Global Context of Gendered Labor Migration Article Analysis 1 The Global Context of Gendered Labor Migration from the Philippines to the United States
Global Context of Gendered Labor Migration Article Analysis 1
The Global Context of Gendered Labor Migration
from the Philippines to the United States
Chapter Lecture
Labor Market: This week, we are going to deconstruct the meaning of migration from both micro and macro structural considerations. Migration is a multi-layered process that results from transnational and globalized economic changes.
What is labor?
Labor is the process by which there an activity results in production. For example, if an individual in the United States works as a cashier for Walmart s/he is providing the service of scanning items for a consumer and collecting capital as a form of exchange for the goods. This type of labor is called formal labor because the employee is providing a service that is documented by the government and s/he contributes a certain amount of their earnings to state and federal taxes.
Another example of labor is called informal. This type of labor is not widely recognized because the earnings are usually not taxed. You are probably familiar with the term off the books or under the table. Prostitution is an example of informal labor.
What is the Market?
The market refers to the flow of capital that is accrued from the labor and production of goods and services.
Within the market there are various sources of capital production and a hierarchical structure that stratifies who gets what amount of capital based on their position in the labor market.
Marxs theory of Capitalism discusses the conflict between the owners of the means of production (bourgeoisie) and the workers (proletariat). For Marx, conflict occurs as workers are often exploited for their labor to the point where they become alienated or detached from their position in the market and even from the items which they are producing. The bourgeoisies main goal is to maximize their profits at any costeven to their employees!
Now how does this theory fit into the current condition of the labor market? Can you think of how people can be exploited for their labor?
Regulating work hours, assessing working conditions and assigning pay scales based on type of work is essential to minimizing exploitation. However, these basic labor rights are not guaranteed in many parts of the world particularly the developing world. Even undocumented immigrants in America are subject to vulnerable working conditions that can result in alienation. Think about it
How does the labor market affect migration?
Recall my last lecture on globalization. When development occurs it creates inequality throughout the developing world. For example, in India there are skilled workers who are trained in telecommunications who are able to gain access to middle-class employment in Indian and have a greater chance of migrating to the U.S. in search of higher wages. At the same time, the development of telecommunications industries in India has also increased the demand for cheap telecomm labor and companies are constantly disposing of workers who are unwilling to work for low wages. What happens to a telecomm worker who was hired under a contract and is now unemployed because the corporation they worked for has found cheaper labor in a neighboring city or even in another country in Asia?
This type of condition sparks the process of migration. Remember, migrating for work can occur nationally and internationally. For internal migration, think of the antebellum period where freed slaves in America migrated north in search of employment.
The process of migration is gendered and the type of employment available within the market is under constant flux. There are certain markets geared towards men and other geared towards women that will stratify the location of migration, wages earned and gendered social mobility in society.
Answer the following questions using lecture notes , article and textbook chapter 4 (text book name: Gender and US immigration Contemporary Trends by Pierrette hondagneu-stelo) will update text book chapter shortly
1. Cite and discuss the significance of the structuration perspective in examining international migration and labor.
2. Use Chapter 4 the textbook and the article to show specific examples of how structural changes and globalization has contributed to gendered markets.
3. Discuss the role of capitalism in shaping the domestic economy.
4. Is there a solution to this form of inequality? What do you think? Conceptualizing International Labor Migration: A Structuration Perspective
Author(s): Jon Goss and Bruce Lindquist
Source: International Migration Review, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1995), pp. 317-351
Published by: The Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc.
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International
Conceptualizing
A
Migration:
Labor
Structuration
Perspective
Jon Goss
Bruce Lindquist
Universityof Hawaii
article applies the theory of structuration to international labor
migration using case study material from the Philippines. It firstprovides
a brief review of the functional and structural approaches to understanding
labor migration and the theoretical impasse that has been created between
them. It then reviews several attempts to resolve this impasse, including
systems and networks approaches; these solutions are rejected on theoreti?
cal and empirical grounds. We suggest that migrant institutions may be a
more appropriate mid-level concept than households or social networks
to articulate various levels of analysis. We develop this concept in the
context of the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens and attempt to
apply this to the Philippines, concluding that this framework is eminendy
suited for further research on international labor migration.
This
International labor migration from developing countries has been the subject
of vast academic literature in the past twenty years as researchers have at?
tempted to measure its extent, to define its dominant characteristics, and
development {see
particularly to evaluate its contribution to socioeconomic
Arnold and Shah, 1986; Stahl, 1986a; Hugo and Singhanetra-Renard, 1987;
Amjad, 1989). The majority of studies have surveyed departing and returning
overseas workers and have examined the costs and benefits of labor export.
