Political Activism of Philippine Labor Migrants in Hong Kong

Diffusion in transnational political spaces: political activism of Philippine labor migrants in Hong Kong

Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg i. Br

vorgelegt von

Stefan Rother aus Ravensburg

SS 2012

Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rüland

Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Heribert Weiland

Drittgutachter: Prof. Dr. Gregor Dobler

Vorsitzender des Promotionsausschusses der Gemeinsamen Kommission der Philologischen, Philosophischen und Wirtschafts- und Verhaltenswissenschaftlichen Fakultät: Prof. Dr. Hans-Helmuth Gander

Datum der Fachprüfung im Promotionsfach: 26. August 2012

Table of contents

List of Acronyms ...... v

1. Introduction ...... 1

Part I: Theoretical background and approach ...... 7

2. Labour migration, transnationalism and International Relations Theory ...... 8

3. Transnationalism in migration studies ...... 21

3.1. Transnational social fields ...... 22

3.2. Transnational social spaces ...... 30

4. Transnational political spaces ...... 40

5. Methodology, case selection, and data collection ...... 55

Part II: Case Study ...... 61

6. Nation-States and the migration industry – the political-legal framework for transnational political spaces ...... 62

6.1. The nation-state and the governance of migration ...... 62

6.2. The Philippines: role model for “best practices” or unscrupulous “labour broker”? ...... 65

6.3. Comparison: Indonesia – a case of “bad practice?” ...... 79

6.4. Hong Kong – the “global city” as the cradle of Philippine migrant activism ...... 85

6.5. Summary/Discussion ...... 97

7. The migrants and civil society ...... 103

7.1. Political space in the Philippines: Party lists, civil society and the split of the Philippine left ...... 103

7.2. On any given Sunday: Private, public and political spaces in Hong Kong ...... 112

7.3. Hong Kong-based activism ...... 114

7.3.1 “The “grassroots cluster” ...... 115

7.3.2 “The “NGO cluster” ...... 133

7.3.3 Same, same, but different? Differences in advocacy between the two clusters ...... 137

7.4. The Philippine-based members of the two clusters ...... 141

7.4.1 “The “grassroots cluster” ...... 141 iii

7.4.2 “The “NGO cluster” ...... 146

7.5. The clusters go global: Competing strategies and parallel events at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) ...... 151

7.5.1 “The “NGO cluster”: The Peoples’ Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA) ...... 151

7.5.2 “The “grassroots cluster”: International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) ...... 155

Part III: Conclusion, Annex, References ...... 159

8. Conclusion ...... 160

9. Annex: Deutsche Zusammenfassung ...... 168

10. List of References and Interviews ...... 172

References ...... 172

List of Interviews ...... 193

List of Acronyms

ADWU: Asian Domestic Workers Union AFP: Armed Forces of the Philippines ALP: Alliance of Progressive Labour AMC: Asian Migrant Centre AMCB: Asian Migrants Coordinating Body AMEND: Alliance for Migrant Workers and Advocates to Amend R.A. 8042 AMIHAN: National Federation of Peasant Women APC: Inter-Governmental Asia-Pacific Consultations on Refugees, Displaced Persons and Migrants APL: Alliance of Progressive Labour APMM: Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants APMMF: Asia Pacific Mission for Migrant Filipinos (now APMM) APWLD: Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development ASEAN: Association of South East Asian Nation ASL: Association of Sri Lankans in Hong Kong ATIK: Alliance of Turkish Migrants in Europe ATKI-HK: Association of Indonesian Migrant Workers in Hong Kong BKPTKI: Keanggotaan Badan Kordinasi Indonesia (coordination authority for the placement of Indonesian migrant workers) BNP2TKI: National Agency for the Protection and Placement of Indonesian Migrant Workers CCOFW: Consultative Council on Overseas Filipino Workers CEDAW: Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women CFO: The Commission on Filipinos Overseas CMA: Center for Migrant Advocacy CMR: Coalition for Migrants’ Rights COMELEC: Commission on Elections COWA: House of Representatives’ Committee on Overseas Workers' Affairs CPP: Communist Party of the Philippines CSD: Civil Society Days of the GFMD DFA: Department of Foreign Affairs DPA: Deep Penetration Agent ECMI: Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People v

EU: European Union FADWU: Federation of Asian Domestic Workers Unions FDGHU: Filipino Domestic Helpers General Union FDH: Foreign Domestic Helpers FDW: Foreign Domestic Worker FEONA: Far East Asia Nepalese Association FMWG: Filipino Migrant Workers Group FMWU-HK: Filipino Migrant Workers’ Union FOT: Friends of Thai GABRIELA: General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action GATS: General Agreement on Trade and Services GCIM: Global Commission on International Migration GFMD: Global Forum on Migration and Development GMA: Gloria Macapagal Arroyo GWP: GABRIELA Women’s Party HDH: Helpers for Domestic Helpers HKCTU: Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions HLD: High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development IAC: International Advisory Committee IAMR: International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees ICB: International Coordinating Body of the IMA ICC: International Criminal Court ICMC: International Catholic Migration Commission ICOFVR: International Coalition for the Overseas Filipinos' Voting Rights IDWA: Indian Domestic Workers Association ILC: International Labour Conference ILO: International Labour Organization ILPS: The International League of Peoples' Struggle IMA: International Migrants’ Alliance IMWU: Indonesian Migrant Workers Union IOM: International Organization for Migration IR: International Relations ISS: International Social Service ITC: The International Tribunal of Conscience

KOTKIHO: The Hong Kong Coalition of Indonesian Migrant Workers Organization LegCo: Legislative Council of Hong Kong MFA: Migrant Forum in Asia MFWM: Mission for Migrant Workers (since 2006; before: Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers) MI: Migrante International MOU: Memorandum of Understanding MRI: Migrants Rights International NCCP: National Council of Churches in the Philippines NCS: New Conditions of Stay ND: National Democratic (movement) NGO: Non-Governmental Organisation NPA: New People’s Army (also CCP-NPA) OAV: Oversees Absentee Voting OEC: Overseas Employment Certificate OFW: Overseas Filipino Worker OPA: Overseas Performing Artist OWWA: Overseas Workers Welfare Administration PASEI: Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc. PGA: People's Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights PHP: Philippine Peso PILAR: United Indonesians Against Overcharging PMRW: Philippine Migrants Rights Watch PO: People’s Organisation POEA: Philippine Overseas Employment Administration POLO: Philippine Overseas Labor Office PPP: Partidong Pandaigdigang Pilipino (Party of the Global Filipino) RCP: Regional Consultative Process SAR: Special Autonomous Region SMC: Scalabrini Migration Center SUP: Seafarers’ Upgrading Program TAR: territory, authority, rights (as used by Saskia Sassen) TESDA: Technical Education and Skills Development Administration TKI: Tenaga Kerja Indonesia (Indonesian Labour Migrants) TMP: Transnational Migrant Platform

vii

TRA-HK: Thai regional Alliance TUCP: Trade Union Congress of the Philippines TWA: Thai Women Association UAE: United Arab Emirates UNFARE: The United Filipinos against Forced Remittance USA: United Stated of America WTO: World Trade Organisation WWEP: Workers Welfare Enhancement Program

viii

1. Introduction

1 November 2009, late morning: Eni Lestari is giving the opening speech for the Second International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) at the Polytechnic University in Athens. Lestari was born in Indonesia and as young woman she came to the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Region (SAR) to work as a Foreign Domestic Worker (FDW). After being abused by her employer, she ran away to a shelter for migrant domestic workers. There she came into contact with Filipina migrant activists. As a result, she first initiated the Association of Indonesian Migrant Workers in Hong Kong (ATKI-HK), then joined the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body (AMCB), an umbrella organization bringing together migrants from five nationalities in Hong Kong. Now she is also the chairperson of the newly formed International Migrants’ Alliance (IMA), by self-definition “the first global alliance of grassroots migrant organizations”. In her speech, Lestari attacks the Global Forum on Migration (GFMD), starting the next day, as “modern day slavery“. The audience, among them a large number of Filipinos, applauds. One of the main speakers of the opening ceremony is José María Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). He is only able to join in by video message, since he cannot risk leaving his exile in Amsterdam. 1 November 2009, afternoon: The People's Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA) also starts its parallel event to the GFMD in a crammed community centre. Among the organizers are the local group KASAPI-Hellas (The Unity of Filipino Migrant Workers in Greece) and the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA). Several organizers from the Philippines and Hong Kong are present. Some of the participants leave earlier because they are also delegates of the GFMD civil society component, the Civil Society Days (CSD) starting early the next morning. One of the keynote speeches is given by Walden Bello, representative of the Akbayan party list in the 14th Congress of the Republic of the Philippines. In a nutshell, these two scenes taking place only a few hours and kilometres apart define the scope of this Ph.D. thesis. It has been often stated that modern-day migration is not simply a matter of people moving from place A to B anymore. If that holds true for migration, it most certainly holds true for migrant activism. My initial hypothesis when formulating the theoretical foundation for this thesis was that this activism takes place in a transnational political space that is not bound by (but neither replacing) the container unit of the nation state. My initial goal was twofold: firstly, to map out such a political space encompassing the Philippines and Hong Kong SAR and consider its implications for the role of the nation state, and secondly to analyse the role of migrant organizations in constructing such places and their potential to contribute some form of “governance from below”. (Rother 2009a) But further 1 scrutiny revealed that while there is certainly some point in questioning the conventional view of the nation state as a container encompassing social and geographical space with clear boundaries, this bounded view does not work for transnational political spaces either. Rather, I discovered partially overlapping political spaces, often encompassing different levels from the local up to the global and back to the regional level as well. And within these spaces, processes of learning and diffusion are apparently taking place. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to analyse the transnational and global scope of this activism and its cleavages and divisions that may have originated back in Manila but have found their way via Hong Kong to places like Athens, where the global dimension of migration is negotiated. Regarding the cleavages, it was no coincidence that the keynote speeches at the parallel meetings in Athens were given by two Filipino activists that almost personify the split of the Philippine left in 1992 – up to the point that one of them (Walden Bello) accused the other (Sison) in 2004 of putting him on a “hit list” for counter-revolutionary activities (Rousset March 2005). But the dominant role of Filipinos within those two, as I call them, clusters of migrant organizations that was apparent in Athens (as well as in global meetings before and after that) can also be seen as an indicator of the transfer of not only ideologies but organizational practices, strategies, agendas – in short, of the diffusion of migrant activism. This complex arrangement of activism I aim to analyse is not only empirically fascinating but also calls for conceptual and theoretical redefinitions. Migration research literature has hugely benefitted from the transnational turn that started in the early 1990s; around the same time, transnational relations were brought “back in” to the study of International Relations (IR) (Risse-Kappen 1995a). But the transnational phenomenon of migration has been largely neglected in IR studies, as James F. Hollifield put it: “How to explain the relative absence of the study of migration from one of the most important subfields in political science is indeed a mystery.” (Hollifield 2008: 199) If migration is addressed at all in IR, it is usually from a top-down perspective that emphasizes the role of the nation-state or supranational institutions and their more or less successful attempts in migration control or “management”. Some more recent studies have added the perspective of governmentality (Kalm 2008), but as in the important framework of securitization (Buzan, et al. 1998), migrants remain to a large degree the objects of policies from above and are hardly given any agency. In contrast, there is a plethora of works aiming to take the migrants’ perspectives in disciplines like sociology or anthropology, but the comparatively smaller number of those studies that focus on the political activism of migrants deal predominantly with “diaspora engagement” in the homeland or participation in the receiving society (Piper 2009a). The

