Exploring International Migration from the Sending Country Perspective: The Case of the Philippines

International migration is a persistent feature of the Philippine society and has become deeply entrenched in the lives of most Filipinos. It is estimated that around 10% of the country’s total population of 112 million are dispersed in more than 200 countries. The diversified presence of Filipino migrants at sea and on land has been facilitated and managed by a highly ‘institutionalised labor-export process’ (Guevarra 2010:3) that has allowed effective, efficient, and quick deployment of workers when there is an incipient labor shortage. This has propelled the Philippines as a major labor-exporting economy and a ‘model labor sending country’. Although the spotlight on Filipino migration has been predominantly on labor migration, other migration streams and migrant categories from the Philippines have also emerged as objects of inquiry within migration studies. Given the range, diversity and scope of Filipino migration, the particularity of international migration from the Philippines is not only a source of empirical investigations but also a strategic site to advance theorising about migration using a sending country perspective.

This session invites papers based on quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods studies, or comparative research projects that examine Filipino migration at the micro, meso, or macro level and that explore the following themes:

1. Aspirations and imaginaries
2. Migration regimes, infrastructures, and networks
3. Migrant categories, migration pathways, and integration
4. Temporalities and different phases of the migration process (pre-, post-, and return migration)
5. Intersections of migration and other subfields (e.g., religion, health, gender, inequalities, politics, family, life course, etc.)