Far From Home: Migrant workers from Philippines, Indonesia chase higher wages abroad, but at what cost?

SAN ISIDRO, PHILIPPINES/KUNIRAN, INDONESIA: When Madam Gina Fabiano first considered leaving her wooden home in the Philippines’ Rodriguez municipality to become a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia 7,000km away, her children begged her not to go. 
They had never been apart, let alone separated by such great distance for such a long period of time. They would not know how to live their lives without her, they said. 
But at the time, the now 43 year-old mother of five – who eventually worked in the Middle East for three years between 2016 and 2019 – felt that she did not have a choice.
Her family’s farmland was becoming increasingly unproductive ever since the government decided to open a landfill nearby in 2002.
Along with other families whose farmlands were also destroyed, Mdm Fabiano and her husband worked as scavengers, sifting through the tonnes of rubbish which originated from the Metro Manila area around an hour away, looking for metals, plastics and other valuables to sell to recycling plants.
The family’s income was never steady. Mdm Fabiano and her husband would earn as little as 1,000 to 2,000 pesos (US$17.10 to US$34.20) a month. The pay was barely enough to put food on the table and pay for her children’s tuition.
Then her mother died in 2016 and Mdm Fabiano, as the second oldest of 14 siblings, had to play the role of matriarch for her brothers and sisters, some of whom were still in school at the time.
“We didn’t have money to take my mother to the hospital when she got sick. I thought at the time that perhaps my mother would not have passed away if I had worked abroad sooner,” Mdm Fabiano told CNA, caressing the cross on her neck with her thumb. 
So when the chance came that year to become a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia with a pay of US$400 per month, she jumped at the chance.
In 2016, Mdm Fabiano became one of 2.1 million Filipinos who left their country in search of work abroad, according to data from the Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers. This figure would drop during the pandemic before rising to a new record of 2.3 million in 2023.
The majority of them came from remote rural areas and impoverished urban neighbourhoods such as Rodriguez’s San Isidro district where job opportunities are scarce, especially for people like Mdm Fabiano who only has a junior high school diploma to her name.

Working overseas allowed these Filipinos to earn at least twice the country’s minimum wage of US$10 a day, but it comes with some hefty costs.
For mothers like Mdm Fabiano, working abroad meant losing the chance to watch their children grow up, celebrate special occasions such as birthdays and Christmas as well as missing out on important moments like first days of school and graduations.
For those left behind, it meant losing someone they love, a guardian, a mentor and a shoulder to cry on.
“The most difficult part was I was not able to take care of my only daughter,” Mdm Fabiano said of her youngest child who was still in kindergarten when she left.
“All I could do was call her on my phone and ask: ‘What are you doing now? Did you eat? Are you going to school?’ That’s all. But the girl I took care of in Saudi: I could tie her hair, feed her properly, tuck her to bed.”
“I was able to take care of her but I couldn’t even care for my own kids.”
These latest available numbers were culled from various sources, including past news reports as well official government agencies.
The figures show the number of migrant workers that are currently living and working outside their home countries. While these may include skilled workers, a large proportion of these migrants work in blue-collar industries.  
Singapore and Brunei are not included. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Migration Outlook report released in 2022 identified the two countries as among the region’s main destination countries for migrant workers in lower-skilled occupations.
Separately, the total number of overseas migrant workers from Vietnam is unclear, though local media reported that the country aims to send 125,000 workers abroad under contract in 2024. In the first quarter of this year, nearly 36,000 migrant workers from the country went abroad, according to the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs.
Overall, while ASEAN migrant workers take up jobs in many different countries across the world, many choose to work in the region. 
For example, a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) last year said that 1.7 million Myanmar migrant workers were registered in Thailand as of 2023. 
“Estimates double when irregular migrants are factored in,” said the ILO report in reference to illegal migrants.  
It added that Myanmar nationals make up the largest migrant population in Thailand and represent the largest diaspora population of Myanmar nationals. 
And according to Indonesian newspaper Kompas, there were approximately 1.66 million Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia as of 2022.
Malaysia has long grappled with a large number of illegal migrant workers, with unofficial estimates saying that the figure ranges from 1.2 to 3.5 million.
The influx of illegal Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia continues to be a thorny topic between both countries. 
In June last year, the issue of illegal Indonesian migrant workers was the main agenda at a meeting between the chiefs of the immigration department of the two countries, Bernama reported. 
Southeast Asia’s porous borders mean that undocumented migration of people – including workers – remains an issue and contributes to the dangers and vulnerabilities they may face.
In Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia, emigration abroad to chase better opportunities and wages is common. More than nine million Indonesians are now working overseas, equivalent to almost seven per cent of Indonesia’s total labour force, according to data from the World Bank. 
The countries’ respective governments and private sectors have taken different approaches to support these itinerant industries. Overseas workers provide a huge contribution to the economy in the Philippines, a country where 15.5 per cent of its 117 million people live below the national poverty line, according to a 2023 data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, and survive on less than US$1.35 per person per day.
Last year, workers overseas sent home US$40 billion, according to the World Bank, contributing to 9.2 per cent of the country’s GDP. The Philippines is the world’s fourth largest recipient of remittances behind India (US$125 billion), Mexico (US$67 billion) and China (US$50 billion).
So important was the outflow of workers to the economy, successive Filipino governments have enacted various policies to promote and support emigration. These policies range from offering better protection to workers overseas to providing programmes to improve the welfare of returning migrant workers.
Former president Rodrigo Duterte, for example, set up the Overseas Filipino Bank to assist migrant workers in sending remittances back to their families in 2018. Three years later, his government established the Department of Migrant Workers to put various government offices linked to labour emigration under one roof.
His successor, Mr Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, who began his presidency in 2022, has promised to provide migrant workers and their families with health insurance, scholarship grants and a retirement plan.
But critics say these efforts failed to create jobs locally and address the underlying issue of high unemployment rate, which the International Monetary Fund predicted will reach 5.1 per cent this year.
“The majority of overseas workers come from areas where work opportunities are very limited, areas where job security is scarce. Even if they do land a steady job, their salaries are often not enough to meet the basic needs of their families,” Mr Marvin Rimas, secretary general of advocacy group Migrante Philippines, told CNA.
Which is why there are many migrant workers who immediately seek another chance to be employed overseas once they have finished their initial contracts. “There is simply no work for them back home,” Mr Rimas said.
Similarly, most of the 4.8 million Indonesians who are currently working overseas also come from underdeveloped places where work opportunities are limited. But unlike the Philippines, the Indonesian government is not actively promoting emigration.
“The private sector plays a bigger role in getting people to work overseas,” Mr Wahyu Susilo, executive director of advocacy group Migrant Care, told CNA.
The government, he added, plays more of a supervisory and regulatory role for the 443 placement companies registered with the Indonesian Migrant Worker Protection Agency (BPPMI).
These companies often employ freelance brokers who go from one village to the next looking for people who are interested in working abroad.
One such broker, Mr Sutarno, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said it was initially hard for him to find potential workers when he first started working in the industry back in 1998, at the height of the Asian Financial Crisis.
“Because the rupiah became really weak there were many countries which turned to Indonesia looking for cheap labour,” the 69-year-old told CNA.
Indonesians were losing their jobs because of the financial crisis. But despite this, not many people were interested because the types of work overseas companies were offering at the time were repetitive and backbreaking, such as planting oil palm seeds and construction work.
The low interest meant that Sutarno was only able to recruit 10 people from his own village, Kuniran, in the remote and hilly part of East Java province. But when the first batch of recruits began sending money home, interest spiked almost overnight.
“In just two months, these migrant workers were able to save enough money to buy a brand new motorcycle. In this village, in those days, not even a successful plantation owner could afford to do that in such a short amount of time,” he said.
“Suddenly, everyone wanted to become a migrant worker.”
In Kuniran today, almost every other home has at least one family member with some experience working abroad.
Their houses are easily distinguishable. Those who have not left the village live inside dilapidated traditional homes made out of wood and bamboo.
Meanwhile, those who have gone overseas can afford to build themselves houses made out of brick and concrete, something which was previously accessible only to those who were educated enough to find white collar work in government.
Kuniran is not unique. Across Indonesia, there are many so-called “migrant worker villages” where a huge portion of the working age population is overseas. Combined, these Indonesian workers sent home more than US$11 billion last year, according to the World Bank. 
One of the hallmarks of such villages is that they are filled with children cared for by their grandparents or close relatives instead of their own mothers and fathers. While the rest of the year these villages seem quiet and deserted, their populations boom during festivities such as the Islamic holiday Idul Fitri.
The attractive salary abroad, which can be two to three times the country’s average minimum wage of US$190 per month, made many youths in these migrant worker villages aspire to seek work abroad.
The strong interest, however, also attracted tricksters looking to take advantage of naive youths who had never stepped out of their tiny villages, let alone their country.