political implications of circular migration are rarely touched upon. But while circular migration has been increasingly promoted in recent years as a tool for development in the global discourse as well as notably in the European Union, it is far from being a wholly new phenomenon: Temporary contract labour migration has been the predominant form of regular migration for more than three decades within and emerging from Southeast Asia, often resulting in de facto circular migration. Since permanent or semi-permanent migration still seems to be the major basis for conceptualizing political dimensions of migration, the transnationality of such circular migration remains crucially under-researched; the major difference between these two forms of migration is that for a temporary labour migrant working on a two-year contract, issues like integration or citizenship are simply not an option and thus hardly a concern. Even if their contract gets renewed repeatedly, resulting in semi-permanent temporary migration, the migrants find themselves in a state of “in-betweenness”. This may explain why the migrant advocacy that can be observed in destinations like Hong Kong is directed at so many levels: The sending state1, the destination of migration, the regional and global level. Migration research in sociology and anthropology has captured this in-betweenness with the concepts of transnational social fields or transnational social spaces, but in order to emphasize that the political dimension of this transnationalism is my main focus, I will use the aforementioned term transnational political spaces. To adequately describe and analyse these phenomena, this thesis aims to be part of the transnational scholarship Sanjeev Khagram and Peggy Levitt have called for (Khagram/Levitt 2008a, 2008b). The authors distinguish transnational scholarship on several levels. Empirical transnationalism involves “the identification, description, mapping, quantification, and categorization of transnational phenomena and dynamics” (Khagram/Levitt 2008a: 5), but also runs the risk of focussing on “phenomena that are or are understood to be by-products of the nation-state system” (Khagram/Levitt 2008b: 27). In my empirical research I have aimed for the former (asides from the quantification) while trying to avoid the latter. This effort has been guided by the methodological transnationalism which requires specific kinds of observations and methods for collecting them: “Transnational dynamics cannot be studied at one point in time because they involve multiple, interacting processes rather than single, bounded events” (Khagram/Levitt 2008a: 7). Similar to multi- sited ethnography, data for this thesis has been collected by adhering to the principle that

1 I use the terms sending country and receiving country (or state) of migrants since they are widely used in the literature on international migration. But I am aware that these terms are not always fitting since state involvement in the migration process differs and one could claim that the term sending country denies migrants some of their agency. Alternative terms worth considering are home country or country of origin. 3

George E. Marcus has described as “follow the people” (and in a way “follow the conflict” as well) (Marcus 1995: 106; 110). As a result, research has not only been conducted between Manila and Hong Kong during four stays in each location, but also in Amsterdam, Athens, Geneva, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta and once more in Geneva. Between these stays in the field, further data has been gathered by membership in newsgroups, email-lists like “pinoy abroad”, and several Facebook groups. Finally, while not strictly adhering to a grounded theory approach (Glaser/Strauss 1967) the way the conceptual framework of this book was developed fits into this approach in several regards. With certain prior theoretical knowledge on various forms of migrant transnationalism, social movements and governance from below, interviews with various migrant organisations were carried out in 2006 in Manila as part of the research project “Democratization through Migration?” (Kessler, et al. 2008). Results from the survey data and information from the interviews pointed towards Hong Kong as a site of very intense activism of Philippine migrants outside their home country. Interviews, event observation and data collection in Hong Kong confirmed these assumptions while the mapping of networks of networks of migrant organisations incrementally revealed two fairly distinctive clusters. This led to further mapping, first among Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong, who are part of these clusters, and then at the global level, as described above. Thus, it can be claimed that the research for this thesis has been truly conducted from the bottom up; with the insights gathered while following this approach, it analyses a phenomenon that has so far not been addressed in the studies on the topic. This may come somewhat as a surprise, since there exists a myriad of studies on Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) in general and on their experiences and activism in Hong Kong in particular, among them seminal studies like Nicole Constable’s “Maid to Order in Hong Kong” (Constable 2007). But many authors seem to be either unaware of the cleavages or apparently prefer not to make them the issue of their research (“the less said about certain differences, the better”, as one author put it). Also, some authors seem to deliberately focus on one side only (and offhandedly criticise “the others”) – be it out of sympathy or even out of institutional affiliation, which is not disclosed in their research. Finally, a common attitude of people who have adopted the cause of the migrants, seems to be one of “don’t look, don’t tell”, since any signs of disunity within the migrant groups is feared to harm their cause. Considering this background, I find it important to stress that the goal of this thesis is neither to take sides in any way among those migrant groups nor to harm the struggle for rights and better working conditions taken up by the migrants in Hong Kong or elsewhere. While absolute scientific objectivity is obviously an illusion, it is still worth to aim for something

4 approximating neutrality in the analysis, although I will discuss the effectiveness of the different strategies that are applied at various levels. And since I just criticized other authors for their lack of full disclosure, I find it appropriate to state that the causes of the migrant activists from all spectrums I encountered during my research are something I have a high level of sympathy for. Structure of the thesis While the majority of the concepts and theoretical perspectives of this thesis were developed or adapted as a result of the data collected, I refrain from documenting this process in detail and chose to present the results in a more structured way. Hence, the first part of the thesis will give an overview of the theoretical background and approach. Although this thesis draws heavily from theories and concepts developed in sociology, anthropology and human geography, its main goal is to make a contribution to the field of International Relations. Therefore, in the chapter following this introduction, I will discuss the relationship between labour migration and IR theory and point out the apparent lacunae in the discipline. Chapter 3 will provide a discussion of transnationalism in the social sciences and specifically the concepts of transnational social fields and transnational social spaces, which form the basis for my own approach. The theoretical approach for the thesis, transnational political spaces, will be developed in Chapter 4, where I will also discuss the concepts of diffusion and organisational isomorphism and pose the guiding questions for the analysis. Methodology, case study selection, and data collection will be the topics of chapter 5. The second part of the thesis will deal with the analysis of the case study. Chapter 6 will present the background against which the political activism of the migrants takes place: the state-level and the attempts to “manage” migration. The subchapters will discuss the labour and migration policies of the Philippines, Indonesia and Hong Kong and the role of the “migration industry” as part of the framework for the migration process. The background on Indonesia is of significance since the number of Indonesian migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong has rapidly increased since the mid-1990s and they have become part of the “clusters” I analyze. Chapter 7 then will apply the concepts from part one to the empirical findings and refine them. The introduction will give an overview of the history of civil society, grassroots organisations and NGOs in the Philippines and the split of the Philippine left. It is followed by a section on the various spaces available to migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. The next three sections of the chapter will analyse in detail the two clusters I have defined – the grassroots cluster and the NGO cluster – through their advocacy based in Hong Kong, the Philippines and on the global level.

The final chapter 8 will discuss the overlapping and expanded transnational political spaces which these clusters create and in which they operate as well as the processes of diffusion that take place within them. It will sum up the findings of the analysis, discuss the guiding questions and the concept of transnational political spaces.

Part I: Theoretical background and approach

2. Labour migration, transnationalism and International Relations Theory

“However, the political science literature on migration and international relations (IR) is exceptionally thin […].” (Hollifield 2008: 199)

The most comprehensive overview on “the politics of international migration” to date has been provided by James F. Hollifield (Hollifield 2008). Although he concludes the sentence cited above with the hopeful notion “…even though a number of younger (and some older) scholars have begun to turn their attention to this field of inquiry”(Hollifield 2008: 199), he further adds that there is no denying that historians, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, and demographers “have a head start in the study of international migration”.(Hollifield 2008: 225) In his state-of-the-art article, Hollifield points out important issues for further research, but still leaves out several relevant aspects that might have been ignored to various degrees in other disciplines as well, but most blatantly so in the field of IR: 1. Issues like migration control or “management” are primarily discussed from the perspective of the receiving countries of migrants. 2. As a further bias, this perspective is mostly limited to Western and/or more developed countries – South-South migration, almost equally high in numbers2 (Ratha/Shaw 2007), is not taken into consideration. 3. The migrants themselves are predominantly seen as the objects of migration policies, sometimes as potential voters, more often as a threat to the security of the nation-state – but rarely as political actors in their own right. 4. If this agency is accorded to migrants, then the focus is mostly on “diaspora groups” with a semi-permanent or permanent residence outside their home country; temporary or circular migration is rarely part of this research. Before I will address these shortcomings, I will give a brief overview of the existing literature on migration within IR. Hollifield provides a convincing argument why migration has played such an insignificant role in IR for such a long time: According to him, during the Cold War immigration was seen as an issue of low politics that did not rise to the level of foreign policy and high politics. And since it was not seen as having significant effects on issues like

