gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 9 The Making of “Workers of the World” Language and the Labor Brokerage State Beatriz P. Lorente On July 31, 2007, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the government agency in charge of managing and supervising technical education and skills development in the Philippines, launched the Language Skills Institute (LSI). The LSI was mandated to offer courses in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Nihongo, Italian, Russian and “other languages as may be needed” (TESDA 2007). A national LSI would be located in Manila, and there would be at least one regional LSI in each of the fi fteen regions of the country.1 To make the language courses accessible to most Filipinos, scholarships under the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo Training for Work Scholarship Project would be offered, so that those who were interested could become “world class” for “free” (TESDA 2007). Speaking at the launch, the then Director General of TESDA, Augusto Boboy Syjuco, gave the reason for setting up such an institute: In a globalizing labor market, the usual knowledge, skills and attitude that our workers possess are no longer sufficient. We need to provide interventions to allow them to gain workplace communication skills not only in English but also in other languages, especially those spoken in the usual destinations of our Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). With the right knowledge, skills, attitude, language skills and culture orientation, our OFW should henceforth be called Pinoy Workers of the World (Pinoy WOW). (Syjuco 2007) That a national government would take pride in establishing and funding language institutes where its citizens could learn the necessary “workplace communication skills” in the languages of the countries they are likely to migrate to for work (i.e., “the usual destinations of our Overseas Filipino Workers”) is not surprising, given that the Philippines can be considered to be a labor brokerage state, that is, it is a state that—through institutional and discursive practices—“mobilizes its citizens and sends them abroad to gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 184 Beatriz P. Lorente work for employers throughout the world while generating a ‘profit’ from the remittances that migrants send back to their families and loved ones” (Rodriguez 2010, x). The Philippines is the world’s largest “exporter” of government-sponsored temporary contract workers in terms of both magnitude and geographic scope (Tyner 2004). At the time that the LSI was launched in 2007, of the more than 8.7 million Filipinos overseas, 4.1 million were temporary labor migrants or overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). They were working mainly as household service workers, professional nurses, waiters, bartenders, cleaners, electrical wiremen, caregivers, plumbers, pipe fitters, welders and flame-cutters in more than two hundred countries and territories worldwide (Commission on Filipinos Overseas 2007). 2 The country is highly dependent on their remittances. Remittances from overseas Filipinos are the country’s premier foreign exchange earner, easily dwarfi ng foreign direct investments and exports. In 2006, while foreign direct investments only amounted to US$2 billion, and export earnings came to about US$3.7 billion, remittances from overseas Filipinos hit US$12.8 billion, accounting for almost 11 percent of the GDP (BBC News 2007; Chipongian 2007).3 It has been estimated that remittances support half of the country’s population (Kanlungan Center Foundation 1999), keeping the economy of the perennial “sick man of Asia” afloat, and generating consumption-led economic growth in spite of recession and high unemployment (Department of Labor and Employment 2005). Syjuco’s reference to a “globalizing labor market,” where “workplace language skills” and knowledge of the languages of the destination countries are necessary in order to ensure the continued competitiveness of migrant Filipino workers, broadly reflects how, in the globalized new economy, language is a key resource for distinguishing as well as adding value to products, as new markets are sought and niche markets are developed (Duchêne and Heller in press; Heller 2010). As a labor brokerage state, the Philippines’ success in accumulating profit relies on it being able to assemble, standardize and flexibilize a sought-after commodity: “Pinoy workers of the world”—short-term, contractual and incredibly mobile workers—who are “resilient,” “loyal,” “equipped with extensive educational training,” have a “natural ability to adapt to different work cultures” and are “ideally suited in any multi-racial environment given a facility with the English language” (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration 2006b). As can be gleaned from the rationale for the launch of the LSI, as well as from the preceding descriptions of Filipino workers, language is an important part of this assemblage. This chapter seeks to explore the particular ways in which language is instrumentalized by a labor brokerage state in this labor enterprise of producing “workers of the world” who can be marketed globally, and yet are flexible enough to meet the needs of local labor markets. What is being commodified here is labor; the Philippine strategy for accumulating profit is not to produce standard workers per se but standard workers who can gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 185 “fit” anywhere in the world. The ways in which “Pinoy workers of the world” are represented calls attention not just to how the Philippines, as a labor brokerage state, is commodifying its labor force for the global labor market, but also to how the state legitimizes such activities. As Tyner has thoughtfully pointed out, To view the Philippine state as simply bowing to the spatial logic of capitalism potentially obfuscates the contradictory and contested activities of the state. Although capital accumulation, such as the desire for remittances, is a primary catalyst for state intervention, the state must also cope with the equally important political repercussions of social relations and the fundamental problem of sustaining legitimacy in the eyes of its citizenry. The balance of these often contradictory interventions significantly influences state legitimacy and informs the discourses of migrant labor. (2004, 2) The data for this chapter are drawn mainly from secondary sources, that is, newspaper articles and official documents published and circulated by relevant government institutions in the Philippines. A number of these sources were compiled between 2001 and 2006, in the course of an ethnographically informed study of Filipino domestic workers in Singapore (Lorente 2007). Since 2007, I have been regularly updating and adding to these secondary data sources, as well as learning about new developments, by systematically conducting searches on the Internet, and by visiting the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in Manila on trips