Transgressing the Nation-State: The Partial Citizenship and “Imagined (Global) Community” of Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers

Abstract

Dispersed among a multitude of industrialized nations, migrant Filipina domestic workers have come to constitute a diaspora—more precisely, a contemporary female labor diaspora.¹ A particular result of global restructuring, this labor diaspora is a product of the exportled development strategy of the Philippines, the feminization of the international labor force, and the demand for migrant women to fill low-wage service work in many cities throughout the world. As numerous nation-states rely on the Philippines to supply domestic workers and provide care for their populations, the globalization of the market economy constructs the Philippines as a nation gendered female.