Life away from home: how indigenous migrants adapt to their new environment
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ization had resulted in the closure of most factories and many business enterprises in Baguio City, the CAR’s center of education, medical care, communications, manufactur-
ing and commerce, and in the national capital region 250 kilometers from Baguio. At the same time, the opening of the domestic market to cheap agricultural produce from de-
veloped countries and China had led to the closure of many farms, most badly hit among which were those in the CAR that were producing temperate-clime vegetables.
The lack of employment opportunities, both in the urban and rural areas of the coun- try, is the main reason why millions of Filipinos now work abroad. Some 33,000 2.2
of the 1.5 million Overseas Filipino Workers OFWs surveyed by the National Statistics Office in 2006 were from the CAR. Almost all of them held academic degrees, but only
half – nurses, engineers, merchant marines and school teachers – worked in the fields they originally studied for. Some of the nurses, in fact, had studied to be medical doctors.
The remaining half had retrained and were employed as factory or construction work- ers, shipyard or foundry welders, drivers or mechanics, domestic helpers or caregivers,
hotel and restaurant workers, singers or dancers, etc. They made do with whatever jobs were in demand because these enabled them to sustain or, in fact, uplift the economic
conditions of their nuclear and, in many cases, even their extended families back home.
Many, if not most, OFWs live a difficult life. They have to bear the psychological im- pact of leaving their loved ones behind. They have to adjust to a new and different set-
ting – to an unfamiliar social and physical environment.
Acculturation is an added problem for indigenous people who had been strongly grounded in their communities’ way of life but, in becoming OFWs, assimilate foreign
views, values and lifestyles. Some – especially domestic helpers and caregivers – are forced to adapt to the culture of their employers as part of their work. There are employ-
ers who are adamant in this regard, and could make failure at adaptation a reason for terminating employment. Some convert to one of the dominant religions in the country
where they work because of the need to belong or in their search for spiritual uplift- ment.
While working overseas can bring economic improvement to their families back home, it is, in most cases, a temporary arrangement. The artificial raising of living stan-
dards mostly results in strained family relations especially when the OFWs’ contracts terminate, they return home and the standards decline.
Actually, family problems emerge while the OFWs are still abroad. In some cases, the spouse who is left behind adopts a lavish lifestyle and squanders the money sent
home by the OFW spouse on gambling, alcohol and illicit relations. In other cases, it is the OFW spouse who indulges in illicit affairs, stops remitting money to their family, and
in extreme cases decide to abandon their family altogether. In still other cases, especially where both spouses are working abroad, the children become emotionally distressed
and turn to alcohol or drugs, which they can easily afford because they have plenty of cash. Whichever the case, families are shattered.
On top of these hardships, many OFWs are exploited and mistreated by their em- ployers. They suffer racial and wage discrimination, and are denied basic rights. They do
not receive protection from the Philippine government. They often fall victim to the false accusations of employers and are imprisoned. Worse, some have been killed.
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Sexual abuse by employers is a common problem. Many women return home trau- matized, some even driven to insanity, by the experience of rape.
The Philippine government has done nothing substantial and long-term to address these problems. Instead, it has enacted laws to intensify labor exportation as a solution
to the country’s chronic economic crisis.
There are many cases, however, in which indigenous peoples have succeeded in recreating communities in their new environment. Existing networks are thus expanded and may reach
across international borders or continents.
Migration leading to cross-cultural contact and interaction do not necessarily result in full assimilation and loss of identity. In many cases, intercultural learning and new experiences have
actually led to the reaffirmation of identity. Detached from their original communities, indig- enous migrants live outside the social and cultural context native to them, but they often manage
to reshape their lifeways around a reaffirmation or recreation of identities, by adopting a mix of old and new viewpoints, values, and forms of social organization. These migrants who live within
a “trans-cultural” or “multicultural” environment face the challenge of adapting their indigenous identities to very different conditions.
EXAMPLE NETWORKING AND THE AFFIRMATION OF IDENTITY
AMONG MIGRANTS FROM THE CORDILLERA, PHILIPPINES
Migration from the rural villages of the Northern Luzon Cordillera actually started long before globalization made its impact felt here. Population increase and limited ar-
able land had resulted in a surplus of rural labor as early as the 1920s in some areas and as late as the 1980s in others. To a great extent, the surplus was absorbed by the mining
industry which developed in the province of Benguet from 1900 to 1990, by agricultural development programs that the US colonial government then the post-colonial Philip-
pine government undertook in unoccupied parts of the Cordillera from the 1920s to the 1950s, and by the various establishments as well as the informal economy that grew in
the course of urban development in Baguio.
Migration overseas first took place in trickles, starting with the exhibit of a Cordil- lera village – complete with the villagers – in the Saint Louis Exposition of 1904, and
increasing with offers of work and grants of scholarship in the US. By 1960, there were enough migrants from the Cordillera in the US state of California to form the first over-
seas association of persons from BIBAK – short for Benguet, Ifugao, Bontoc, Apayao and Kalinga, which were the names of the sub-provinces comprising the old Mountain Prov-
ince at the time.
The original BIBAK was an association of students, academics and professionals from the rural villages of the Cordillera who were studying or working in Baguio City
Ask the participants for examples from their own communities.
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or had taken up permanent residence there. This original BIBAK was formed in 1940, became inactive in the 1980s, but has recently been revived.
Like the original BIBAK, the first overseas BIBAK, based in Los Angeles, became a venue for Cordillera migrant students, academics, nurses and workers to provide moral
support to one another and hold periodic gatherings in which they could tell the stories, perform the music and dances, even the rituals, and prepare and share food in the cus-
tom of their respective villages, affirming their shared yet diverse heritage and identity.
Today, there are BIBAK associations in at least nine US states and in many other parts of the world.