to the Philippines in May 2008 and December 2009.4 This chapter fi rst traces the beginnings of labor migration in the Philippines as a way of fleshing out how the Philippines evolved into a labor brokerage state. Second, it examines how language has been and is being mobilized as a resource in this labor enterprise, both in terms of representing migrant Philippine labor, as well as in terms of intervening in attempts to standardize and flexibilize the language skills of migrant Filipino workers. Finally, it looks at how the state defi nes its role, as it balances the need for profit with the need to legitimize its actions with its citizenry. This is done by looking at the particular case of the new requirements for wouldbe migrant household service workers. THE PHILIPPINES AS A LABOR BROKERAGE STATE Labor migration from the Philippines began in the 1970s as an attempt to resolve deteriorating social and economic conditions in the country, brought about largely by the restructuring of the Philippine economy toward commercial agriculture and export-oriented industrialization (EOI) under the gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 186 Beatriz P. Lorente auspices of Ferdinand Marcos’ economic development-oriented “New Society.”5 The rise of labor migration from the Philippines is well chronicled in numerous migration studies on the Philippines (for annotated bibliographies, see Perez and Patacsil 1998; Yukawa 1996) . The Philippines was not a newcomer in global labor circuits. During the Spanish colonial period (1521–1898), Filipinos worked for Spanish galleons; the fi rst known instance of Filipino “labor migration” occurred during the galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco from 1565 to 1815. Employed as laborers (and likely also as prostitutes) on board the ships, Filipinos abandoned ship in Acapulco as early as the sixteenth century, migrating to other parts of Mexico. By 1763, a Filipino community had settled in Louisiana, in what would become the longest-standing permanent settlement of Asians in the United States (Fujita-Rony 2003). During the American colonial period, the fi rst wave of Filipino migrants began at the beginning of the twentieth century and was structured largely by the colonial relations between the Philippines and the United States (see Takaki 1998). The ones who left were mainly Filipino men, many of them from northern Luzon; they filled temporary labor needs in agriculture in Hawaii and on the U.S. West Coast (Yukawa 1996). The second wave was made up mostly of Filipino professionals, many of whom were in the medical profession (see Choy 2003); they went to the United States after major reforms in U.S. immigration law in 1965 opened the door to a steady and significant flow of Filipino permanent migration to the United States. However, apart from the nature of the work and geographical destinations of OFWs, labor migration since the 1970s has also been characterized by the deliberate intervention of the state in the structures and processes of migration. The evolution of such state-sponsored labor migration can be traced to the shift from a strategy of import substitution in the aftermath of political independence in 1946, to a strategy of EOI from the late 1960s to the Martial Law Period from 1972 to 1981 (Gonzalez 1998; Tyner 2000). “One key to the Philippines’ economic strategy was the discursive marketing of an ‘internationally attractive labor force’, i.e. a cheap and docile workforce prevented from unionizing or striking” (Tyner 2004, 30). To produce such a labor force, the Philippine government restructured domestic labor market conditions through the 1974 Labor Code (also known as Presidential Decree or PD 442). The code permit[ted] employers to pay new employees only 75 percent of the basic minimum wage during a six-month “probationary” period . . . By releasing workers after this period, multinational corporations effectively instituted a high turnover rate . . . Denied access to traditional economic forms of subsistence production, yet more fully incorporated into the waged labor force, many Filipinos found employment opportunities unavailable in the Philippines, or untenable due to low wages. (Tyner 2000, 136) gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 187 Labor export was seen by the state as a means of resolving such unemployment and underemployment problems, while, at the same time, promoting Philippine development and alleviating balance of payment problems through remittances. In this way, the extremely destabilizing restructuring of the labor market that was an essential part of the country’s export-led development strategy effectively made Philippine labor one of the “natural resources” that the country could export. The 1974 Labor Code also laid the foundations of labor migration (specifically in Articles 17.1 and 17.2) by mandating that the Philippine state would promote “the overseas employment of Filipino workers through a comprehensive market promotion and development program and, in the process . . . secure the best possible terms and conditions of employment of Filipino contract workers on a government to government basis” (Tyner 2004, 33). With its labor force effectively considered as exportable “commodities,” the Philippines was one of the fi rst Asian countries to respond to the labor needs of the oil-rich countries in the Middle East in the 1970s. What was intended to be a temporary solution to domestic unemployment and balance of payment problems, “continued and expanded beyond the Middle East in response to the increasing demand for Filipino workers on the one hand, and the development of institutions and policies in the Philippines that enabled the state to seize opportunities in the global labor market on the other” (Asis 2005, 26). Overseas employment has become a cornerstone of administrations from Marcos to Aquino, figuring as an essential aspect of national development goals as elucidated in Medium-Term Philippine Development Plans (Tyner 2004). In this regard, the role of overseas labor migration in the Philippines has fundamentally shifted from a temporary solution to the critical low employment rate in the domestic market to an employment strategy that recognizes the role of overseas remittances in alleviating poverty, spurring investment and cushioning the impact of worldwide recession when private capital dries up. (POEA 2005b, 3) Officially, the Philippine state only “manages” labor migration; it does not promote it. A Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) “White Paper” released in 1995 emphasized, Many people see opportunities abroad and want to benefit from them. And there are labor-market gaps in the global economy that are best filled by labor migration. The challenge to Philippine policymaking today is not one of exporting the country’s labor surplus; it is managing effectively the natural process of labor migration—which will continue even if we ban the outflow of our workers. (DOLE 1995 in Guevarra 2003, 115) gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 188 