2 According to a World Bank paper by Ratha/Shaw published in 2007, the authors “estimate that 74 million, or nearly half, of the migrants from developing countries reside in other developing countries. In other words, South-South migration is nearly as large as South-North migration” (Ratha/Shaw 20072007: v). 8 balance of power, the East-West conflict or the international system as a whole, it was not considered a major issue on the theoretical level as well (Hollifield 2008: 183). This view reflected the scant attention paid to migration at the level of international politics until the end of the Cold War. Although international migration obviously involves at least two states, it was not seen as an issue that would have a major effect on the relations among states. Instead, migration was solely understood as an issue of domestic policy that the sovereign Westphalian nation-state should deal with. The emerging studies on migration in other disciplines from the 1970s onward can be grouped into two distinctive bodies of social scientific investigation, as Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller have pointed out: research on “the determinants, processes and patterns of migration” and research on “the ways in which migrants become incorporated into receiving societies” (Castles/Miller 2009: 20, Massey, et al. 1998: 3). On the macro level, the dominant theory in the first group of research has been the straight-forward view of neoclassical economics, whereby the international migration of workers is caused by differences in wage rates between countries. Labour markets are the primary mechanism by which international flows of labour are induced and by regulating these markets governments can also control migration flows (Massey, et al. 1993: 433–34). These theories have also become known as push/pull-theories, since they look at the push-factors that drive migrants from their home countries and the pull-factors that pull them towards countries with labour shortages and higher wage levels. This view is accompanied by a microeconomic model, where migrants actually have some agency and make informed decisions as individual rational choice actors that calculate if they make a net profit from migrating (Todaro 1976, Massey, et al. 1993: 434– 35). These neoclassical theories have been increasingly criticized as being too simplistic and even “absurd” (Castles/Miller 2009: 23), since they do not match empirical evidence: It is rarely the poorest people who migrate, and the selection of the destination country cannot simply be explained by economic models alone. As a response, the “new economics of labor migration” (Stark/Bloom 1985) set out to offer a more sophisticated model. The “household model” (Massey 1990) pointed out that migration decisions are rarely made by individuals but rather by social groups like households, families or even whole communities. While this model focused on the supply-side of migrant labour, the segmented or dual labour market theory argued that international labour migration is mostly demand-based; recruitment is being organized by employers in the more developed receiving countries or by their governments on behalf of the employers (Massey, et al. 1993: 444). As in the household model, governments do not play a decisive role in this theory.

Economic reasons and market demands are also seen as the deciding factors in the dominant theories on the systemic and structural level: the historical-structural approach and world systems theory (Wallerstein 2004, Castles/Miller 2009). In these approaches, the unit of analysis is “not the individual migrant, but rather the global market and the way that national and international economic and public policies, and particularly capitalist development, have disrupted, displaced, or even attracted local populations, thereby generating particular migration streams” (Brettell 2008: 119–20). These approaches draw from Marxist political economy and dependency theory. Wallerstein divides the world into core capitalist nations and less developed peripheral (and semi-peripheral) regions (Wallerstein 2004). The flow of migration is a consequence of the countries’ respective positions in the modern capitalist world system and follows the international flow of goods and capital, but in a reverse direction (Massey, et al. 1993: 447). Again, the role of the nation-state is very limited: it may resort to political or military interventions to protect investments abroad or to side with market-friendly governments; failure of these policies can lead to an increasing flow of refugees to the more developed countries. Another example for the limited role of the nation-state in migration management is the observation that in many cases the increased efforts of states to control migration have not resulted in a decrease of the number of migrants. This argument is known as the gap hypothesis (Cornelius, et al. 2004) and Hollifield offers an explanation with his liberal state thesis (Hollifield 2008: 197). He points out that the demand for cheap (migrant) labour is an inherent element of liberal markets, while the logic of a liberal democratic polity involves a regulation and restriction of migration. Aggravating this dilemma is the fact that rights in liberal democracies possess a long half-life period and once in place cannot easily be abrogated, which limits the capacity of liberal states to control immigration. This brief overview of established migration theories (the more recent approaches will be discussed in the next section) has shown that there was hardly any involvement of IR theorists in their formulation. Hollifield identifies three schools of thought in IR that inform the study of international migration: realism or neorealism, transnationalism, which he calls “the globalization thesis” and sees closely related to constructivism (although there is not much mention of migration in the writings of the major IR constructivists either), and finally liberal institutionalism and the theory of complex interdependence (Hollifield 2008: 200) Although realism seems the least concerned with migration, its proponents nevertheless are in line with common sentiments on migration. For authors like Myron Weiner, migration is foremost a security dilemma (Weiner 1985). Migration is seen as a crisis and potential threat to the nation-state from the outside as well as through rising multiculturalism and a “cult of

10 ethnicity” from within (Schlesinger 1998). This assumption was shared by Samuel L. Huntington in his last book “Who are We? The challenges to American identity”, in which he considers the “Latino culture” of immigrants as a threat to the American identity, defined by him as foremost Anglo-Protestant (Huntington 2004). Such polemic and borderline- xenophobic undertones can also be found in several populist writings on the subject like Peter Brimelow’s “Alien Nation”, wherein immigration is seen as “The War against the Nation-State” (Brimelow 1996: 222). While realists’ primary goal seems to be to uphold the sovereignty of the nation-state – including its imagined cultural homogeneity – this appears to be a lost cause already for those authors Hollifield subsumes under globalization theorists and their claim that “the sovereignty and regulatory power of the nation-state has been weakened by transnationalism” (Hollifield 2008: 203). It is rather puzzling why Hollifield seems to see globalization theories and transnational approaches as almost identical and adds constructivism to the package for good measure, when there are several distinctions between the first two, as will best discussed in the next section, and social constructivists like Alexander Wendt consider the nation-state very much as the central unit of analysis (Wendt 1999, Rother 2004). It is also telling that the main “globalization theorists” Hollifield cites – Saskia Sassen and Peggy Levitt – are in fact sociologists. This can be seen as a reminder of the process of catching-up IR theory still has to perform, but also as an indicator of the importance of inter- (or trans?)- disciplinary approaches. For Saskia Sassen, the nation-state has indeed lost its central role, and she has defined several new sites and levels of importance. According to her, “globalization can be deconstructed in terms of the strategic sites where global processes materialize and the linkages that bind them” (Sassen 2001). These sites can be export processing zones or off- shore banking centres, but most importantly, global cities. These are the new centres of power and wealth, with Hong Kong being one important example. Sassen also identifies novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights (TAR) that are neither global nor national (Sassen 2008). These assemblages are enormously diverse, ranging from lex constructionis, a private ‘law’ developed by the major engineering companies in the world to establish a common mode of dealing with the strengthening of environmental standards in a growing number of countries, to the International Criminal Court (ICC). They can contribute to a process of denationalisation: “What was bundled up and experienced as a unitary condition (the national assemblage of TAR) now increasingly reveals itself to be a set of distinct elements, with variable capacities for becoming denationalized.”(Sassen 2008: 69) This has also opened up new spaces for civil society actors, among them diaspora and migrants rights networks; once

11 more, the Global Cities play a central role, by providing space for microsites in global civil society (Sassen 2002). There are migration-related fields where IR theory has made a more significant contribution. For starters, migration studies may have experienced a transnational turn since the 1990s, but the concept of transnationalism has been already used for more than 40 years in political science to “characterize all types of interactions and institutions above nationally bounded phenomena and international relations” (Pries 2001a: 17; see also Albrow 1996: 119). Karl Kaiser first wrote on transnational politics back in 1969 (Kaiser 1969) and in 1971, the recently appointed editors of “International Organization” Joseph S. Nye and Robert O. Keohane, published a special issue on “Transnational Relations and World Politics” (Nye/Keohane 1971, Keohane/Nye 1972). These efforts did not result in a larger amount of empirical research, though, nor did they have a lasting impact on IR theory, prompting Thomas Risse-Kappen’s call in 1995 for “Bringing transnational relations back in” (Risse-Kappen 1995a). Risse-Kappen considered the initial research as “ill-defined”, because it encompassed everything in world politics except state-to-state relations, which made it difficult to study any lasting impact of transnational relations (Risse-Kappen 1995a: 7–8) Instead, he formulated as the main research question for the authors in his edited volume: “under what domestic and international circumstances do transnational coalitions and actors who attempt to change policy outcomes in a specific issue-area succeed or fail to achieve their goals?”(Risse-Kappen 1995a: 5) The emerging literature on transnationalism in the last decades has also included research on specific transnational actors. These ranged from epistemic communities (Haas 1992) to transnational terrorist networks (Behr 2004, Magouirk, et al. 2008) and advocacy networks in international politics (Keck/Sikkink 1998). Especially the research on the latter has proven to be a fruitful field, with a wide range of advocacy networks and transnational social movements (Smith, et al. 1997a) covered, but also raising questions of their legitimacy (Hudson 2001) and pointing to problems of power and democracy (Piper/Uhlin 2004). While in other disciplines migrant activism began to receive increasing attention from a social movement perspective (Piper 2005), the main focus in IR has been on diaspora politics. Yossi Shain and Aharon Barth were among the first authors to write on diasporas and IR theory (Shain/Barth 2003). Drawing from constructivism (role of identity) and liberalism (role of domestic politics), the authors focus on the role of diasporas in post-conflict societies, citing a World Bank study according to which “by far the strongest effect of war on the risk of subsequent war works through diasporas” (Collier/Hoeffler May 2000: 26) see also

(Brinkerhoff 2011). This was seen primarily due to financial contributions of diasporas to rebel organisations. Essentially, the authors treat diasporas as independent actors, exerting influence on their homelands' foreign policies and with a unique status: “outside the state but inside the people” (Shain/Barth 2003: 473). Thus, kinship identity is of major importance (Shain 2007). These findings are an important contribution to IR but of limited use when looking at temporary labour migration, since Shain and Barth follow the conventional diaspora definition with its rather static focus on a clearly defined centre of reference and members who have left their homeland involuntary or for political reasons3. Unfortunately, in recent years the term diaspora has been increasingly used as a catch-all-phrase for all kinds of migrants and refugees, thus completely blurring the concept (Amersfoort 2004, Brubaker 2005). The discrepancy between classic diasporas and the new meanings attributed to the term can be seen in the work of Gabriel Sheffer who traces the concept back to ancient times (Sheffer 2003). He also makes the distinction between stateless and state-linked diasporas, examples for the former being the Jews, African-Americans or Poles who for long periods of time possessed no sovereign nation state on the territory they regarded as their homeland (Sheffer 2003: 148). This then raises the question whether diasporas are aiming to strengthen (or rebuilding/constructing as in the case of Poles and Jews) the nation-state or are instrumental in transcending it? Fiona B. Adamson and Madeleine Demetriou argue along similar lines as Shain and Barth (Adamson/Demetriou 2007). They welcome that the constructivist agenda increasingly recognizes identities beyond the nation-state in world politics, such as regional identities, international norms, or civilizations. But they still consider a number of collective identities central to the understanding of international politics to remain acutely under-theorized: “Chief among these are the collective identities formed by contemporary migration processes, and the way in which they call into question the relationship between states as actors, institutions or territories and collective identities as quasi-independent structures of meaning.” (Adamson/Demetriou 2007: 490) Using the Greek-Cypriot diaspora in the United Kingdom, and the Kurdish diaspora in Germany and other European states as their case studies, the authors show how the diaspora experience can actually strengthen identity, for example by getting into contact with other Kurds while living in Germany. The authors argue that transnational practices can lead to a decoupling of the geopolitical boundaries of the state from national and symbolic boundaries of membership and belonging (Adamson/Demetriou 2007: 513–14).

