Migrant women: wives and workers

Kari Leonard
October 30, 2008
4:19pm

In this article, it is speaking about the affect of the global financial crises on jobs among migrant workers and the affect on the amount of money that it sent overseas from workers or migrants. The migrant workers who are unskilled and less valuable to their employers would take the first and earliest hits. “The Department of Foreign Affairs, said the DFA has served notice that “several traditional destinations for women service workers were closing their recruitment doors. It was also reported that even low-paid jobs were getting lower (paid.”” The article states that because of this then the Philippine government should rethink its policy about sending out mostly women for service work abroad or domestic work. The fact that the women are sending money back might not be an economic advantage because there is a serious social cost of an absent wife or mother. Women also migrate to other countries as spouses of nationals. Most of the time the “marriage migrants are regarded as potential nationals to be assimilated rather than as culturally autonomous migrants.” I feel like after all of the progress that we feel is happening with women in developing countries that this article brings a drawback. The migrant women are going to no longer have many jobs over here in the U.S. and be kept in their lowest paid jobs in their own country. And also the U.S. is basically forcing the women that are marrying nationals to ‘assimilate.’ They are not even allowing them to keep their own culture when they marry. They are forced to become one of us.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20081026-168473/Migrant-women-wives-and-workers