Beatriz P. Lorente This report was later incorporated in the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act (RA 8042) of 1995. It is important to note that the Philippine state’s portrayal of itself as “managing” labor migration is buttressed by a discourse that “proposes that opportunities abroad are natural processes of globalization and that the desires and aspirations of Filipinos to work overseas are natural responses” (Guevarra 2003, 115). In managing this supposedly natural process of labor migration, the most important government institution has been the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), which oversees this official “management” of overseas workers. The Philippine state, through the POEA, aggressively promotes migrant Filipino workers (Tyner 2000). It has a marketing division that conducts market research on the locations where OFWs may go, and the nature of the possible employment opportunities in these places. The POEA also seeks to develop “friendly markets” for OFWs in the form of “inbound marketing programs,” where Filipino “skills and talents” are showcased to foreign principals and employers invited to visit the Philippines, and “outbound marketing missions” where POEA representatives are sent to existing and prospective labor destinations to explore opportunities and secure contracts (Guevarra 2003). The POEA works in tandem with the DOLE, the TESDA and the OWWA. For example, in 2005, the POEA implemented the DOLE Labor Opportunities Program (DOLOP), which was designed as an “in-bound marketing activity to promote the services of OFWs and showcase their skills and talents” (POEA 2005b, 15). The TESDA is in charge of providing technical education to Filipinos, and now offers training courses that are designed to cater to the needs of overseas labor markets. As will be discussed later, prospective domestic workers are now required to get a TESDA certificate in household services in order to be deployed overseas. The OWWA is the government agency responsible for providing welfare assistance to registered OFWs and their dependents. The POEA also licenses and regulates the thousands of privately owned overseas employment agencies in the country. The POEA’s “management” of international labor migration has become the “model for other labor-sending economies for the past two decades” (POEA 2005b, 3). More importantly, it is in this way that the export of labor from the Philippines represents the unprecedented convergence of interests between states and international capital, with the recruitment and deployment of migrant labor centrally organized and ‘guaranteed’ by the state (Aguilar 2002). Patterns of Labor Migration from the Philippines As an employment strategy, overseas labor migration could be considered to be enormously successful, if one were to look at the sheer number of OFWs that have been deployed by the state. The number of OFWs has increased gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 189 exponentially since labor migration was instituted in 1974. In 1975, only 12,501 migrants were recorded as having left the country (Kanlungan Center Foundation 1999). Ten years later, 372,784 Filipinos left the country as migrant workers. By 2005, the POEA claimed to have deployed almost a million OFWs (see Table 9.1) and the number has increased since then. The majority of OFWs are in the Middle East and Asia (see Table 9.2), in countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Hong Kong, Table 9.1 Annual Deployment of Overseas Filipino Workers, 1984–20096 Year Overseas Filipino Workers Growth Rate (%) 1984 350,982 1985 372,784 1986 378,214 1.46 1987 449,271 18.79 1988 471,030 4.84 1989 458,626 –2.63 1990 446,095 –2.73 1991 615,019 37.87 1992 686,461 11.62 1993 696,630 1.48 1994 718,407 3.13 1995 653,574 –9.02 1996 660,122 1.00 1997 747,696 13.27 1998 831,643 11.23 1999 837,020 0.65 2000 841,628 0.55 2001 867,599 3.08 2002 891,908 2003 867,969 2004 933,588 7.56 2005 988,615 5.9 2006 1,062,567 7.5 2007 1,077,623 1.42 2008 1,236,013 14.7 2009 1,422,586 15.1 6.21 2.80 –2.7 Sources: Kanlungan Center Foundation (1999), Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (2005a, 2005b, 2009). gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 190 Beatriz P. Lorente Table 9.2 Top 10 Destinations of Land-Based Overseas Filipino Workers (Rehires and New Hires), 2009 Country 2009 1. Saudi Arabia 291,419 2. United Arab Emirates 196,815 3. Hong Kong 100,412 4. Qatar 89,290 5. Singapore 54,421 6. Kuwait 45,900 7. Taiwan 33,751 8. Italy 23,159 9. Canada 17,344 10. Bahrain 15,001 Source: Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (2009, 18). Singapore and Taiwan. These Middle Eastern oil-rich countries and affluent Asian economies demand a flexible and low-cost labor force to sustain their economic growth and support their own labor force. OFWs are also heading to North American and European destinations, such as Italy and Canada, where there are significant care deficits. Also, the groups in which most OFWs have been classified in recent years highlight one of the defining characteristics of labor migration from the Philippines: the feminization of migrant labor. This has been brought about not just by the international division of labor, but more particularly by the international division of reproductive labor, wherein migrant women from developing countries like the Philippines perform the caretaking and household work of class-privileged women in industrialized countries (Parreñas 2000, 2001). This international division of reproductive labor is underpinned by the shift of reproductive work from the household (where it is considered to be an integral component of the roles of women as wives and mothers) to the market (where it is considered “unskilled”), as a result of global economic restructuring. Among the “tigers” of East and Southeast Asia (which include Singapore), the movement of local women into waged labor was the result of state-led industrialization (in the 1970s) and economic liberalization (in the 1980s). This has worsened the care deficit in countries that lack institutional child and elderly care, and where the provision of care is considered to be a family affair. “All this has set in train strong market forces demanding transnational, flexibilised workers to fill the cracks and crevices in the domestic sphere, an arena often neglected by the state and treated as dispensable in terms of the globalising logic” (Huang, Yeoh, and Abdul Rahman 2005, 2). This is reflected in the current “niches” of migrant Filipino labor; Table 9.3 lists the top ten occupational groups of new OFWs as of 2009. gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” Table 9.3 191 Deployed Overseas Filipino Workers (New hires, Top 10 Occupational Groups by Sex), 2009 Occupational Group Male Female Total 1 Household service workers 1,888 69,669 71,557 2 Nurses professional 1,599 11,866 13,465 3 Waiters, bartenders and related workers 4,978 6,999 11,977 4 Charworkers, cleaners and related workers 2,140 7,916 10,056 5 Wiremen electrical 9,709 43 9,752 6 Caregivers