3 Migrant activists might claim that the same could be said for labor migrants who feel forced to leave their home countries because of the inability of their government to provide sufficient job opportunities. 13

While these are important insights, there lurks a certain danger here to replace one “container model” by another: The territorial container of the nation-state may be opened up, but instead a somewhat homogenous “collective identity container” is constructed. This may be suitable for the case studies analysed by Adamson and Demetriou, but one has to avoid the pitfall of assuming “the diaspora” or “the migrants” to be a homogenous group, while there may actually exist significant divisions within these groups and these cleavages may even be deepened by the diaspora/migration experience. In this context, Brubaker warns of “essentialist assumptions of ‘true’ identities” (Brubaker 2005: 13) Martin Sökefeld adds that “the conceptual shortcomings of diaspora derive in many aspects from unspoken and rather cosy connotations of the concept ‘community’” (Sökefeld 2006: 280); see also (Alleyne 2001). As an “antidote”, he prescribes a social movement approach to the formation of diaspora that does not assume that these “communities” are given but specifically enquires into mobilization processes (Sökefeld 2006: 281) In his case study – the Alevi diaspora in Germany - Sökefeld shows how “the discursive emphasis on the unity of the Alevi community hides all kinds of conflicts and disputes that frequently threatened the unity of specific Alevi associations” (Sökefeld 2006: 279). This resembles the regularly heard call for the “unity of all migrants” in the Filipino case. Naturally, the importance of community is emphasized when the unity of a social unit is threatened or when disunity is considered harmful for its cause. The social movement approach advocated by the author is a helpful tool that can also be applied outside of diasporic communities – for example when, as will be discussed in this thesis, migrants from different origins form a community united by a common cause rather than by their common place of birth. Another perspective on diasporas within IR theory is to look at the efforts of the home country to connect with its citizens abroad: Latha Varadarajan analyses the celebration of the “global Indian nation” by the Indian state and its “domestics abroad” (Varadarajan 2010). This strategy is also employed in the Philippines, where the “Global Pinoy” is celebrated (Herberg 2008) (more on this in chapter 6.1.2). The anthropologist Sarah Mahler point out how, at the macro-level, “states work to foster the loyalties of emigrants in order to achieve larger nationalist and neo-colonial goals” (Mahler 2000: 200)4. Mahler discusses how large-scale migration can influence diplomatic relations – between states, but also between states and migrants or vice versa, when return migrants act as diplomatic agents of certain values encountered in the host countries by way of “trickle-up grassroots diplomatics” (Mahler 2000: 217).

4 For an overview on various sending countries policies towards their citizens abroad, see (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003). 14

Migrants are also seen as political actors in their own right in Eva Østergaard-Nielsens “The Politics of Migrants' Transnational Political Practices”, again focusing on the Turks and Kurds in Europe (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003). The author calls for more research about the relationship between political opportunity structures in the host country and transnational political engagement of migrants (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003: 768). While her focus is on semi- permanent or permanent groups of migrants, the political opportunity structure is of relevance for temporary migrants as well: Obviously, it makes a difference if one is a domestic worker in, say Saudi Arabia, or in Hong Kong, as will be discussed below. Rainer Bauböck lists three instrumental reasons for the governments of sending countries or political elites to take an interest in their population abroad: human capital upgrading, remittances, and the political lobbying of receiving-country governments (Bauböck 2003: 709). Their efforts may go as far as being considered extra-territorial nation-building processes, which raises questions of democracy and legitimacy when dealing with issues like external voting rights and dual citizenship (see Bauböck 2010 for a political theory perspective, Kessler 2009 for democratic citizenship in Asia). Rey Koslowski points out that democratic theory does not provide a good answer to emigrants’ involvement in homeland politics, because it assumes a bounded demos (Koslowski 2005: 15) Since emigrant participation in home country politics is an underappreciated political phenomenon, Koslowski suggests an alternative framework: the globalization of domestic politics (Koslowski 2005: 25). This approach may capture certain aspects of large-scale international migration, especially from a sending-country perspective, but I would argue that domestic politics are only one part of the package: They may influence and be part of the agenda of migrant politics in newly evolving political spaces, but the domestic/international distinction does not fully capture this phenomenon, as will be argued in the next chapter. This overview has shown that the concept of diaspora, however broadly or narrowly defined, has been introduced into IR theorizing. Without diminishing the importance of these contributions, it might be fair to say that they have only made a limited impact on mainstream IR theorizing. In contrast, the most prominent role of migrants in IR can still be found in the concept of securitization. While some authors like the aforementioned Weiner, Schlesinger, Huntington and Brimelow have actually contributed to this phenomenon with their publications, its analysis can be ascribed to the Copenhagen School (Buzan, et al. 1998). In their 1993 edited volume “Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe”, Ole Waever, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup and Pierre Lemaitre introduced the concept of “societal security," and argued that ethno-national identity may override state sovereignty as a major security concern in Europe after the end of the Cold War (Waever, et al. 1993). From this

15 perspective, immigration and asylum seekers were considered a new threat in countries like Germany, replacing the previous fear of communism (Rother 2005). Framing migration as a security issue was both an active and reactive measure by national governments, with party politicians hoping to benefit from this scenario of threat while at the same time feeling pressured by their constituency (Rother 2010d: 424). This “governmentality of unease” (Bigo 2002) led to a tightening of immigration laws at the national and European level (Nuscheler/Rheims 1997, Huymans 2000, Ceyhan/Tsoukala 2002, Melossi 2005). Buzan and Weaver define securitization as a successful speech act “through which an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political community to treat something as an existential threat to a valued referent object and to enable a call for urgent and exceptional measures to deal with the threat” (Buzan/Waever 2003: 491). This securitization of migration became a global issue after September 11, prompting the United States to implement stricter immigration laws (Castles/Miller 2009: 214–17, Rosenblum August 2011). The concept of securitization is further refined not only be the original authors but also by a number of more recent studies (Stritzel 2007) with some criticizing the framework as being too narrow. Matt Mcdonald argues that the role of the addressees of these speech acts is so far underdeveloped (McDonald 2008). As discussed above, the population of, say, Germany may not only be the addressee of these speech acts but may also aggravate the securitization by calling for stricter asylum politics, an agenda caused and amplified by some parts of the media. It should be noted that not all speech acts and framing efforts of states will necessarily have negative effects on migrants; for example, as a side-effect of the migration-security discourse, there has been increased sensibility for human smuggling and trafficking. Here, the USA uses blaming and shaming strategies by publishing its annual Human Trafficking Report in which the efforts and policies of states are assessed. By placing Japan – a long-time destination of Overseas Performing Artists (OPA), a euphemism for nightclub hostesses from the Philippines – in the second-worst category of „Tier 2 Watch List“, the USA was successful in prompting Japan to rethink its policies (US Department of State 2010: 189–91). But there is also another kind of framing with a more positive connotation that has emerged within the last decade: the assumed link between development and migration. Remittances have even been termed the 'new development mantra' (Kapur 2003). This debate, fuelled by institutions like the World Bank, is on-going on the policy level as well as in migration and development studies, with economic considerations still dominating the discussions; the literature on the subject is rapidly growing (Chamie/Dall’Oglio 2008, van Naerssen, et al. 2008, Castles/Wise 2008), with many authors taking a rather critical stance (Faist 2008, Piper 2009b, de Haas 2010, Puentes, et al. November 2010)

Intentional or not, on the policy level this agenda can be seen as a form of counter- framing to the securitization of migration and has helped to introduce migration to the arena of international politics. As stated above, for a long time migration was seen as an issue of low politics that should be dealt with at the level of the nation-state. Also, significant disparities in political and economic power between sending and receiving states of migrants pose difficulties in migration discussions. Thus, for a long time, migration did not feature prominently on the agenda of international politics5. Up until today, the relevant conventions have only attracted a limited number of ratifications. For example, the “International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families” was adopted in 1990 by the United Nations General Assembly. But it took 13 years until the convention finally obtained the required 20 ratifications to enter into force. As of August 2011, still no Western receiving country has signed this comprehensive document of protection. Nevertheless, the adoption of this convention in 1990 marked the introduction of the issues of migration into the international arena. The Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 was the first major international forum tackling migration issues. In 2002, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan initiated the 19-member strong independent Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM). It organized several regional consultation meetings, commissioned a significant number of reports from leading international migration experts and published and presented its final report to Annan in October 2005 (Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) October 2005). Around the same time, the debate on the positive impact of remittances sent home by migrants intensified. These might have helped the UN General Assembly to hold its first High Level Dialogue (HLD) on Migration and Development in September 2006 (Martin, et al. 2007). There was disagreement during the HLD on how to proceed. While the Group of 77 and China acted as like-minded states and saw the dialogue on migration as “too important not to have it within the United Nations” (Martin, et al. 2007: 21) others called for the establishment of a forum dealing specifically with that matter. As a result, Annan asked the UN Special Representative for Migration, Peter Sutherland, to initiate such a forum – the result was the GFMD mentioned in the introduction of the thesis, a non-binding, informal and state- lead process that nevertheless manages to gather the majority of nation-states and several civil-society representatives for annual deliberations since its introduction in 2007 (Matsas 2008, Rother 2009d).

5 The following overview draws from Rother 2010f. 17

One might assume that these developments would have caught the attention of IR scholars, especially those who focus on regime formation and global governance. But so far, only a small body of work has emerged on the issue (and by no means exclusively by IR scholars), focusing on migration “management” (Ghosh 2000, Martin/Zürcher 2008, Geiger/Pécoud 2010), levels of state cooperation (Hansen 2011), institutional aspects (Green/Thouez 2005, Hatton 2007, Badie, et al. 2008, Newland 2010), regime building (Koslowski 2004, Tamas/Palme 2006, Koslowski 2008), the refugee regime (Betts/Loescher 2011) and global migration governance more generally (Koser 2010, Marchi 2010, Betts 2011). There are also some works who reflect on the governmentality of international migration (Truong 2011) with Sarah Kalm concluding: “The normality of population movements does not lead it to question the current forms of territorially-based memberships as systems for inclusion and exclusion. Instead, it promotes a range of new and rational measures to manage the phenomenon, hence “capturing” it within states system categorizations. One could therefore perhaps […] suggest that it might not be migration which is the main object of government here, but perhaps the states system norm.” (Kalm 2008: 219) What is mostly absent from this literature is the role of civil society (Thouez 2004, Rother 2010d), a rights- based perspective (Piper 2008, Gordon 2009) and a notion of “governance from below” (Piper 2003, Grugel/Piper 2007, Rother 2009a, Grugel/Piper 2011).