However, because researchers have adopted incompatible theoretical ap?
proaches and selected diverse contexts and a wide range of variables for
empirical analysis, the overall results of these studies remain ambiguous.
Moreover, as a result of the developmentalist orientation of the field (Kearney,
1986), researchers have been more occupied with evaluating the consequences
of international labor migration on national economies, communities or
households than with identifying the processes that lead individuals to pursue
employment overseas.
Although reviews of the literature on migration conventionally recognize
two distinct approaches, these ultimately both reduce to the same essential
– i.e., that the
assumption about process
migration of labor is a response to a
the
between
source and destination countries
differential
or
inequality
wage
caused by a difference in level of socioeconomic development. Migration is
therefore reduced to the circulation of labor power, and the social, cultural,
political and institutional dimensions of the phenomenon are subordinated to
an economic logic (Schiller et al, 1992). The functional perspective focuses
on microeconomic
processes, particularly the decisionmaking behavior of
IMR
Vol. xxix, No. 2
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317
318
International
Migration Review
individuals, who in their desire to improve their life chances respond to real
or perceived inequalities in the distribution of economic opportunity by
migrating to another place. Functional theory originally assumes that the
aggregate effect of these individual decisions will eventually lead to a reduction
in spatial inequalities and a gradual decline in individual motivation to migrate,
and hence to a slowdown of the migrant stream. The structural perspective,
on the other hand, focuses on the macroeconomic
processes that produce
sociospatial inequalities and constrain the life chances of individuals as mem?
bers of specific social classes in particular places. Migration is seen not as the
aggregate result of individuals exercising rational choice but as the result of
sociospatial inequalities systematically reproduced within global and national
economies. International migration does not reduce spatial inequalities and
lead to equilibrium but, due to loss of human capital, intensifies inequalities
and perpetuates underdevelopment.
The ideological opposition between these approaches has become reified
into an unproductive polarization of the literature, sustaining an artificial
– what Giddens
separation between macro and micro scales of analysis
calls
the
war”
micro
between
macro
and
(1985:292)
“phoney
approaches in
social science – and agency and structural determinations in migration (Wood,
1982; Kearney, 1986). Some authors, however, have attempted to reconcile
the functionalist and structuralist approaches. Fawcett and Arnold (1987:456),
for example, propose a “migration systems paradigm” which they define as “a
loosely structured set of concepts that [they] hope will provide some stimula?
tion and guidance for future research efforts.” They suggest that international
labor migration be viewed as a unified social process and that individual
decisions and actions are conditioned by “contextual factors” (structural forces)
operating at each stage of migration.
Similarly, but approaching the compromise from the other end of the
agency-structure continuum, Massey (1990) invokes Myrdal’s (1957) concept
of “circular and cumulative causation,” arguing that while individual decisions
and actions are conditioned by contextual factors the cumulative effect of
independent decisions may, over time, alter the decisionmaking context. Consequendy, “a full theoretical account of migration must include not only
interlevel dependencies among individual, household, community, and na?
tional-level factors, but inter-temporal dependencies as well” (Massey, 1990:9).
Both of these integrative approaches observe that migrant networks are
important to the process of international migration and suggest that the
incorporation of networks into theoretical and empirical analyses provides a
means of articulating agency and structure and reconciling the functional and
structural perspectives. Unfortunately, while undoubtedly recognizing a seri?
ous problem in the migration literature, these approaches do not provide a
coherent solution: first because they are conceptually vague; second because
the household and social networks as they are conceived within these ap-
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Conceptualizing
International
Labor Migration
319
proaches are unsatisfactory analytical categories which cannot, therefore,
function as points of articulation between macro and micro levels of determi?
nation, or between structure and agency.
Although the existential significance of the household cannot be gainsaid
– of
given that it is the primary organizational unit for social reproduction
labor allocation, income-pooling, and collective decisionmaking (see Smith
and Wallerstein, 1992; Smith et al, 1984) – feminist theory and empirical
research have exposed it as a problematic analytical concept (see, for example,
Folbre, 1986). At the same time, while social networks are central to an
understanding of migration (see, for example, Gurak and Caces, 1992), there
has been a tendency to conflate social networks with migrant networks, or the
progressive evolution of the former into the latter. As an alternative means to
integrate the literature and to conceive of international labor migration as a
unified social process, we present the concept of the migrant institution. The
migrant institution is a complex articulation of individuals, associations, and
organizations which extends the social action of and interaction between these
agents and agencies across time and space.
