asian migration trends in recent decades. In the seventies, the migration trend was very much male as the oil boom in the Middle East triggered a demand for workers from Asia. With the emergence of newly-industrialised economies in the eighties, countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia began attracting migrants as well - many of them factory workers or labourers doing jobs shirked by locals, and many of them going into domestic work. In the economic restructuring of the nineties and Asian economic crisis, Varona said, many countries began sending migrants home and migrants found their host communities less welcoming than before. Some countries, like South Korea and Japan, officially do not admit unskilled labour.

Through the years, he said, many countries see migrant workers as good only as cheap labour. ''Once they begin asserting their rights, they are not cheap anymore, and who (host country) wants to get expensive labour?'' Varona asked. ''The lack of recognition of migrant workers' rights as human rights is important.''

Many governments in the region are nervous about migrant workers, who often have to face harsh conditions, face limits on their rights, are excluded from social and health services or have to pay more for them. Many countries look as migrant workers ''very much as important tools, but never (to) become integrated into society.'' There are now 15 million Asian migrants, and the Philippines has 7 million migrant workers, Varona said.

Often, discrimination - based on class, gender and race -- underpins many policies and attitudes toward migrants. Likewise, they often find themselves victims of criminalisation as a way of keeping them out or sending them home during bad economic times, he added.

Women often face tougher challenges, and their work as migrants is often very "gender-specific" - they work in plantations, as domestic workers, and as entertainers in places like Japan. Apart from the risk of sexual and physical abuse, women migrant workers are sometimes prevented from marrying locals, are deported if they become pregnant and undergo compulsory medical, AIDS, pregnancy tests. "The assumption is that they came here to work (and nothing else)," Varona explained.

Touching on what media can do on the issue of migration, Varona suggested that media also reach out to popular publications although they often are the ones that sensationalise news about migrants. IPS, he suggested, should embrace these media too because they remain important sources of information for many people.

Later, he said that media often portray migrant workers as victims of crimes, abuse and prejudice, but that "they are not only that". Media has also failed to project them as people who are also organising themselves to assert their rights, for instance in Hong Kong and Japan. Filipinos are often more aggressive in organising themselves when able, but he said even Indonesian migrant workers are slowly doing so. "We should expose abuses (against them), but should also reshape the projection of migrants into people who can change their own lives," he stressed. Moreover, he said perhaps it was time that migrants "used their economic power to change policies at home (sending countries)."

After Varona, Mar, a 33-year-old former seafarer from the Philippines, shared his experiences with the participants of the seminar and the audience. He said that seafarers have a culture of having many sexual partners whenever ships stop at ports, out of loneliness as well.

Looking back, he said that while he had heard of HIV/AIDS, he only realised how real it was when medical exams needed before he was to leave the country showed that he was positive for the virus. He said that he did not enough information about HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases at the pre-departure seminar, where many young seafarers like him were all focused on achieving their dreams of seeing the world and had been told to expect sexual freedom. "I never thought of safety," he said. He added that while becoming an overseas worker gives a person a chance at a better future "we (seafarers) should recognise that we face a lot of risk, and be cautious and responsible."

A discussion followed about how host governments view migrant workers and how they draw up policies that discourage settlement, ways that are used to get rid of pregnant workers by weaknesses in the rules. These restrictions on pregnancy especially affect domestic workers. In Hong Kong, it was pointed out, half of domestic workers are single and 90 percent of them are women.

Aurora Javate de Dios, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (Asia-Pacific), pointed out that access to reproductive health services can be doubly difficult for women, whose loneliness overseas ''predisposes them to risky sexual behaviour." In some cases in Japan, women end up having repeated abortions so they can continue to stay there and work.

Varona said that it may also do well for groups working with migrants to address the needs not only of those who are already working overseas, but also contribute to changing what appears to be a mindset among many migrant workers, including Filipinos, that "it is the end-all and be-all, grand solution against poverty''. This, he said, would also help reduce the problems that migrant workers find themselves in when in foreign lands.

From Asian migration trends and a personal sharing of experience by a former migrant worker, the afternoon's session moved to the trafficking of women, many of them into the sex industry which has its own problems around health.

In her remarks, Bhassorn Limanonda of the Institute of Policy Studies of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok said that sex workers are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS because of various factors: easier cross-border travel in recent years, open economic policies that encourage open borders, and relaxation of immigration rules in many cases. But as travel becomes easier, knowledge/awareness of HIV/AIDS remains at a ''very low'' level and the information is often "erroneous".

For her part, De Dios of the Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women (Asia-Pacific) says the trade in the trafficking of people is so huge that it is said to be the second largest international industry after illegal drugs. An estimated 250,000 people are trafficked in Asia each year about 1 million worldwide, according to UN estimates she cited.

She also explained the difference between trafficking and migration for work. Trafficking, she said, usually occurs in the Mekong river region, East Asia, South Asia and South-east Asia, even from developing country to developing country. For instance, she said, there have been reports of trafficking to Africa and Saipan. Japan is a magnet for entertainment workers, and has 150,000 foreign women in the entertainment industry, from the Philippines, Thailand, Eastern Europe and Latin America. She added that the trafficking in women is a ''business'' for those who run it.