and caretakers 507 8,721 9,228 7 Laborers and helpers general 7,105 994 8,099 8 Plumbers and pipe fitters 7,702 20 7,722 9 Welders and flame cutters 5,870 40 5,910 10 Housekeeping and related service workers 908 4,219 5,127 42,406 110,487 152,893 Total deployment Source: Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (2009, 19). As can be seen in Table 9.3, an overwhelming majority of the new hires were deployed as household service workers, that is, domestic workers. Practically all of them are women. In fact, Filipinos constitute one of the largest groups of transnational domestic workers, and, indeed, one of the largest and widest flows of contemporary female migration (Parreñas 2001). It is estimated that about half of the total number of OFWs are women, and that two thirds of them are domestic workers (Tyner 1999). The patterns of labor migration from the Philippines are highly indicative of the country’s rather peripheral position in the global division of (reproductive) labor. The Philippine labor enterprise profits from establishing and dominating such niches in the global labor market. LANGUAGE IN THE PHILIPPINE LABOR ENTERPRISE Language has always played an important role in the Philippine labor enterprise, so much so that the position of the Philippines as a labor-sending state could be considered to have influenced Philippine language policy significantly (Gonzalez 1998). In 1974, when the bilingual education policy (BEP) instituting Filipino and English as the media of instruction was put in place (Tupas 2007), with the provision that steps would be taken toward the development of Filipino as the common national language, the Philippine gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 192 Beatriz P. Lorente economy was already well into the process of becoming more fully incorporated into the global economy as a source of low-waged labor. It was in this same year that the fi rst batch of government-sponsored Filipino contract workers was deployed to the Middle East, an early indication of how the search for a national linguistic symbol of unity would soon be overtaken, or had already been overtaken, by the insertion of the Philippines into the world system as a labor-sending country. The almost indisputable argument was that English was necessary if the country were to participate and fully benefit from the global economy. Arguably, in this light, the biggest losers were the Filipinos, whose wages had been eroded by their incorporation into the global labor market, and whose varying levels of English competence differentially affected their entry as (mainly) low-waged workers in an export-oriented, labor intensive light industry fi nanced by foreign capital (Tollefson 1991). In fact, already in the 1970s, the Philippine government had restructured the education system, in accordance with the perceived needs of EOI. Restructuring the education sector was a vital complement to the changes that had been made to the labor sector. Major changes to the Philippine educational system can be traced back to Martial Law. According to Tollefson, Various presidential decrees transformed the elementary and high school curricula into “work-oriented” programmes to prepare youth for participation in commercial and industrial enterprises . . . The goal was to ensure that the educational system would “equip high school students with specific skills needed for industry and agriculture” . . . In addition, beginning in 1976, the World Bank funded [the] publication and distribution of millions of new textbooks and manuals through the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports that were designed to help the system of education respond to the new economic policy. (1991, 149) These changes to the Philippine educational system were reinforced further through the institutionalization of the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), which became the country’s main educational stratifier: With standards set by the central government, the NCEE determined who among the high school graduates could go on to college, earn their degrees and most possibly become white-collar workers. Those who did not pass could either enroll in technical education certificate courses or start working on low-paying jobs because by then they would have been taught vocational skills in high school through institutionalized technical programmes. (Tupas 2004) These changes in Philippine educational policy translated to gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 193 a renewed emphasis on English and a shift towards vocational and technical English training. The Marcos government’s strong support of English was due primarily to its crucial role in meeting the labour requirements of the Philippine economy. (Tollefson 1991, 150) The three main labor needs at that time were consistent with the country’s policy of EOI fi nanced and managed by foreign capital. They consisted of (1) a large pool of workers for unskilled and semitechnical jobs in light manufacturing, assembly and the like; (2) office staff and middle managers able to work under the managers of transnational corporations investing in the Philippines; and (3) a service industry for foreign businesses, including maintenance crews, hotel staff and domestic workers (Tollefson 1991). What the formal education system then produced was a multitiered skills-oriented population whose proficiencies in English were ordered accordingly (Tupas 2001, 2004), with most students being educated for low-paying jobs requiring only basic English (Tollefson 1991). These differences reproduced the already glaring social and economic disparities in the Philippines. Those who learned English well and who had the skills to take up the better-paid white-collar jobs were inevitably graduates of elite schools, with most of them coming from the well-off and landed families in the Philippines. Those who did not learn English well were usually from the impoverished areas of the country; they usually did not go on to college and they ended up in the large pool of semiskilled and unskilled workers in the manufacturing and service sectors. As Tollefson pointedly states, “the policy of using English in schools thus serves a dual purpose: it helps to ensure that a great number of students fail, and it produces the necessary number of graduates with appropriate English skills” (1991, 151). When overseas labor migration was formalized by the government in 1974 as a viable employment alternative and as a strategy of capital accumulation, many OFWs came from the group of semiskilled and unskilled workers. The Philippine education system’s pattern of producing a hierarchy of labor, with corresponding levels of English skills meant for an externally defi ned labor market, has intensified or even worsened with the institutionalization of overseas labor migration. As Toh and Floresca-Cawagas (2003) point out, the quality of education in the Philippines has continuously deteriorated over the years, and the educational system is unable to respond realistically and relevantly to