This conception is informed by structuration theory. The work of Anthony
Giddens explicidy addresses the structure-agency duality and is particularly
useful for a unified conceptualization of international labor migration. The
limitations of the conventional functional and structural approaches to labor
migration are discussed in the following sections and a critique of the proposed
integrative approaches is provided. Subsequendy, we sketch the theory of
structuration and then develop an alternative conceptualization
of migrant
institutions consistent with this theory. The discussion is illustrated with
observations on the Philippines and case study material collected during
research in Manila and a provincial community during 1986-1990.
While the
focus is thus international labor migration of a mosdy temporary nature, this
conceptualization is applicable wherever spatially extensive relationships link
migrants to their home communities, including rural-urban or circular migra?
tion in the domestic contexts, and what has recendy been identified as
“transnationalism” in the international context (Schiller et al., 1992; see also
Rouse, 1992: 14). In fact, as our case study shows, these three forms of mobility
– rural-urban
– are
migration, international labor migration, and emigration
related
institutions.
closely
through migrant
CONVENTIONAL
Functionalist
EXPLANATIONS
OF LABOR
MIGRATION
Approach
Functional models of population movement are based on modernization
theory and neoclassical development economics, which conceive of migration
as the means by which surplus labor in a largely agricultural economy is
transferred to the urban industrial sector, providing for economic growth and
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320
International
Migration Review
a psychosocial reorientation of the migrant in the process (Lewis, 1954; Ranis
and Fei, 1961; Zelinsky, 1971). Although explanation may be based on either
characteristics of source and destination societies or
general socioeconomic
individual perception and decisionmaking, this is a microsocial approach in
the sense that it assumes that social process is merely the aggregate of individual
actions (Massey et aL, 1993). The approach makes the assumptions of meth?
odological individualism, that is, that individuals make rational decisions to
maximize their utility on the basis of available knowledge of objective condi?
tions, or in the case of migration that they migrate in response to wage
differences that result from uneven distribution of returns to the factors of
production. Labor moves in search of higher wages from areas of capital scarcity
and labor abundance to areas of capital abundance and labor scarcity, or from
rural to urban areas and from developing to developed countries. The theory
predicts that competition among migrants will eventually depress wages in the
capital-rich region, while remittances together with the return of skilled mi?
grants to the source region will stimulate economic growth, eventually elimi?
nating spatial inequality and the wage differential that drives migration.
Rural-urban and international migrations have increased in many contexts,
however, despite high levels of unemployment and underemployment in the
urban-industrial economy. Nor has economic development of source areas
occurred as predicted. In an attempt to salvage this model (Kearney, 1986:335),
Harris and Todaro (1970) propose that individuals respond rationally to
perceived differentials in wages and the expected probability of securing em?
ployment, rather than actual opportunities, and hence they migrate despite the
fact that opportunities for wage labor are limited. This behavioral modification
of normative theory makes sense, but as Kearney points out (1986:335-336),
once it admits of nonequilibrating tendencies in migration and incorporates
imperfect information and supra-individual decisionmaking, the model loses
its theoretical distinctiveness and explanatory value. The model also reduces
migrants, a social category that is structured by gender, ethnicity and social class,
to mere embodiment of labor power (Cadwallader,
and fails to
1992:10)
take
into
account
the
and
other
structural
barriers to
adequately
political
mobility.
Ironically, while developing countries have generally sought to reduce or
redirect rural-urban migration due to its manifest disequilibrating tendencies
and inefficiencies, the functional approach has become a policymaking ortho?
doxy for international labor migration. Many Asian countries, for example,
have encouraged their citizens to seek income opportunities overseas under the
assumption that while the host country is provided with a supply of cheap
labor, the source country benefits from foreign exchange earnings in the form
of remitted wages. Overseas migration also provides a temporary relief from
domestic unemployment and a political safety valve, particularly as it is
generally the most ambitious and potentially vocal individuals who migrate.
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Conceptualizing
International
Labor Migration
321
In the longer term, it is anticipated that increased rates of domestic saving and
the application of new skills by returning workers will translate into productive
investment and the creation of new employment opportunities.