The group then exchanged views on specific parts of the world - why there are many reports of sexual abuse against migrant workers, many of whom are domestic workers, in the Middle East. De Dios said that the difficulty of NGOs to operate there, unlike in other host countries, adds to the challenges faced by Asian domestic workers who live in the homes of their employers and thus in very private contexts. There are also cultural differences that add to the challenge, and she said that Middle Eastern countries were among the toughest oppositors to provisions in a draft protocol on migration that were put in as responsibilities of host countries. Often, Church communities are the ones able to reach out to migrant workers, especially Filipinos, in the Middle East.

Kim Ghattas, a journalist-participant from Lebanon, added that racism is also a factor in problems of migrant workers in some parts of the Middle East. At the same however, she said that the treatment of foreign migrant workers is linked to the fact that the human rights situation in those countries are far from ideal in the first place, even for their own nationals.

Other journalists from Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia shared a bit about the policies and laws in their countries that affect migrant workers. There was also a discussion on the culture of sexual freedom among seafarers, how migrant workers cope with loneliness and their sexual behaviour, how to quantify the economic contribution of migrant workers' labour, and how some labour-receiving countries having different wages for different nationalities of migrant workers.

Ceres Doyo, a journalist from the Philippines, said it would be interesting to look at the "demand" for sex apart from the "supply" (trafficking of women, women in the entertainment industry). "What is the nature of this need? What is there was no supply of women, say to the seafarers?"

February 23, 2001

Aegile Fernandez of Tenaganita told participants about how Malaysia strictly enforces rules governing the stay of migrant workers in the country.

Those who enter Malaysia legally -- there are now 900,000 -- are generally treated well in terms of pay, though they do not receive privileges and benefits which other professional workers enjoy. But all documented workers are entitled to work-related accident insurance.

In Malaysia, maids are not considered "workers" (they work in private homes, unlike the usual labourer) and are therefore not covered by the country's Employment Act. Thus, they are not covered by work contracts which could entitle them to bigger benefits, a healthier work environment and a mechanism to protect their rights. The Philippines is the only country with which Malaysia has entered into a work contract system, because it has a bilateral labour agreement with Kuala Lumpur.

Thus, compared to domestic helpers from countries such as Indonesia, Thailand,
Burma as well as South Asian countries, Filipino domestic workers are paid more, due in part to the Philippine government's 'intervention'. Fernandez said Filipino domestic workers are the only ones who enjoy two days off a month, under their work contracts.

But she says that as workers and their governments assert their rights and demand more benefits, they are edged out of the labour market. For instance, she said the Philippine government and Filipino workers' demand in 1999 for higher wages, due to the fall in the value of the ringgit, was rejected by Malaysia - and resulted in a freeze on hiring of Filipino help. But because many employers prefer Filipinos, there have been selective hiring of domestic workers from the Philippines mainly by diplomats and the elite. Other nationalities, like Indonesians, are paid half the rate that Filipinos get, so that the market for migrant workers is often directed toward cheap labour.

Largely, interventions by sending governments are focused on the labour side, and not much in terms of health, she said. Contracts of workers who fail to pass medical tests, which are mandatory every year, are sent home. So are women migrant workers who get
pregnant. Those who test positive for HIV/AIDS are deported within 24 hours under Malaysian law, she added.

But if these impositions are harsh, it is worse for undocumented or ''runaway'' workers who do not return to their countries after their contracts are terminated. In many cases, they end up in bars. ''So when a (police) operation takes place, they are no longer considered migrant worker but sex workers,'' Fernandez said, resulting in even lesser protection for them.

Because of the large number of undocumented workers who have stayed on in Malaysia after it began trying to send more migrant workers home after the Asian economic crisis, she added, the home ministry has launched an operation that aims to flush out these illegal workers. ''They go into every home, every factory, every shop to check out documents,'' she said. Failure by the workers to produce work papers land them in detention camps, whose conditions have been the subject of criticism.

Still, she pointed to a bright spot. Migrant workers are now given pre-departure and post-arrival briefings, because they are not covered by the Employment Act.

In Singapore, Filipino domestic helpers are preferred by employers because of their
proficiency in the English language, said Kelvin Ng, a writing fellow from Singapore who shared some information about his country,

The island state is just as strict as Malaysia in enforcing laws governing domestic workers. This includes the deportation of workers found to be HIV-positive, who are pregnant and are thus considered to have broken their contract.

Like in Malaysia, documented workers can avail of health services. One other positive development is a law that punishes employers who physically abuse domestic workers, because the Singapore government wants the country to be known as a civil, courteous society.

The participants from Japan and South Korea also spoke about the situation of migrant workers in their countries. Filipino workers in those countries are mainly in the entertainment industry.

There are 115,000 registered or documented Filipinos in Japan, making them the fourth
biggest ethnic group in the country, after the Koreans, Chinese and Brazilians, according to journalist Suvendrini Kakuchi.. There are no domestic workers in Japan, she added.

Mayumi Nakazawa said legal or ''permitted'' foreign workers get health insurance and other benefits just like Japanese workers. There are an estimated 200,000 overstaying
workers in Japan, whose contracts have lapsed but who remain in the country.

Yunsik Jeong of the Asian Workers Network in Pusan said there are 20,000 Filipinos in South Korea. Half of this number enter the country with a ''trainee visa'' which is a legal way to get into the country. Migrant workers. however, cannot be members of trade unions.

Most Filipino entertainers operate around the U.S. military installations in South Korea,
Jeong added.

In both North Asian countries, migrant workers get help from non-government organisations such as church groups.

On the issue of quantification of the value that foreign migrant workers contribute to the economies of host countries, Varona said that no comprehensive study has been made about it. But he said that directly, these workers help the local economies by way of increased consumer spending.