„The vessel of sovereign statehood is leaky; the pumps still work from time to time, but not consistently; the captain is not sure whether to beach the vessel or to join a fleet of similarly damaged ships sailing under negotiated orders.“ (Haas 1990: 181)

The aim of this overview was to show that IR theory and research has a lot of catching- up to do when it comes to migration. This is all the more surprising since the “age of migration” (Castles/Miller 2009) challenges common conceptualizations of the territorially bounded nation-state, of actors in international and transnational relations and of governance at the national, regional and global level. While the literature presented here does attempt to fill these gaps, most of it does not address the four shortcomings mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. There is still a bias towards looking at migration from the perspective of the receiving countries of migrants. One of the obvious reasons for this is that this is where most scholars are based, funding is available and political interest – mostly focused on issues of control and integration – exists. This also helps to explain why South-South migration receives less attention, since the receiving countries of these major migration movements do not offer the same research environment.

The limited agency credited to migrants as political actors in their own right is not as obvious to explain; one reason might be the state-centric view in IR, but on the other hand there is a significant body of literature on NGO involvement in international politics (for a brief overview (Rother 2010d), although even here migrant issues and organizations are completely ignored. It has to be acknowledged, though, that political activities of migrants have received growing interest in political science. But there are limitations: the focus is mostly on “diaspora groups” with a semi-permanent or permanent residence outside their home country. Again, this might be explained by the fact that this is the kind of migration predominant in countries where migration research is located – resulting in studies where the immigrants who are at the centre of the research are usually based in North America and Europe. The anthropologist Nina Glick-Schiller criticizes that migration scholars, not only within political science, have “adopted the perspective of their respective nation states” and much of European und US scholarship on migration confines itself to questions of “how well do they fit in our society” (Glick Schiller 2007: 4). According to her, the often lamented “methodological nationalism” still seems to be very dominant in migration research. This may result in a neglect of the “new social realities” (Pries 2001a: 29) which not only affect a significant number of people in their daily lives but can also have important political implications. Most of all, the existing migration research in IR lacks a truly transnational as well as a spatial component. By truly transnational I refer to phenomena that cannot be studied in one and maybe not even two countries but at the same time do not necessarily constitute a global phenomenon. But they may affect the global level at one point, the regional level at another, while political actions may have an effect (or get diffused) on the national level of several states. These processes are similar to the scale shifts that Sydney Tarrow and his co-authors identify within social movements (Tarrow/McAdam 2005, Tarrow 2005). Putting migrants and their organisations as political actors at the centre of the research, it becomes obvious that they move in a political space that is not bounded by the borders of the nation-state. What kind of space are we looking at then? Unfortunately, IR theory tells us precious little about space as well. The research field is caught, as John Agnew put it, in a “territorial trap” (Agnew 1994). It has been repeatedly argued that migration research would benefit from more interdisciplinarity (Morawska 2003) and that transnational migration studies have emerged as an inherently interdisciplinary field (Levitt/Jaworsky 2007: 129). Also, IR theory is certainly no stranger to developing its concepts by drawing from ideas developed in other disciplines, constructivism being a prime example (Jensen 1999, Rother 2004: 10). Thus, this thesis proposes to draw from the most influential literature in recent migration research that has

19 been responsible for the transnational turn in the field: the concepts of transnational social fields (primarily anthropological) and transnational social spaces (primarily sociological). In the following chapter, I will discuss transnationalism in migration studies and these two approaches.

3. Transnationalism in migration studies

“The study of transnationalism holds the promise of shedding new and brilliant light on emerging cultural processes - identity, political, and economic transformations in particular. Through a transnational optic, human agency "from below" comes into focus as well as macrostructural forces "from above".” (Mahler 1998: 94)

Transnational migration and the research focusing on it seem to have “come of age” (Mahler 2007). In fact, the concept has become so common by now that an article published in 2009 raised the question “Are we all transnational now?” (Dahinden 2009) This is an impressive development considering that up until the 1980s, as Cédric Audebert and Mohamed Kamel Doraï summarize, migration has been treated as an independent and somewhat marginal phenomenon and perceived “as a temporary dynamic, even as an anomaly, by policymakers and scholars in Western Europe” (Audebert/Doraï 2010: 10–11). Even in later years, when new integration policies were designed, “the dominant view of the migrant was one of a passive agent dependent on global and national economic contingencies, rather than one of an active transnational agent or one of a productive development agent whose social space could encompass both origin and settlement countries” (Audebert/Doraï 2010: 31) This has most certainly changed, prompting Peggy Levitt and B. Nadya Jaworsky to speak of a “sea change” that migration scholarship has undergone in the past two decades (Levitt/Jaworsky 2007). Introducing transnationalism into the research agenda has brought migration research closer to identifying the multiple ties which link migrants to their home country, family ties, media or economic linkages (like remittances). It also poses a political question that has been asked less frequently: If we witness “the growing uncoupling of social space and geographical space” (Pries 2001a: 23), what are the consequences for governance? Especially the rise of circular migration leads to challenges that go beyond the questions: How does the sending state fulfil its obligations to its citizens, what is the role of the receiving state? To secure their protection and participation may require a new form of governance that not only includes the governments concerned but also the private sector and, most important, the migrants themselves. Thomas Faist emphasizes the need to “not only study the consequences of transnationalization “top down”, as in the state-centric paradigm of global governance, but also “bottom up”, as implied by the transnational turn” (Faist 2004: 333). When adopting this “bottom up”-perspective, political scientists are also confronted with the question: How do these migrants influence or maybe even transform the nation-state?

Ludger Pries criticizes the rather diffuse and undifferentiated use of the terms transnational, transnational relations and transnationalization by political scientists, who according to him tend to use them as a synonym for any kind of non-state relations that reach across borders without taking the spatial dimension into consideration (Pries 2008b: 181). While the transnationalism approach is by now an established research program in various academic disciplines, “sometimes the terms transnational and transnationalism are used so vaguely and indistinctly that they are likely to become “catch-all and say nothing” terms, as was the case with the globalization concept” (Pries 2007: 3). There are numerous authors working on transnationalism in migration studies, among them Alejandro Portes and Luis E. Guarnizo, who claimed in an early overview that “transnational migration studies form a highly fragmented, emergent field which still lacks both a well-defined theoretical framework and analytical rigour” (Portes, et al. 2001: 218). Although stated a decade ago, the fragmentation of transnational migration studies still remains a valid assessment today. Rather than giving a broad overview, then, this chapter will concentrate on two highly influential concepts that form the basis for the theoretical approach of this thesis: The transnational social fields introduced by Nina Glick Schiller Linda Basch and colleagues (Glick Schiller, et al. 1992a, Basch, et al. 1994), and transnational social spaces, as developed, among others, by Thomas Faist (Faist 2000, 2004) and Ludger Pries (Pries 1999). All of these scholars challenge the “container approach of the mutual and exact overlapping and exclusiveness of social and geographical space in the concept of national societies” (Pries 2002: 14). But there are several aspects in which the concept of transnational social spaces distinguishes itself from the fields of Glick-Schiller/Basch and parts of the globalization literature – foremost, as the name implies, the importance of “space” with its inherent relational qualities.

3.1. Transnational social fields While a New York Academy of Science workshop organized in May 1990 can be considered a landmark of the transnational turn in migration studies, the impetus for the framework came out of empirical observations gathered in the years preceding it. The anthropologists Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch and Cristina Blanc-Szanton observed migrants from Haiti, the eastern Caribbean, and the Philippines now living in New York and came to the conclusion that earlier conceptions of immigrants and migrants no longer suffice: “Now, a new kind of migrating population is emerging, composed of those whose networks, activities and patterns of life encompass both their host and home societies. Their lives cut across national boundaries and bring two societies into a single social field.” (Glick Schiller, et al. 1992b: 1)

Distinguishing their approach from a common view on diaspora, for the authors, communities created by international migrants in their new regions of residence are not merely “extensions” of their communities of origin. The migrants form qualitatively new social groups in new “social fields”, that link together their societies of origin and settlement and thus are transnational in scope, as they specified in their book “Nations Unbound”: “We call these processes transnationalism to emphasize that many migrants today build social fields that cross geographic, cultural and political borders.” (Basch, et al. 1994: 7) For the authors, this connection leads to “de-territorialized social spaces” that emerge above and beyond concrete territorial spaces (Basch, et al. 1994). The deterritorialized nature of these spaces has been highly contested, among others by Ludger Pries: “The empirical case studies underline – against the aforementioned presumptions of “deterritorialization” and “annihilation of space” – the significance of geographic space and of state regulations for transnationalism.” (Pries 2001a: 20). This is by far not the only criticism directed at the authors, but one has to keep in mind that, as Sarah J. Mahler points out, the aim of the authors was not to present a transnational theory of migration, but rather a new analytical framework or “lens” for examining international migrations (Mahler 2007: 195). The authors based their analysis on four main assumptions (Basch, et al. 1994: ch. 2, Pries 2001b: 54): First, transnational migration is irresolvable connected to the development of global capitalism. The global restructuring of capital based on changing forms of capital accumulation has led to deteriorating social and economic conditions and this effect is felt in both labour sending and labour receiving countries. This makes both locations insecure terrain of settlement (Glick Schiller, et al. 1995: 50). Secondly, transnationalism is a process, by which the migrants construct transnational social fields through their everyday practices, and their social, economic and political ties and relationships. Thirdly, research perspectives bound to concepts like ethnicity, race and nation cannot sufficiently identify or analyse transnational phenomena. And, finally, by living transnationally, those migrants are confronted with different concepts of nation building and thus different ideas about ethnicity and race. But these nation building projects of both home and host society also build political loyalties among immigrants to each nation-state in which they maintain social ties. To describe these “new” kinds of migrants, the authors created the term transmigrants: “Transmigrants are immigrants whose daily lives depend on multiple and constant interconnections across international borders and whose public identities are configured in relationship to more than one nation-state.”(Glick Schiller, et al. 1995: 48) Unlike

