Multinational Maids: Multistate Migration among Aspiring Filipino Migrant Domestic Workers.

Abstract

This dissertation examines multistate migration, an emerging pattern of migration adopted by capital-constrained migrants who are unable to gain entry into their preferred destination (often in the West) on their first attempt to leave their homeland. This migration pattern involves lengthy stays lasting at least a year in various “stepping stone” destinations where migrants accumulate additional capital (financial, human, cultural and social) that is then leveraged to secure access to countries higher up their personal destination hierarchy. Multistate migration can be intentionally planned out from the outset (“stepwise migration”) or it can be more organic (“onward migration”) but, in all cases, such trajectories are marked by dynamic fluidity. Through in-depth interviews with 160 Filipino migrant domestic workers (26 in the Philippines, 28 in Hong Kong, 41 in Singapore, 21 in the US and 44 in Canada), and an analysis of migrant domestic worker policies and praxis in six major markets for Filipino domestic workers (Hong Kong, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Canada) and the US, this dissertation develops a theoretical model of multistage migration.

Overall, 42% of participants in Singapore, 50% in Hong Kong and 82% in Canada were multistate migrants, highlighting the positive relationship between increasingly strict entry barriers to different destinations and the adoption of multistate migration. Other macro-level factors behind the emergence of multistate migration include the development of a transnational labor market for migrant domestic workers, the ongoing economic malaise of the Philippines and the culture of migration that has developed in that country. At the meso-level, overseas migrant networks encourage the adoption of multistate migration both by the sharing of advice on the benefits of incremental migration to a preferred country, but also by the non-/partial provision of migration assistance. So does the for-profit migration industry that makes direct migration to preferred destinations too expensive for most migrants. Finally, at the micro-level, the ability to engage in multistate migration up their destination hierarchy is a function, not only of migrants’ initial degree of access to capital, but also their agentic ability to accumulate new capital while overseas.