social, economic and political demands in the country. This is most evident in the disparity between the degrees of most college graduates and the demand for such skills or expertise in the domestic labor market (along with the failure to create such demand), leading to a rise in the number of educated underemployed and unemployed who, in turn, may be funneled into overseas labor migration. Former president Arroyo articulated this push toward matching the goals of Philippine education with the demands of the global labor market. In a gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 194 Beatriz P. Lorente 2002 speech during Migrant Workers’ Day, Arroyo argued that the increasing number of OFWs did not constitute a brain drain, because they benefited the country economically. As such, she urged the education system to “produce and produce” the workers that are “in demand” overseas: Kaya pag sinasabi nila brain drain, sabi ko, hindi, naglilingkod doon naglilingkod pa rin dito dahil hindi kinakalimutan ’yung mga pamilya, ’yung pamayanan, at sa ganung paraan pati ’yung bansa natin ay nakikinabang. Ang importante kung ano ’yung nakikita nating demand sa mga skills, ang ating school system ay dapat produce nang produce. Kung malaki ang demand sa nurses, produce more nurses; kung malaki ang demand sa I.T. workers, produce more I.T. workers kasi kailangan din natin sila dito, kailangan sa ibang bansa. Kaya pakinabang kung nandoon, pakinabang kung nandito sila, so produce more because there is an overall increase in demand. So when they say brain drain, I say, no, they are serving there but they are still serving here because they do not forget their families, their communities, and in this way our country also benefits. The important thing is when we see the skills that are in demand, our school system should produce and produce. If there is a big demand for nurses, produce more nurses; if there is a big demand for I.T. workers, produce more I.T. workers, because we need them here and other countries need them. They’re an advantage there and they’re an advantage here, so produce more because there is an overall increase in demand. (Arroyo 2002; emphasis and translation mine) Standardizing the Language Skills of Flexible Workers of the World This dependence of the Philippine labor market on the demands of external markets is evident in how the Philippine government has continued to emphasize and support policies and skills training programs aimed at maintaining Filipinos’ competitive edge in terms of linguistic resources. This has been true in the case of English, as proficiency in what is considered as the global lingua franca supposedly makes Filipinos “ideally suited (for) any multi-racial working environment” (POEA 2006b). This is also true in the case of the “other languages,” apart from English, that are spoken in the destination countries of OFWs: Learning another language or as many languages as possible as needed in the workplace is analogous to sprinkling a little spice to an otherwise already sumptuous dish to make it more palatable and appetizing. Workplace language skills will add to the competitive advantage of our Pinoy workers . . . multi-lingual, skilled, valuable, effective, sought after, successful and the country’s pride. (TESDA 2007) gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 195 Given that competitiveness in the global labor market has practically been equated with English proficiency, it is not surprising that, at least until recently, there have been dire warnings that Filipinos are losing their “competitive edge” over other countries because of their supposedly declining levels of English competence (Manila Times 2003; Philippine Daily Inquirer 2004). A similar discourse is emerging in relation to outsourcing, and more specifically to the call center industry. Call centers are seen as the country’s “emerging sunshine industry” (Jobstreet 2003a, 2003b). In its attempt to attract businesses, the Philippines has been emphasizing the English proficiency of its workforce and most especially, the Filipinos’ familiarity with American culture and linguistic variety because of the country’s colonial history. These are supposedly the country’s advantages over India (see Salonga 2010). It seems, though, that concrete steps were and are being taken to ensure that Filipinos maintain their “competitive advantage.” Efforts to rectify the perceived loss of English competence have ranged from the implementation of “English-only zones” and “English hours” at universities in Manila (Quismundo 2004), to English “refresher classes” for seamen and “English in the workplace” sessions for Filipinos working in the U.S. dependency of Saipan (Department of Foreign Affairs 2002). On a larger scale, during the Arroyo presidency from 2001 to 2010, there were explicit pronouncements of a “return to English,” affi rming just how the economic necessity of sustaining labor migration from the country has been and continues to be the most striking development in language policy and planning in the Philippines (Gonzalez 1988, 1998, 2004; Sibayan and Gonzalez 1996). In her fi rst State of the Nation address in 2001, Arroyo made proficiency in English the major policy goal of the Department of Education. In January 2003, she followed this up by mandating a “return to English” as the main medium of instruction in Philippine schools. In September 2005, the House Committees on Higher Education and on Basic Education endorsed and sought the immediate approval of House Bill 4701 (HB 4701), which, among other things, would make it mandatory for English to be the official medium of instruction in all academic subjects in high school (Rosario 2005). This bill was passed almost a year later on September 21, 2006. Even with the very recent introduction of the Multilingual Education bill (MLE), which proposes the use of mother tongues as the primary medium of instruction in all subjects from preschool up to the end of elementary education (Gunigundo 2010) , the status of English as being absolutely essential for the continued competitiveness of Filipino workers has remained largely unchanged and unquestioned. In fact, supporters of MLE have been careful to point out that using the mother tongue in the lower grades would help children learn English better in the upper grades (Tupas 2009). While the continued maintenance of the grip of English in the Philippines may be the most visible impact of labor migration on the linguistic gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 196 Beatriz P. Lorente economy and language policies of the country, due to the country’s dependency on the continued “competitiveness” and therefore continued remittances of overseas Filipinos, it is increasingly not the only one. There seems to be a shift in how English is positioned as the “competitive advantage” of OFWs. While, by and large, English proficiency is still portrayed as the exclusive linguistic capital of OFWs, it is also starting to be depicted as the minimum linguistic capital of OFWs. This shift is legitimized by the Philippine state in a discourse of “people empowerment,” understood as the provision of language teaching in the languages that will enable Filipinos to access and take full advantage of overseas work opportunities. This shift can perhaps be best illustrated with the new guidelines for household service workers that the POEA issued in 2007. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR SUPERMAIDS On February 5, 2007, the POEA issued new guidelines for the “Reform Package affecting Household Service Workers” (HSWs). Under these new guidelines, HSWs with visas issued after December 16, 2006 would have to meet the following requirements: a minimum age of twenty-three, a minimum entry salary of US$400, a TESDA NC2 certificate for Household Services7 and attendance at an OWWA country-specific language and culture orientation. After getting their NC2 certification, would-be HSWs could then take the “supermaid course.” The “supermaid course” was intended to train Filipino HSWs to become “home managers” who can competently “plan and organize work, use mathematical concepts and techniques to respond effectively to difficult/challenging behavior, provide care and support to children, maintain a healthy and safe environment, respond to emergency and provide care to pets” (TESDA 2006b). The notion of “supermaids” was introduced by Arroyo in August 2006, during a roundtable discussion on job and livelihood opportunities for Filipino domestic workers who were returning to the Philippines from wartorn Lebanon at that time. The president said the government had put in place livelihood and training programs to upgrade the skills of Filipinos going abroad as domestic workers so that they would not just be ordinary domestic workers but—in the then president’s words—“supermaids” (Dalangin-Fernandez 2006). In its Governing Board Resolution 8 for the series of 2006, the POEA outlined the rationale for introducing the new requirements for would-be HSWs: “migrant workers for deployment require the highest degree of protection owing to their gender and the vulnerable state of their employment” (POEA 2006a), and “the State recognizes that the ultimate protection to all migrant workers is the possession of skills and familiarity with the country and language of their employers and host governments” (POEA 2006a). In seeking acceptance for these new requirements, the POEA further argued gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 197 that “the certification one gets from this training would enable a household help to apply for a higher job level in hotels . . . HSWs must welcome the training program. We are adding more value to the skills of our HSWs” (Marcelo 2007). Upgrading the skills of domestic workers would translate to Filipinos being given a premium by employers, that is, “they would be able to earn more” (Marcelo 2007). The introduction of these new guidelines was met by a storm of protest from recruitment agencies and workers. At least 8,000 workers, most of them women applying for overseas jobs as domestic workers, held a protest rally on January 15, 2007, at the Liwasang Bonifacio and in front of the DOLE offices in Intramuros, Manila, protesting the new guidelines (GMA News 2007). In Hong Kong, about 5,000 FDWs marched on the streets on January 28, 2007, to demand the immediate scrapping of the new POEA guidelines (Philippine Daily Inquirer 2007). Recruitment agencies, workers and migrant NGOs protested the $400 minimum wage, arguing that this would effectively price Filipinos out of the market for domestic workers. The groups also complained about the steep costs of the TESDA NC2 training and the OWWA country-specific language and culture orientation, the fees for which ranged from P5,000 to P10,000, and the additional amount of time (approximately twenty-seven days) it would take for them to complete the training. Domestic workers and some migrant groups also questioned the government’s capacity to enforce the salary guidelines and its motivation for collecting more fees for additional certificates, the general sentiment being that this was another “money-making scheme” of the government. DOLE and the POEA responded by highlighting that the guidelines were intended to raise the working conditions of disadvantaged Filipino household service workers globally, and that the issue had been “hijacked” by recruitment agencies who stood to lose their profitability because of the “no placement fee” guidelines (DOLE 2007). The $400 minimum salary would help secure a premium niche for Filipino “supermaids” and hopefully, better working and living conditions for them (Manila Times 2007). The additional training which Filipinos would go through would also enable them to apply for “higher level” service jobs in, for example, hotels and restaurants. With regard to the new language and communication requirements set by the POEA for both the NC2 and the supermaid course, there are three interesting points to note: (1) the ability to communicate in English is considered to be a “minimum requirement”; (2) “workplace communication skills” (presumably in English, and on top of the basic ability to communicate in English) is one of the basic modules in the TESDA training program; and (3) some knowledge of a “foreign” language other than English is considered to be necessary, as seen in the requirement that prospective domestic workers undergo a country-specific language and culture training with the OWWA. gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 198 Beatriz P. Lorente The Filipino “supermaid,” as constructed by these new POEA guidelines, is an English-knowing multilingual, knowledgeable of the language (e.g., Cantonese for Hong Kong, Arabic for the Middle East, etc.) and culture of the household she is going to work for, and with competent “workplace communication skills.” The discourse of English being the “competitive edge” of Filipino migrant workers is translated into English being a “minimum requirement” at the local scale where would-be housemaids, housekeepers and cleaners are trained for deployment. As Tollefson (1991) has already pointed out, that English competence can be made a “minimum requirement,” and that there is no lack of Filipinos lining up to leave the country, are the results of a large labor surplus in the country. As a minimum requirement, it would seem that the ability to communicate in English is no longer sufficient to sustain the “competitiveness” of FDWs. On top of being able to communicate in English, FDWs are also supposed to have the ability to “participate in workplace communication.” The “Competency-Based Curriculum Exemplar” for the Household Services National Certificate 2 (NC2) (TESDA 2006a) is generic when it comes to the kind of communication skills which are considered to be valuable for service workers. The module, “participating in workplace communication” is supposed to cover the following: Parts of speech; sentence construction; effective communication; communicating with the employer; communicating with other members of the household; familiarizing with common places and terminologies; basic