sojourners6 they do settle to a certain degree and become incorporated in the economy and political institutions, localities, and patterns of daily life of the country in which they reside. Among the case studies cited by the authors to back their claim are the transnational practices of Filipinos residing in the USA. As Nina Glick-Schiller and her colleagues point out, the then existing census data painted an incomplete picture, because the questions used assumed that all Filipinos resided in the U.S. permanently and had cut their ties with their countries of origin. But the reality of many of those families is much more diverse, since there is frequent travel between both countries, there are often close ties with the usually extended families back home in the Philippines and the on-going relationships between household members living in both locations are marked by a constant exchange of funds and resources and the organization of activities across borders (Glick Schiller, et al. 1995: 49).7 While many scholars would agree that these are indeed transnational migrants, the term transmigrant has received a less enthusiastic response - not the least since “in some contexts, scholars have been confused with this term, mistaking it for a reference to transmigration of souls” (Mahler 2007: 218). Thus, transnational migrant seems to be the preferred nomenclature. Another major point of debate regards the question, how new these transnational ties actually are. Glick-Schiller and colleagues pointed to transformations in the technologies of transportation and communication (publishing their first work actually in a time before widespread usage of the internet, Skype and mobile phones) as one factor that made possible the increase in density, multiplicity, and importance of the transnational interconnections of immigrants. But for them, migrant transnationalism seems to be facilitated rather than produced by the possibility of technologically abridging time and space. More importantly, transmigrants may find the incorporation in the receiving countries either not possible or not desirable (Glick Schiller, et al. 1995: 52). This may also be due to efforts of the sending countries to stay connected with their diasporas and look to them as a global resource and constituency. For Kastoryano, transnationalism introduces a new relationship with states characterized by “a mutual dependence between a liberal, pluralist state and the "mobilized diaspora" (Kastoryano 2007: 177).

6The concept of the sojourner was introduced by Paul Siu’s study about Chinese Americans. A sojourner is somebody who “clings to the culture of his own group” and “is unwilling to organize himself as a permanent resident in the country of his sojourn.” Citation from (Yang 2000: 235) 7 This is fully compatible with my observations on “the other end” in the Philippines, especially during research stays in Manila during Christmas (2005/2006) and Easter (2007) holidays: The shopping centers in upmarket districts like Makati and Ortegas were brimming with the “rich relatives” from the USA or Canada that had come home to visit relatives. Within Filipino families in my circle of acquaintances there were also discussions, which younger family member had the best chances to stay with the relatives abroad and “get a foot in the door” in North America – the “household strategy” at work. 24

Migration thus does not exclude sending-country nationalism – quite the opposite is the case, as Benedict Anderson wrote in 1992 about the kind of migrant he called the “long- distance nationalist”: “For while technically a citizen of the state in which he comfortably lives, but to which he may feel little attachment, he finds it tempting to play identity politics by participating (via propaganda, money, weapons, any way but voting) in the conflicts of his imagined Heimat - now only fax-time away. But this citizenshipless participation is inevitably non-responsible - our hero will not have to answer for, or pay the price of, the long-distance politics he undertakes. He is also easy prey for shrewd political manipulators in his Heimat.” (Anderson 1992: 13) For Glick Schiller and colleagues, these dispersed long-distance nationalists and the governments of their states of origin may join efforts to construct a deterritorialized nation- state that encompasses a diasporic population within its domain. The Greek state is cited as an example: While the “old” Greece diaspora may have engaged in transnational activities, they did not claim that their settlements were part of Greece (Glick Schiller, et al. 1995: 52– 53). This has changed in the times of the government-promoted concept of “Greeks abroad”, where, according to Gregory Jusdanis, for some of them “the unifying force of the Hellenic diaspora is no longer a place, the nation-state of Greece, but the imagined transcendental territory of Greekness which groups of individuals may appropriate to suit their own needs and interests“ (Jusdanis 1991). In their 1995 article, Glick Schiller and colleagues consider this phenomenon a “new transnational space”, where for example the Greek government can mobilize popular opinion for its then current opposition to the newly independent state of Macedonia (Glick Schiller, et al. 1995: 53). The example rightfully questions the clear-cut distinction between transnationalism from above and below and demonstrates that transnationalism is not necessarily counter- hegemonic. But there are weaknesses as well. While several spatial references are used by the authors, they remain mostly undefined if not confusing. Does the “imagined transcendental territory of Greekness” also include specific places or is it a mere abstract construct (and why then use the term “territory”)? The same question can be posed regarding the use of “transnational space” by Glick Schiller and colleagues – what are its boundaries, how is it constructed, and does it include actual places? What is the definition of “domain”? But the concept that raises the most questions is the one of the deterritorialized nation-state: Even when we define nation-states with Benedict Anderson as “imagined communities” (Anderson 2003), there still remains a clear territorial/geographic component (which holds also true for the Greek-Macedonian conflict cited above). While the reach of a nation-state

25 obviously is not restricted to its geographical territory anymore and borders may become increasingly permeable, territory still matters. This notion is shared by many researchers: In a study on Latin American immigrants to the USA, Luis E. Guarnizo, Alejandro Portes and William Haller acknowledge the existence of a stable and significant transnational field of political action that connects immigrants with their polities of origin. But they add that this action is far from being deterritorialized, only undertaken by a small minority, and also “socially bounded across national borders, occurs in quite specific territorial jurisdictions, and appears to reproduce preexisting power asymmetries” (Guarnizo, et al. 2003: 1211). Taking a geographic and gender perspective, Geraldine Pratt and Brenda Yeoh argue that, rather than weakening the nation-state, transnationalism “is bound up with remaking the nation, often within renewed patriarchal norms of national belonging. So, too, while transnationalism can open up new spaces of belonging, we argue that this is accomplished through specific connections between places rather than through (an often romanticised) deterritorialized mobility.” (Pratt/Yeoh 2003: 159). In a joint publication with Guarnizo, Michael P. Smith also rejects prevailing postmodernist metaphors of “deterritorialization” and “unboundedness”, since transnational actions are still bounded “by the policies and practices of territorially-based sending and receiving local and national states and communities” (Guarnizo/Smith 1998: 10). This holds especially true for migrants’ transnational political activism: Although the internet is a part of “building diasporas” (Ignacio 2005) and new communication technologies might have created what Lisa Law calls “Transnational cyberpublics” (Law 2003), the members of these publics are still based in their respective destination countries and thus face specific restraints and challenges. As mentioned above, it does make a difference, if one is a migrant activist in Hong Kong or, say, Singapore; even more so when one is based in Saudi-Arabia and therefore without the ability to organize openly. Thus, the “opportunities and constraints found in particular localities where transnational practices occur” (Guarnizo/Smith 1998: 12) do matter. Among the other contested aspects of the transnational approach by Glick Schiller and colleagues is its “newness” and historical dimension. Robert C. Smith makes the case that while transnationalism may not be a completely new phenomenon, it has previously not been analysed as such (Smith 2000). Taking an American-centric perspective, he points out that the last-wave migrants (1880s-1920s) engaged in behaviour similar to what today would be described as transnational. But he adds that “while there have been such transnational practices before, they were not theorized as such, and they could have been usefully considered using such an approach” (Smith 2000: 208). Regarding the comparatively small

segment of the immigrant population that actively engages in transnational activities, as pointed out by Guarnizo and colleagues, Smith responds that this is a common phenomenon observed in trade unions, social movements or political parties: “the numbers by themselves mean little” (Smith 2000: 209). A scholar significantly less sympathetic to the concept of transnational social fields is Roger Waldinger. In the 2004 article “Transnationalism in Question”, written with David Fitzgerald, the authors judge that the literature on migrant transnationalism as a whole has not delivered on its initial promise and “the absence of any concerted effort to analyze the relationship between immigrant transnationalism and receiving states and civil society actors is a fundamental omission” (Waldinger/Fitzgerald 2004: 1181). They join in the view that migrant transnationalism is by no means a new development, and criticize that the existing case studies, which they consider too few in number, often actually examine migrant bilocalism: the trans-state connections between particular places here and there – “localistic ties reappearing in similar form just about everywhere that long-distance migration occurs” (Waldinger/Fitzgerald 2004: 1182). In their view, these ties hardly qualify as transnational. Instead they argue that the term should solely refer to the relationship between immigrants and nation-states since it is only in this domain that nationalism and states enter into the picture (see: Glick Schiller/Levitt 2006: 5). Waldinger has continually repeated his critique (Waldinger 2008, 2010), although the 2004 article had prompted a substantive – and slightly enervated – response by Glick-Schiller and Peggy Levitt entitled “Haven’t We Heard This Somewhere Before? A Substantive View of Transnational Migration Studies by Way of a Reply to Waldinger and Fitzgerald” (Glick Schiller/Levitt 2006) Here, the authors accuse Waldinger and Fitzgerald of ignoring the research produced by an ever expanding interdisciplinary group of scholars, while they “seem to have read mostly American sociologists and a few anthropologists, largely ignoring American historians and geographers and most of the international scholarship that represents important contributions to the field” (Glick Schiller/Levitt 2006: 3). Research in the field has indeed been extensive, including the Transnational Communities Programme hosted between 1997 and 2003 by the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA) at the University of Oxford8. The programme’s Director, Steven Vertovec, is also editor of the comprehensive and on-going series “Routledge Research in Transnationalism”. Another broad overview that does not only focus on migration is provided by the “transnational studies reader”, edited by Khagram and Levitt (Khagram/Levitt 2008c).

