Kinlore
1974 – present

Overseas Filipino Workers and the global diaspora

A labour-export policy begun under Marcos turns the Philippines into one of the world's great sources of migrant workers, from nurses and seafarers to domestic workers, whose remittances keep families and the economy afloat.

  • Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World — Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, University of Minnesota Press (2010)
  • Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work — Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Stanford University Press (2001)
  • Survey on Overseas Filipinos — Philippine Statistics Authority (2024)
  • Overseas Filipinos' Remittances — Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (2025)
  • Filipinos in the U.S. Fact Sheet — Pew Research Center (2024)

Well established migrationeconomyfamilyidentity

Filipinos had migrated before, to Hawaiian plantations and Californian farms under American rule and, after 1965, to the United States as nurses and doctors. But in 1974 the Marcos government’s Labor Code made sending workers abroad a deliberate policy, meant as a temporary fix for unemployment and a source of foreign currency. The government created agencies to license recruiters and negotiate with receiving countries, and the “temporary” fix became permanent.

  • Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World — Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, University of Minnesota Press (2010)

The Philippine Statistics Authority counts around two million Overseas Filipino Workers abroad at any one time, many in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuwait and Qatar, and Filipino seafarers crew a large share of the world’s merchant ships. Counting permanent emigrants, government estimates put the total number of Filipinos overseas at around ten million.

  • Survey on Overseas Filipinos — Philippine Statistics Authority (2024)
  • Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World — Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, University of Minnesota Press (2010)
About 4.2 million Americans are of Filipino descent.
In 2024, remittances from overseas Filipinos reached a record of about $38 billion, roughly 8% of GDP, according to the central bank.
  • Overseas Filipinos' Remittances — Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (2025)

Presidents since Corazon Aquino have called OFWs bagong bayani, “new heroes”. The 1995 execution in Singapore of Flor Contemplacion, a Filipina maid convicted of murder whom many Filipinos believed innocent, caused national outrage and led to new protections for migrants.

  • Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World — Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, University of Minnesota Press (2010)
Sociologists such as Rhacel Parreñas have documented the costs: mothers raising other people’s children abroad while their own grow up with grandparents, and workers in the Gulf facing confiscated passports and abuse.
  • Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work — Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Stanford University Press (2001)
The balikbayan box, packed with chocolate, clothes and soap and shipped home at Christmas, is the diaspora’s most loving symbol.

Why it matters today

The Philippines

Almost every Filipino family has someone abroad. OFWs are celebrated as "modern-day heroes" and their remittances pay for houses, school fees and hospital bills, but the long separations, the abuse some workers face and the sense that the country exports its people rather than creating jobs at home are deep sources of pain.