mathematics; technical writing; types of forms; recording information. (TESDA 2006a) The assessment criteria include [s]pecific relevant information is accessed from appropriate resources; effective questioning, active listening and speaking skills are used to gather and convey information; appropriate medium is used to transfer information and ideas; appropriate non-verbal communication is used; appropriate lines of communication with superiors and colleagues are identified and followed; defi ned workplace procedures for the location and storage of information are used; personal interaction is carried out clearly and concisely. (TESDA 2006a) These assessment criteria place an emphasis on the transfer of information, on “obtaining and conveying workplace information” according to what is “appropriate” and/or according to “defi ned workplace procedures.” There is also a literacy component where the emphasis is on completing relevant work-related documents, that is, fi lling out forms and recording information. The fi nal component is participation in workplace gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 199 meetings and discussions where their “own opinions are clearly expressed and those of others are listened to without interruption,” “workplace interaction are conducted in a courteous manner appropriate to cultural background and authority,” “questions about simple routine workplace procedures and matters concerning conditions of employment are asked and responded.” These suggest that the communication skills that are considered to be valuable are “passive”; they are not about constructing or questioning knowledge or procedures. The introduction of a communication skills element in the curriculum for household service workers points to how the new work order with its linguistic demands (Cameron 2002) has, at least discursively, come to be inserted in the economy of labor migration from the Philippines. It is indicative of global developments (or the new work order) where linguistic and communication “skills” have come to dominate forms of work, and in the case of the Philippines, forms of migrant labor. As Cameron points out, Whereas the industrial economy required large numbers of manual workers, who were colloquially referred to as “hands” and whose language skills were seen as largely irrelevant, the new capitalism is different. For one thing it is dominated by forms of work in which language-using is an integral part of every worker’s functions. [It has been] suggested that the traditional “manual/non-manual” distinction was in the process of being superseded by a new division of labour, in which an elite class of “symbolic analysts”—creative professionals skilled in the manipulation of words, numbers, images and digital bits—would dominate a much larger and less privileged group providing routine services, either “in person” or behind the scenes. While the work done by these service providers is not necessarily any more creative or demanding than traditional manual work, it does put more pressure on literacy skills . . . and more generally, interpersonal communication skills. (2002, 72) Apart from knowing English and having workplace communication skills, Filipino “supermaids” are also constructed to be knowledgeable in the language and culture of the destination country. This means being able to understand Cantonese if they are heading to Hong Kong, Arabic if they are going to any of the countries in the Middle East, and possibly Mandarin Chinese if they are going to Singapore. Six language and culture familiarization courses are currently being offered: Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Cantonese, Mandarin and English. The twenty-hour course lasts for three days. Of these twenty hours, only sixteen actually go to training in language and culture; four hours are devoted to a stress management workshop that seeks to prepare would-be domestic workers for problems they may face with the families they leave behind in the Philippines, and with the families they will work for in their various destinations. In 2007, gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 200 Beatriz P. Lorente 129,159 OFWs ready for deployment underwent the country-specific language and culture training as part of their pre-departure orientation seminar. In 2008, 60,979 would-be foreign domestic workers were trained in basic spoken and written Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Italian, English and Hebrew, ostensibly to help them in their day-to-day interactions with their foreign employers (OWWA 2009). In the booklet used for the language and culture familiarization program, the following topics are covered: introduction to the destination country and culture (i.e., religion, government system, traditions and food), introduction to the language of the destination country including alphabet and numbers, greetings, and vocabulary lists for vegetables, fruits, tastes, kinds of meat and parts of the body, parts of the home, household chores and family members. Expressions and words used for caring for the sick and describing common illnesses are also given, as is a list of specific cultural do’s and don’ts in the destination country.8 Obviously, the OWWA orientation will not be sufficient to make would-be “supermaid” HSWs proficient in the language of their destination countries, but this development reinforces the image of migrant Filipino workers as being “flexible” and able to work with anyone, whether or not they speak English. The image of the “supermaid” that emerges suggests that for the Philippine state it may no longer be enough to depend on English as the competitive edge of OFWs. It would seem that competitiveness in the global market increasingly demands English speakers with workplace communication skills and linguistic competence in the language of their destination country. This emergence of workplace communication skills and multilingualism (i.e., English and the language of the destination country) as a means of making Filipino workers distinctive in the global labor market may be attributed to increased competition from other labor-sending countries, such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka, in the niches which the Philippines has traditionally dominated (Huang, Yeoh, and Abdul Rahman 2005). In Singapore, for example, Indonesia is already the country’s biggest supplier of foreign domestic workers (Basu 2011). Faced with more affordably priced competition, the Philippine state’s response has been to skillify its migrant workers in a bid to move them into “high value jobs” or to premium positions in the marginalized occupational niches where they may gain a profit from being distinctive from the rest of the competition. The Philippine state is also reconfiguring, in the process, what globally marketable, flexible and profitable workers would be. Their supposed proficiency in English, the global lingua franca, indexes them as being globally marketable, and their certified knowledge of the “necessary” language and culture of their destination