8 For an overview and more than 80 working papers see http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/ 27

Obviously, the research on migrant transnationalism is very vivid and still growing (Vertovec 2009: 1); however, refinements by the initial authors and the first round of stock- taking notwithstanding, the research is still very diverse if not fragmented. Also, there is an uneven distribution of case studies with the main focus on the USA, the UK and Germany as destination countries reflecting the locations of the researchers. This concentration may inherently lead to the methodological nationalism Andreas Wimmer and Glick Schiller warn about (Wimmer/Glick Schiller 2002, 2003). Simply put, methodological nationalism is “the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world” (Wimmer/Glick Schiller 2002: 302). By looking back at the development of the nation-state, the authors come to the conclusion that transnationalism is indeed anything but a new phenomenon, but that this fact was obscured by methodological nationalism: “What we discover in this twilight is how transnational the modern world has always been, even in the high days when the nation-state bounded and bundled most social processes. Rather than a recent offspring of globalization, transnationalism appears as a constant of modern life, hidden from a view that was captured by methodological nationalism.” (Wimmer/Glick Schiller 2002: 302) This perspective has dominated much of social science in the last century and Levitt states that “sociology has been in the service of the nation-state since its inception” (Levitt/Jaworsky 2007: 130), with one of the main discussions focusing on how to make Americans out of newcomers. A similar bias could certainly be stated for the discipline of political science and the field of IR (Albert, et al. 2001). For Glick Schiller, this methodological nationalism is still highly influential in today’s writings on migration (Glick Schiller 2007, 2010). Since even scholars of transnational migration or diaspora haven often bound their unit of study along the lines of national or ethnic identities, two contradictory positions are the result: the celebration of migrant-built remittance economies and the description of migrant transnationalism as an ephemeral first- generation phenomenon that portends eventual assimilation (Glick Schiller 2010: 111–12). While her two co-authors from “Nations Unbound” have moved into professional positions that apparently do not leave room for further research, Nina Glick Schiller continues to uphold the concept of transnational social fields which she claims offers more clarity than other transnational approaches and is the proper antidote for methodological nationalism. In a recent contribution she defines the fields as “networks of networks that link individuals directly or indirectly to institutions located in more than one nation-state. These linkages are part of the power dynamics through which institutionalised social relations delineate social

28 spaces.” (Glick Schiller 2010: 112) In this definition, field is not used metaphorically but rather as a means of locating individual migrants within territorially situated social relationships. Instead of maintaining distinctions between levels of analysis, Glick Schiller advocates a global power perspective on migration. She asks migration scholars to pay more attention to the global role of power holders – including financial institutions, organisations and states that serve as base areas of capital (Glick Schiller 2010: 121). Indeed, perspectives focusing on power would lend themselves well to bridge-building between migration studies and IR (Rother 2009c: 98, 2010d). And in her updated concept on transnational social fields, Glick Schiller makes several points that are highly relevant for the case study analysed in this thesis. For her, migrants can be ‘scale makers’ who reshape places as they integrate them within transnational social fields of familial, commercial, religious, political and organisational relationships (Glick Schiller/Simsek-Caglar 2011). Also, “migrants’ multiple and contradictory transnational incorporations into localities in more than one state cannot be analysed by reference to globalisation from below – or transnational social spaces or communities – if these terms direct us to separate the analysis of migrant agency from other aspects of the structuration of a transnational social field: class positioning, localised economic and political opportunity structures, cultural politics, racialisation and non-migrant actors. The multiple positionalities of migrants cannot be encompassed within analytical frameworks that approach migrants solely within a context of resistance to uneven globalisation, as ethnic communities or as labour, whether skilled or unskilled.” (Glick Schiller 2010: 126) While I fully share this observation, I will nevertheless propose a somewhat different framework of analysis. The holistic approach as proposed by Glick Schiller promises the benefit of including several oft-neglected dimensions of migration into the analysis. But I would argue that the multiple positionalities of migrants may also – if not better - be analysed adequately by a spatial perspective. These transnational political spaces may encompass the various scales of migrants’ agency. And while a bottom-up perspective should not be the sole lens of analysis and the “other aspects of the structuration” have to be taken into consideration, it is still important to look at processes emanating from below. These can be the sources for processes of diffusion that may be harder to identify when taking a global power perspective. But in order to be able to develop this framework, one has to look at the concept of transnational social spaces that Glick Schiller has criticised above.

3.2. Transnational social spaces

The concept of transnational social spaces has to be differentiated from much of the globalization literature, where globalization is defined as a “social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede” (Waters 1995: 3). But space matters – the expansion of social spaces beyond the container units of nation states does not automatically lead to the diminishing importance of geographical factors. Ludger Pries makes the following distinction between transnationalization and globalization: Transnationalization refers to phenomena which reach across borders but are not global in the sense of being omnipresent. Another differentiation should be made between transnationalization and the intensification of inter-state or intergovernmental relations: While the latter are based on the relations of states and governments as corporate actors, the former include everyday practices as well as organizational and institutionalized relations between individual and collective actors (Pries 2008b: 16). Pries defines transnationalization as economic, cultural, political and social relations and connections that reach beyond the borders of the nation state, but are not primarily established between states respectively their governments (Pries 2008b: 13). The main difference between globalization and transnationalization, then, is that the latter refers to phenomena that reach across borders but are not “everywhere”. To define the positions of the social relations, the concept of space is used. Among the main proponents of transnational social spaces are the German sociologists Ludger Pries and Thomas Faist (with the latter also having a background in political science). From the late 1990s onwards, both have produced an impressive body of work on the concept, including several edited volumes (Faist 1995, 2000, 2004, 2010, Faist/Özveren 2004, Pries 1996, Pries 1999, 2001a, 2008a, Pries/Sezgin 2010). On the whole, their works share several similarities with the transnationalization literature described above, including the opposition to methodological nationalism. But by emphasizing the spatial dimension, they (re-)introduced a concept into migration studies that has long been considered the appropriate focus of social/human geographers (Roseman 1971, Smith 1989, Meentemeyer 1989, Hillmann 2007, Döring/Thielmann 2008, Samers 2010), but marginalized elsewhere: “space has been for several decades an undertheorized concept in sociology” (Kivisto 2003: 6). While George Simmel had written about the “Sociology of space” already back in 1903, the interest in physical and social spaces had declined in subsequent years. This changed from the early 1970s onwards. In his work “The Production of Space” (published in French in 1974, but translated to English in 1991) the French sociologist and Marxist Henri Lefebvre states that 30

“groups, classes, or fractions of classes cannot constitute themselves, or recognize one another, as “subjects” unless they generate (or produce) a space” (Lefebvre 1991: 416). Among the influential works published since then are the writings of David Harvey (Harvey 1989) and his concept of “time-space compression”, Anthony Gidden’s view of the nation-state as a “storage-container of time–space relations” (Giddens 1985: 168–69) and Manuel Castells “Rise of the Network Society” with its “’space of flows’ that “is not placeless, although its structural logic is” (Castells 2000: 443). In his work “Die Transnationalisierung der sozialen Welt” (“The transnationalization of the social world”), Ludger Pries provides a comprehensive overview on how space is conceptualized in social science (Pries 2008b). Pries questions if something like a “natural space” (“natürlicher Lebensraum”) does actually exist – or if space is not rather always thought of, made, acquired or constructed by humans and thus social space from the very start. As a general definition he proposes to see space as the relational position of elements that is structured by human activity (Pries 2008b: 81). The results can vary significantly: In his two- volume, 1400 plus pages work on space, Alexander Gosztonyi identifies no less than 29 different conceptions of space throughout the sciences (Gosztonyi 1976). Among them are the space of experience (Erfahrungsraum) which refers to the immediate space humans find themselves in without reflection, as well as conceptions like the orientational space (Orientierungsraum), geometrical space (geometrische Raum), physical space (physikalische Raum) and mathematical space (mathematische Raum). Besides absolute space (absolute Raum), there is also the relative space (relative Raum) which is defined by the relations of objects within it. For Pries, these relational aspects can also define social space – by the positional relations of social elements, whose meaning and structure is based solely on human activities (Pries 2008b: 91). He defines the social elements as three ideal types: artefacts, social practices and symbolic representations. Artefacts refer to all items that are products of human intentions and efforts. Pries lists housing spaces, work spaces and urban spaces as examples of spaces that are based on the positional relations of artefacts (Pries 2008b: 92). Social practices are human interactions with other humans, nature and – in form of reflection – themselves. Positional relations can thus also be based on social practices and constitute spaces of practice (Pries 2008b: 93). Finally, symbolic representations can constitute the living environment of humans: Their subjective Lebensraum can be based on mental maps that draw from experiences, connotations or projections. Certain places, localities, territories or distances can thus have emotional or normative connotations for the subject and form symbolic spaces (Pries 2010: 94).

Judging by this short overview, it comes as no surprise that Pries disagrees with globalization resulting in “spaces of flows” as proposed by Castells (Castells 2000) and John Urry (Urry 2000): terrains, locales and regions still play an important role (Pries 2008b: 111). So do nation-states, but we should stop seeing them as exclusive containers of geographical and social space: “Over the centuries societal spaces in which people coexist and engage in processes of socialization became increasingly tied, in reciprocal exclusiveness, to more or less clearly defined geographic spheres. In turn, clearly defined geographic spaces extending over a physical area (a ‘territory’ or ‘locale’) were supposed to correspond to only one societal space (for example, a community or national society). The coincidence of societal and geographic space was exclusive in a double sense. First, every societal space seemed to ‘occupy’ precisely one geographically specific space; societal spaces such as families, communities or societies inhabited one coherent territory. Second, a single geographical space became a ‘socially occupied territory’ with room for only one societal space: an apartment or house could contain only one family; a locale could only accommodate one community; and a nation-state could only house one national society.“ (Pries 2005: 171)

Thus, while the national container can no longer be taken for granted as the natural unit of social analysis, Pries points out that “dissolving societal spaces with relatively stable and dense structures and order into the notion of uncontained flows is neither a satisfying nor an empirically feasible option” (Pries 2005: 185–86). Transnationalization is then defined as the formation of relatively stable, cross-boundary and pluri-local social spaces, consisting of the sense of belonging, cultural similarities, communication, work relations and everyday life of migrants as well as the related organizations, social orders and regulations (Pries 2008b: 44). Pries adds that these formations can display a primarily economic, social, cultural or political dimension – but are usually characterized by a complex interplay between these dimensions. This is a definition that can be used as a starting point for a broad variety of research on transnational migration; but even though innovative research in this field has been conducted, the political dimension of these ties is still under-researched – even more so when it comes to temporary labour migration. Pries has drawn significant parts of his concept of migrants’ transnational social spaces from empirical observations made in the case of the USA and Mexican, where he found multiple connections between the Mexican places of migrant origin and the destinations in the USA, transnational families and the transformation of social institutions like village fairs (Pries 1996: 459–64). He differentiates his approach from the concept of transnational communities: 32

