Working in collaboration with Migrante International and drawing on testimony of residents in the remittance-dependent, migrant-sending community of Bagong Barrio in Caloocan City in Metro Manila, Philippines, we examine the systematic production of lifetimes of disposability that drives labour migration across the generations. The closure of factories and contractualisation of work in the 1980s created the conditions in which labour migration is not a choice but a necessity. Diligent use of remittances to pay for the education of their children in many cases has produced a new generation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), and investment in housing often is another route to OFW status. Alongside this narrative of ongoing precarity, we listen closely to the testimony of residents for ways of living that are both subsumed within and somewhat excessive to accounts that might render their lives as merely waste or wasted. Abstrak: Sa tulong ng Migrante International at gamit ang ilang kwento ng mga residenteng patuloy na umaasa sa remittance o padala ng kanilang mga kamag anak na OFW, aming sisiyasatin sa papel na ito ang sistematikong produksyon ng tinatawag ni Neferti Tadiar na "life-times of disposability" na siyang nagtutulak sa pangingibang bansa ng libo libong Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) mula sa Bagong Barrio, isang barangay sa lungsod ng Caloocan, Maynila. Sa lugar na ito, ang pagsasara ng maraming pabrika at kontraktwalisasyon nung 1980s ay siyang nagtulak sa marami upang maghanap ng trabaho sa ibang bansa. Para sa mga residente ng Bagong Barrio na aming napanayam, ang pagalis ng Pilipinas para sa hanap buhay ay hindi lamang isang personal na pagpapasiya. Isa itong kasagutan sa matinding pangangailangan. Bukod pa rito, karamihan sa mga OFW, sa tulong na rin ng kanilang mga kamag anak ay napipilitang gamitin ang remittance para sa pagaaral ng mga anak o sa pagbili ng lupa at bahay bilang puhunan para sa kanilang mga anak, ang susunod na henerasyon ng OFW sa kanilang pamilya. Sa kontekstong ito ng pawang na siklo ng pangingibang bansa, nais naming pakinggang mabuti ang mga kwento ng mga residente ng Bagong Barrio upang mabigyang pansin ang iba pang uri ng pamumuhay na kontra sa karaniwang pagtingin sa buhay ng Pilipinong migrante, na ito ay nasasayang lamang o isa nang patapon na buhay.

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This paper documents the experiences of two different groups of ‘essential’ Filipino migrant workers during the pandemic: female domestic workers and male seafarers, each confined in new ways in their work/home situations and spaces. These two categories of workers make up a large proportion of migrants within the Philippines' extensive export labour economy. For domestic workers, the Canadian government virtually stopped processing applications for permanent resident status. Held in limbo in their temporary work status, many domestic workers experienced increased employer control over their movements and their bodies. Seafarers have been no less immobilised, disallowed from leaving their workplace (their ship) when in port or within the normal and expected work period of 9 months at sea. Extended ‘shifts’ at sea for some seafarers have left other seafarers at home, waiting in the Philippines in precarious situations of loss of income and mounting debt. In the case of both domestic workers and seafarers, the pandemic and a range of state and international regulatory failures and/or gaps have placed temporary workers into new conditions of precarity and into intensified experiences of immobility. We also show how their immobilisation as precarious workers reverberates throughout their families, and across the globe.

Originally performed in Vancouver, the testimonial play Nanay was developed to address the politics and hard ethical dilemmas of caregivers and migrant labor in Canada. When moved from Vancouver to the Philippines, the play was considerably revised with input from the community to consider the problems facing Filipino live-in caregivers from within the context of their home country.

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