Migrant Care director, Mr Susilo said he had seen cases where potential migrant workers were told by a middleman to pay up to 3 million rupiah (US$187.73) to apply for a passport, six times what it is supposed to cost.
There are also cases where workers ended up working in another country illegally because they have not secured the necessary permit.
“These workers had never seen a passport before let alone know what a working visa should look like. They only discovered that they have been working using a tourist visa or a temporary visit visa when authorities arrested them,” he said. 
Mdm Suparni, a 40-year-old Kuniran resident who also goes by one name, said even from an early age she was aware that there are many tricksters in the industry. But that did not stop her from aspiring to become a migrant worker just like her older sister. 
“(My sister) would come home once every two years or so in nice clothes. She would bring me t-shirts, cosmetics and chocolates. She would take my father to a local electronics store where they would buy a new television set or a refrigerator,” the Kuniran native told CNA.
“I thought to myself, ‘that’s what I want to do, I want to work abroad’.”
Mdm Suparni briefly worked as a factory worker in Indonesia after graduating from senior high school but she always set her sights on becoming a migrant worker. That opportunity came in 2006.
She first worked as a labourer at an electronics factory in Malaysia for two years before switching profession to become a member of the housekeeping staff at a hotel in the same country for another year. She then became a domestic helper in Singapore.
After working abroad for five years, Mdm Suparni tried settling down in Indonesia. She returned in 2011, got married a year later and had a daughter in 2014.
But life in Kuniran was hard. Her husband, Mr Kusno, another migrant worker veteran, was making only around 100,000 rupiah a day in construction and jobs were few and far between.
Meanwhile, the only work Mdm Suparni could find was selling vegetables at a local market where she made on average 50,000 rupiah a day.
“We were spending more money than we could earn. We were starting to accumulate debts,” she said.
In 2017, Mdm Suparni made the tough choice of leaving her then two-and-a-half year old daughter, Noni, in the care of her husband and became a domestic helper in Singapore for the second time.
Noni barely recognised her when she came home to visit every few years. Her daughter was more attached to her father and paternal grandmother and barely listened to her mother.
Mdm Suparni, who now works in Taiwan as a domestic worker, said she is still struggling to win her now 10-year-old daughter’s heart.
Noni is sometimes reluctant to speak to her mother whenever she calls and even when the child is in the mood to talk, she will only give short and cold answers.
“I feel like I’m a stranger to her. I want to get close to her but I don’t know how,” Mdm Suparni said.
Cases like this are familiar for Mdm Anis Hidayah, a commissioner at the Indonesian National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM). As a long-time advocate for migrant workers, she has been closely monitoring the impacts migration can have on the families left behind.
The human rights commissioner said that without the structure of a normal family and the love and attention provided by both parents, children sometimes misbehave, perform poorly at school or get into trouble.
“There are many social costs which arise from migration, which I think have not been mitigated well by the government,” she told CNA.
Children in the Philippines are also facing similar issues, said Mr Rimas of advocacy group Migrante Philippines.
“(Migrant workers’) children, they don’t have parental guidance, especially from the mother. So the mothers are working abroad and their children experience separation anxiety. They suffer from depression. Then they’re looking for something that can cure or lessen their depression,” he said.
Mr Rimas said his group has documented cases where children of migrant workers ended up having drug problems or got into fights at school because they lack the supervision and discipline from both parents. 
Although their parents went abroad in the hope that their children can have a better future, ironically it is not uncommon for children of migrant workers to drop out of school as a result of delinquency and bad behaviour.
Ms Maryjane Yago, 19, said her elder sister often used to pick on her, but the bullying got worse after their mother left the Philippines in 2020 to become a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia.
As a result, Ms Yago felt more at home at her friends’ houses. “I would spend the night at my own home maybe twice or three times a week,” she said.
During one of those nights away from home, Ms Yago became pregnant at the age of 17 and as a result did not finish senior high school.
She gave birth to a baby girl, just months before her mother returned to the Philippines in 2023 after a three-year stint working in the Middle East. 
“I was in shock at first but in the end I was able to forgive her for what had happened,” Ms Yago’s mother, Mdm Gemma Yago, 47, told CNA. “I do have some regrets about going abroad. If I didn’t go I would be able to take care of my daughters better.”
Like Mdm Gemma Yago, Mdm Fabiano said she also regretted going abroad.
Upset with their mother’s decision to leave, Mdm Fabiano’s children would perform so poorly academically that four of them ended up dropping out of senior high school. Her youngest is still in grade nine and Mdm Fabiano is determined not to let her only daughter follow in her brother’s footsteps.