This model has informed government policy in the Philippines since the
mid-1970s when the rapid accumulation of capital in the Middle East and the
resulting construction boom created a demand for overseas labor at the same
time as the Philippine economy had stagnated, burdened with a balance of
payments crisis and high levels of structural unemployment. Partly due to
chronic political instability, the Marcos regime was unable to attract sufficient
foreign capital to the Philippines, despite the usual tax, tariffand infrastructural
incentives, and it turned to the export of cheap labor as the cornerstone of its
labor-intensive export-oriented industrialization program (Alegado, 1992).
Nevertheless, labor migration was viewed as a temporary phenomenon, pro?
viding for the relief of present problems and establishing the base for long-term
development.
Survey research from the Philippines and elsewhere has largely supported
the notion that individual migrants are motivated by the prospect of high wages
overseas and the prospect of accumulating sufficient capital to construct a
home and/or start their own business (Arcinas, 1984; Arcinas et al, 1986;
Smart etal, 1986; ILMS, 1984; Abrera-Mangahas, 1989). The lines outside of
the recruiting agencies and consulates in Manila are testimony to the extent of
this hope. However, as more potential migrants compete for overseas labor
opportunities, the risks of being cheated by unscrupulous brokers have in?
creased and the conditions of labor overseas have generally deteriorated
(Lindquist, 1993; Goss, 1990). Nevertheless, it seems that stories of successful
overseas migrants more than outweigh the increasing evidence of failure. If this
is the case, it is as important to examine the flow of information and the role
of previously successful migrants in recruitment networks as it is to identify
objective income differences in the explanation of migration.
Empirical evidence has also been inconsistent with the assumed equilibrating
tendencies of labor migration and its developmental benefits. First, overseas
earnings are invested less in productive enterprises than expended to repay debts,
purchase land and housing or daily subsistence needs, and finance conspicuous
consumption (Smart et al, 1986; Demery, 1986; Arnold, 1992). These con?
sumption expenditures undoubtedly mean that migrants and their families are
better off, which may have a multiplier effect on the local economy (Richards
and Martin, 1983:467), but this may also cause inflation. The lack of reliable
data and appropriate models unfortunately prevents definitive conclusions
about the long-term and macroeconomic effects of remittances (see Stahl and
Habib, 1989:270). Second, migration is selective ofworkers already gainfully
employed and appears to have limited influence on national levels of unemploy?
ment. In the Philippines, for example, more than 90 percent of departing
contract workers were employed before going overseas, and levels of unemploy-
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International
322
Migration Review
ment continued to rise in the late 1970s and 1980s despite the annual
deployment of nearly 500,000 workers overseas (Smart etal, 1986; Vasquez,
1987; Stahl, 1986b). Labor export may provide partial relief to domestic
unemployment, as vacancies created by the departure of contract workers may
be filled by previously unemployed persons, but this may also be only a
temporary effect (Vasquez, 1987:238). Third, wages in the Philippines have not
increased as a result of overseas labor migration (Vasquez, 1987). Nor has
employment abroad lead to the acquisition of new skills since most migrants
take up low-paying, unskilled jobs shunned by the workforce of host countries
(Agostinelli, 1991). There is some evidence, in fact, of a deskilling of Filipino
labor as migrants are employed in jobs in which they seldom utilize their prior
training (Agostinelli, 1991). Empirical evidence suggests, therefore, that the
processes presumed or predicted by the functionalist explanation of migration
do not occur in the Philippines.
Structuralist Approach
The
structuralist approach explains migration in terms of the exploitative
political-economic relationship between sending and receiving societies. Thus
it is not so much the demographic or even socioeconomic characteristics of the
migrants that explain international migration but their social class position. In
this macrosocial approach, the observed patterns of migration are not seen to
be merely the result of the aggregation of individual decisions and actions but
the product of objective social and spatial structures which produce the
necessary conditions for labor migration.
Migration literature generally identifies three closely related but distinct
forms of this approach, namely neo-Marxist dependency theory, world systems
theory, and modes of production theory. Dependency theorists argue that
labor migration results from the uneven spatial development resulting from
colonial and neocolonial relationships between developed capitalist economies
and the underdeveloped peripheries. Migration is not only a response to the
but is also a social
spatial inequality characteristic of underdevelopment,
process by which it is reinforced. Amin (1974), for example, argues that, due
to the selection of the most productive and educated workers from the
underdeveloped region or country, migration represents a geographical trans?
fer of value greater than the return to the individual in remitted wages. The
processes of underdevelopment create and sustain a dual labor market at the
global level; one in which the Third World periphery prov…
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