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Exploring Links between Education, Migration and Remittances: The Philippine Case

2010; Wiley; Volume: 1; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00050.x

1758-5899

Emmanuel Yujuico, Mona D. Valisno,

Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

For developing countries, remittances have long since surpassed official development aid as a source of external finance. Many countries with large migrant stocks receive more in remittances than in foreign direct investment. Here, we explore interrelationships between education, migration and remittances in the Philippines. Much literature has been devoted to debating brain drain versus gain as well as the costs and benefits of workers’ remittances. Here, we provide preliminary thoughts on how the recent global financial crisis informs these dynamics during changeable global conditions and its implications for other developing countries. As in other migrant-sending countries, remittances to the Philippines – the world’s fourth largest recipient of such inflows – were expected to fall substantially in 2009. Given difficult economic conditions in several destination countries, the knock-on effects of lost employment and stagnant wages were generally believed to cast ominous portents. Both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted declines, as did financial services providers Citigroup, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC. The latter even predicted a 20 per cent decline in remittance inflows amid the crisis even though they have grown every year since 2001. Development administrators, too, have expressed wariness about falling remittances due to the crisis (Alexander, 2010). Remarkably, in not a single month did nominal recorded remittances to the Philippines fall on a year-on-year basis from 2008 to 2009, eventually totalling $17.3 billion (BSP, 2010). We believe that this is not a serendipitous occurrence but an outcome born of distinct policy choices. Although administrations come and go, migrant workers remain an indispensable constituency given their importance in helping to insulate the country from balance of payments problems. Moreover, the Philippine example holds insights for other labour-exporting countries. In this commentary, we will discuss preferences from the panoply of policy options that have helped create this result. Surpassing all others is the challenge to equip migrants with relevant skills that the global marketplace requires and that, in turn, lend them much-needed protection. Second is that of broadening geographic possibilities for migrants set against a global backdrop of widespread scepticism of and even outright disdain for open borders. Taken together, measures to address these challenges suggest that migrant-sending states will have a significant role to play as the global governance of migration remains a patchwork quilt at best. Domestic debates surrounding migration in the Philippines are not germane to it, with issues like the role of state promotion, brain drain and worker vulnerability looming large in the national consciousness (Commission on Population, 2007). Yet, a point of agreement for the government and its critics on migration policy is the need to upskill those seeking employment abroad. While the Philippines devotes considerable resources to protecting migrants, it can only go so far given its limited institutional capabilities and the limited global will to discuss migration multilaterally. Hence, education lends protection by improving workers’ bargaining leverage during wage negotiations, raising the likelihood of employment in regularised occupations covered by laws on working conditions, and – in fields such as engineering at least – establishing camaraderie with fellow professionals worldwide. Efforts to raise the educational attainment of Filipino migrants can be traced to the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995, which recognises that the ultimate protection for all migrant workers is the possession of skills. Accordingly, deployment should increasingly be geared towards skilled workers. As late as 1998, surveys indicate that less than a quarter of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) had a college degree. By 2008, however, 40 per cent were tertiary educated (see Figure 1). OFWs’ educational attainment (%).Source: National Statistics Office – Survey on Overseas Filipinos. Benefits of upskilling are particularly evident among seafarers, who make up nearly a third of deployments and 20 to 25 per cent of global mariners – the largest contingent of any nationality. Since 2000, the country has met the International Maritime Organization’s International Convention on Standards of Certification, Training and Watchkeeping (STCW) for sustained inclusion on the ‘white list’. Best practices require vetting instructors, equipment, facilities and curriculum. Philippine institutions failing to meet STCW strictures cannot send seafarers abroad. Only marginal declines in seafarer deployments in 2009 despite a double-digit decline in world trade indicate continuing returns to investments made in meeting world standards. Although difficult to disentangle, policy initiatives alone do not account for these changes. In general, work abroad self-selects those most persistent and diligent in identifying employment trends and in preparing for them accordingly. OFWs are avid users of discussion boards where migrants share first-hand experience to aid others in making decisions. In this sense, the government’s task is to complement migrant workers’ innate drive to gather skills and establish social networks with market intelligence on job vacancies and political conditions in destination countries. To raise awareness, centralised job listings of placement agencies accredited by the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency are maintained on the website http://www.workabroad.ph as well as in kiosks in high-traffic areas such as shopping centres. Certainly, demographic trends play a role in determining these choices. Although the global financial crisis tops the agenda of developed destination countries, the IMF (2009) estimates that the cost of dealing with its fallout will be a mere tenth of dealing with ageing populations. Burdens on public health care and pensions of industrialised nations will escalate as longer life spans and low fertility rates result in higher dependency ratios. Healthy Philippine remittances in 2009 are thus attributed to continued demand overseas for skilled health professionals like doctors, nurses and physiotherapists (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), 2010). While global trade fell 12 per cent in 2009, demand for goods is proving to be more volatile than demographic trends. Another policy objective that complements imparting useful skills is broadening the geographic possibilities for migrant workers. Diversification helps even if the United States remains a major destination for Filipino migrants for historical reasons and will remain so as workers in health and education – of which the Philippines has plenty – are the only areas of consistent occupational growth stateside. For, in contrast to the Philippines, Latin American countries whose migrants are concentrated in US cyclical trades such as construction have unfortunately experienced declines in remittances. Of note are seven labour Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs) that the Philippines has concluded as a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN, 2009) for accountants, architects, dentists, doctors, engineers, nurses and surveyors. Once more, the existence of patchy global regimes, this time for recognising educational and professional qualifications internationally, means having to compensate for them at regional or bilateral levels. Seldom recognised is the phenomenon that half of all economic migration is south–south, and the single market ASEAN has planned for 2015 should diversify destinations for regional workers (Yujuico and Valisno, 2009). Migration will likely remain an issue with limited traction in the international policy arena. It is an issue championed by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) without much political clout such as the Philippines and one that industrialised countries shy away from in multilateral forums. Part of why the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Doha Development Round remains stalled is attributable to developed countries being averse to discussing Mode IV migration provisions under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) concerning temporary movement of natural persons. Destination countries portray it as an immigration issue rather than a trade issue. At the behest of developed countries – most notably the United States – the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) operates outside the UN system (Betts, 2008). The GFMD’s consultative, non-binding and government-led nature is unlikely to result in a meaningful overhaul of the present architecture. Yet, the current situation should compel rather than impede migrant-sending countries’ efforts to deploy resources creatively to ensure migrants’ well-being. Upskilling and geographic diversification are but two of the many policy choices the Philippines has taken to augment its quest to find gainful employment abroad (Agunias, 2008). In the absence of global governance mechanisms for migration, regional ones such as the ASEAN MRAs and a series of occupation- and jurisdiction-specific bilateral labour agreements the Philippines has signed partially compensate (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, 2009). Perhaps inevitably, demographic trends will turn the tide in favour of migrant-sending countries wishing to introduce migration policy to multilateral forums. Meanwhile, navigating through the political minefield of other countries’ diverse migration landscapes will best be accomplished by governments working hand in hand with migrants to help identify where employment opportunities lie and to tailor educational opportunities accordingly. Such measures help safeguard valuable remittance inflows in the political-economic context of international labour mobility where ‘soft governance’ is at its softest.