countries makes them made-to-order in a standardized way for the niches in the local labor market where they will work. Apart from the new guidelines for prospective foreign domestic workers, this discourse is also becoming evident in recent POEA Annual Reports, which proudly report on the increase in the gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 201 number of professionals and skilled workers in the total deployment of new hires, and which highlight the organization’s “momentum of searching and generating high value jobs in international labor markets for Filipinos who take the option to seek employment outside the country” (POEA 2007, 5). This skillifying of migrant Filipino workers and of Filipino domestic workers in particular serves not only to ensure the profitablity of the Philippine labor enterprise, it is also through this that the Philippine state legitimizes its actions in the eyes of its citizenry. The move into “high value” jobs is framed as the responsibility of the state, because “the possession of such skills by Filipino workers abroad is their best protection from any abuse or maltreatment” (Marcelo 2007); as the duty of the state as it should enable its citizens to take advantage of opportunities to work overseas should they choose to take the option; and as a source of national pride: With the vast opportunities being offered by the seemingly smaller and borderless world, the Pinoy workers’ proven competence, ability, trainability and adaptability simply put them on a competitive edge. The growing need for language-adept workers can be easily fi lled by our Pinoy workers who take pride in having the capacity and learning ability to learn languages easily. (TESDA 2007) CONCLUSION This chapter has examined how, as a labor-sending state, the Philippines has emerged as a site of production that binds origins and destinations, that is, it is a location where bodies are transformed into globally marketable, made-to-order and profitable migrant labor for particular niches in the global labor market. The Philippine labor enterprise’s project of ensuring the competitiveness of its migrant workers has material consequences: it reproduces inequalities within the state and reinforces the state’s role as the provider of made-to-order, readily deployable, flexible workers in the global labor market. This chapter has also shown some of the mechanisms by which the Philippine state intervenes in the labor-market-related migration trajectories of its citizens. These mechanisms call attention not just to how states as power institutions, construct particular representations of Filipino labor, but also to how states legitimize the “export” of migrant bodies for profit through the “empowerment” and continued “professionalization” of OFWs by ensuring that they have the supposed access to the linguistic resources they need in order to be more “globally competitive.” This skillifying of the linguistic skills of migrant Filipino workers and in particular of Filipino domestic workers hints at a rather interesting construction of “workers of the world”: their supposed possession of translocally valid language resources—in this case, workplace communication skills, English and the languages spoken in their target destinations—not only give them a gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file 202 Beatriz P. Lorente “global” appeal in the labor market, but also distinguish them as “authentically” Filipino. They are not just any worker of the world; they are “Pinoy workers of the world.” This particular assemblage, where linguistic resources that are framed as being globally mobile are used to index a national identity, hints at the complex and troubling encounters between the brokerage state’s desire for profit, via the accumulation of remittances from its migrant workers, and its need to sustain legitimacy by constructing these very migrant workers as national sources of pride. NOTES 1. Currently, the foreign language courses offered at the LSI are Arabic (which also includes Saudi/Gulf Culture), English, Korean, Mandarin, Japanese and Spanish (which is referred to as “Spanish Language for Different Vocations”). There are a total of thirty-three LSIs across all of the regions of the country. 2. As of 2009, there were 8.5 million overseas Filipinos, representing about 9.2 percent of the country’s population of 92 million. Of these 8.5 million overseas Filipinos, 4 million are permanent migrants whose stays overseas do not depend on work contracts; the majority of these migrants are in the United States; 3.8 million are temporary migrants, and around 650,000 are irregular migrants. Permanent migrants are immigrants or permanent residents whose stays do not depend on work contracts. Temporary labor migrants or OFWs are persons whose stays overseas depend on their work contracts, which may range from six months to two years; they are expected to return to the Philippines at the end of their employment. Irregular migrants are those who are not properly documented, without valid residence or work permits, or who are overstaying in a foreign country. In a special category are the sea-based workers or seafarers; there were more than 330,000 Filipino seafarers ‘overseas’ in 2009. 3. Remittances from overseas Filipinos seem to hit new record highs every year. In the fi rst half of 2010 alone, remittances through bank channels amounted to US$9.062 billion. 4. I visited the POEA in May 2008 in order to get a sense of how would-be overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were processed. I visited OWWA in December 2009 with the intention of observing a country-specific language and culture familiarization program. I managed to talk to an OWWA administrator about the program, get hold of the booklet used for the Arabic language and culture familiarization program and to watch, albeit briefly, a class for would be domestic workers heading to Arabic-speaking countries. Although the data from my observations and interview are not used in this chapter, they were invaluable in helping me contextualize and concretize the data from my secondary sources. 5. Marcos launched his vision of the this “New Society” at the same time that he declared Martial Law on September 21, 1972. This “New Society” emphasized individual and national discipline and the sacrifice of personal liberties for economic development (Tyner 2004). 6. Annual deployment figures only manage to ‘catch’ those who are leaving the country to work abroad for the fi rst time. They do not include return labor migrants. 7. The TESDA training regulations for prospective foreign domestic workers fi rst came to my attention in May 2005 when I came across copies of the draft training regulations at the Bayanihan Center in Singapore where I was gapore for NUS staff and students. To view documents protected by DRM, please download the following plugin at http://plugin.file The Making of “Workers of the World” 203 volunteering in a skills upgrading program for Filipino domestic workers. 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