“It is possible to construct socially and sociologically relevant units of analysis and reflection without having to presuppose ultimate definitions of societal units like community or national society” (Pries 2005: 186). To analyse these units, Pries suggest four dimensions, the first of them being the political-legal framework. This is similar to what early migration literature called migrations systems (Kritz, et al. 1992, Fawcett 1999). In the definition of Massey and colleagues, migration flows acquire a measure of stability and structure over space and time, which allows for the identification of stable international migration systems. These systems are “characterized by relatively intense exchanges of goods, capital, and people between certain countries and less intense exchanges between others. An international migration system generally includes a core receiving region, which may be a country or group of countries, and a set of specific sending countries linked to it by unusually large flows of immigrants” (Massey, et al. 1993: 454). More important than comparing the numbers of migration flows are the political negotiations and legal frameworks (if any) agreed upon between the countries involved. The second dimension is the material infrastructure (Pries 1996: 467–68). This is constituted by modes of communication and transportation between the places of origin and destination as well as financial channels for migrant remittances. Another important role is played by social networks beyond family relations – specialized lawyers and doctors as well as the so-called coyotes, people smugglers involved in the often irregular crossing of the border. Finally, there are also indicators for a new socio-cultural infrastructure – transnational or hybrid cultures emerging in the transnational social spaces that are more than a mere combination of the cultures of places of origin and destination. This hybridity can also define the lifestyle of the migrants, which is part of the third dimension, the social structure and institutions (Pries 1996: 468–69). Transnational migrants position themselves simultaneously in several social structures, for example in the system of social inequality in their community of origin and in the social structure in their place of destination. This new lifestyle is neither a “diaspora lifestyle” nor a gradual process of assimilation but based somewhere between these worlds. While the sum of experiences may thus consist of more than its parts, it has to be stressed once more that these lifestyles are not situated in the aforementioned spaces of flows: the various places still play an important part in the lives of the migrants, with Pries researching for example the migration from the Mexican state of Puebla to New York. It is no coincidence that very often migrants from a community in Mexico are predominantly drawn to the same specific place in the USA. This is often due to the material infrastructure and migrant (family) networks; migration leads to follow-up migration in a process of cumulative causation (Massey, et al. 1993: 461–62). While this may

33 make the migration process somewhat easier and more secure, there are also pitfalls: Structures of social inequality and conflicts of the place of origin may also be duplicated in the place of destination. And migrant networks may also be places of negative social capital, for example when informal recruitment through networks can induce workers to accept exploitative conditions (Krissman 2005: 22) (more on social capital below). Finally, the fourth dimensions of analysis deals with identities and life projects (Pries 1996: 469). Transnational migration may lead to multiple and segmented identities. Their geographical- spatial as well as sociocultural-spatial frame of reference runs crosswise to the borders of nation-states and national societies. Building upon these observations formulated by Pries in his 1996 article, I argue that the same could be said for their political-spatial frame of reference. In a 2007 working paper, Pries states that the transnational paradigm has been well- established and does not need to concentrate its efforts on proving the mere existence of transnational phenomena anymore (Pries 2007). Rather, more clarification and a refined framework were needed. He formulated four challenges to transnationalism as a research program. The first challenge emphasizes the necessity to “define appropriate units of analysis for transnational societal phenomena” (Pries 2007: 3). In this regards, transnational studies should focus on transnational societal units as relatively dense and durable configurations of the transnational social practices, symbols and artefacts mentioned above: “To this end, it is necessary to explicitly define the specific relation between the (transnational) units of analysis, the (local, national, regional or global) units of reference and the (micro, meso or macro) units of research; these components characterise the transnational perspective and distinguish it from a global or simply comparative point of view.” (Pries 2007: 3) The second challenge is congruent with the call for empirical transnationalism by Khagram and Levitt (Khagram/Levitt October 2005) presented in the introduction. The author agrees that it remains an important issue to measure, more precisely, the range of distribution and occurrence of these transnational societal units of analysis and compare the results with other societal units of analysis. Pries introduces societal space as a more comprehensive term including social, economic, cultural, ethnic dimensions, but subsumes these aspects under the less precise term social space as well (Pries 2007: 5). A third challenge is “to analyse the internal structures and processes of such transnational societal units as well as the interrelation between transnational and non- transnational types of societal units of analysis” (Pries 2007: 5, emphasis in original). This challenges the researcher not to presume that transnational societal units are always something completely different or always structures in the same way as non-transnational

34 units. The internal structures may be based on the distribution of assets, interests, values and power, while Pries sees the dynamics as the mechanisms of coordination between the different and distant units of the transnational spaces. He also poses the question whether and to what degree the multitude and nature of transnational societal units is influenced by local, national or regional fields of power (Pries 2007: 6). This aspect would lend itself well to incorporation into IR approaches, especially if one adds the global power dynamics perspective advocated by Glick Schiller. As the fourth desideratum of current transnationalism studies, Pries points to the development of adequate methodology and methods for the kind of transnational scholarship Khagram and Levitt have called for. Besides the “follow the people” approach by Marcus, other qualitative methods adopted from the fields of anthropology, ethnography and sociology seem suitable: holistic approaches, participatory fieldwork and open interviews. But there still remains the challenge that in traditional social sciences the units of analysis and the corresponding spatial units were taken for granted. With transnational scholarship, this has changed: “Differentiating absolutist and relativist concepts of space, however, leads to fundamental revisions of the relation between the units of analysis and the spatial units of reference – the latter cannot be taken for granted as coherent and contiguous geographical ‘containers’, but have to be considered as pluri-local and constructed by social practices, symbols and artefacts.” (Pries 2007: 6) One aspect that is especially relevant for this thesis is the distinction between the levels of analysis. Pries points out that while most transnational studies concentrate either on the micro-level of everyday life or on the macro-level of social institutions and migration systems, the meso-level of transnational organisations lacks the attention it deserves and could be the micro-macro-link in transnationalism studies (Pries 2007: 16–17). He provides the following definition: “In this framework, transnational organisations are characterised by their decentralised resources and, at the same time and opposite to focal organisations, intense coordination. Therefore, transnational organisations could be understood as highly decentralised and border-crossing pluri-locally distributed and, at the same time, intensely coordinated, stable and dense cooperation frameworks with membership rules, deliberately established and variable structures, as well as more or less explicit goals and intentions.”(Pries 2007: 17) (emphasis in original)

Pries names Greenpeace, Attac and Oxfam as important non-profit organisations which are active on a transnational level and possess more or less decentralized resource structures and, at the same time, effective and strong coordination patterns. These are all 35 organisations with a global outreach, but there is no reason why the definition should not be used as well for organisations that operate on a regional level or even span only the border of two nation states – as long as they are based on multiple locations within these states or at the very least the operations in one state are not the mere branch of the headquarter located in the other state. Networks of networks of migrant organisations as the ones discussed here may even be more grassroots-based, the structures may not be as deliberately established and the members may be united by a common cause but share less of a “corporate identity” than, say, Greenpeace or Attac (which started out that way but became more institutionalised over the course of time). It will be also important to analyse the spatial dimension of these organisations. Does the social space they operate in equal the locations of their members? But since many of the non-profit organisations especially reach out to a wider audience and address governments, regional or international organisations and the general public, it may be relevant to analyse not only the space they inhabit but also the social and political space they create with their advocacy. Many of the points raised above can also be found in the works of Thomas Faist. He defines transnational social spaces as “sustained ties of persons, networks and organizations across the borders across multiple nation states, ranging from low to highly institutionalized forms; transnational social spaces are combinations of ties, positions in networks and organizations, and networks of organizations that reach across the borders of multiple states” (Faist 2004: 337). It is this spatial dimension that makes the term “space” seem more adequate than “field” when studying these transnational relations. Again, it is made clear that transnational social spaces may be based on an abstract concept, but are by no means entirely situated in spaces of flow or cyberspace, as early globalization literature argued: Social relations are usually still established at very specific places. Faist states that “central issues of politics, policy and polity need to be rethought in the light of migrants’ transnational ties” (Faist 2007: 228). He argues that while there have been attempts to analyse phenomena associated with the potential decoupling of state territory, demos and state, these still have been mostly undertaken from a state-centric perspective or from one which privileges powerful transnational actors, e.g. multinational companies. On the other hand, the political dimension of cross-border social and symbolic ties of migrants has received much less attention: “While anthropological and sociological studies of transnational social spaces and transnational communities abound, a systematic, explicitly political sociology of transboundary relations has so far not been undertaken.” (Faist 2007: 228–29) After the “first wave” of the transnational turn in migration studies in the late 1980s

36 and early 1990s was preoccupied with the phenomenon of “transnationalism” as such, and the second wave of scholarship since the mid-1990s paid more attention to conceptualizing and measuring transnationalization, Faist calls for a third stage to consider the political dimensions (Faist 2007: 230–32). The author points to dimensions of transnational social spaces that share similarities with the ones developed by Pries; on the one hand, they are constituted by the various forms of resources, namely the (social) capital of the persons involved, and on the other hand the regulations imposed by nation-states and various other opportunities and constraints. For him, the distinction of “transnationalism from above” and “transnationalism from below” might be too diffuse in terms of power relations to capture the whole range, international NGOs being one example: they may reflect grassroots resistance to neo-liberal globalization or they may serve to legitimize governance – or both at the same time (Faist 2007: 234). Faist states that a transnational approach may be particularly useful for studying the internal and endogenous dynamics of cross-border politics involving non-state actors (Faist 2007: 235). He lists several case studies – none of them referring to temporary contract migration – and four advantages of the transnational turn in migration studies. First, it helps to overcome the integration perspective of immigration countries and brings together the migratory space encompassing emigration countries, immigration countries and migrant and migration networks, communities and organisations (Faist 2007: 237). While this space may have also been examined in the migration systems approach, the respective civil societies were not conceptualized. This leads to the second advantage – migrants are brought “back in as actors in their own rights” (Faist 2007: 237). While the third advantage refers to the usefulness of the transnational approach in complementing other theories of immigrant adaptation, the fourth point has special relevance for this thesis: “Going beyond migration systems theory, which focuses mainly on the causes of migration and the migration process itself, the transnational approach explicitly considers the repercussions for politics, policy and polity in emigration countries and immigration countries.” (Faist 2007: 239) Faist reckons that political transnationalization may be more important for emigration than immigration countries. In a re- or proactive way, many emigration countries aim to reconstitute and restructure their policy tolls in response to the growing complexity of governance processes in an increasingly interconnected world (Faist 2007: 240). Faist offers two methodological tools to address the development of transnational social spaces, activities of transnational NGOs and the implications of transnationalization for membership in polities by means of nationality and citizenship: cumulative causation and path

37 dependence (Faist 2007: 241). Cumulative causation “can be said to exist if each of the factors identified has an influence on all other factors either directly or indirectly, and each factor is influenced through other factors.” (Faist 2007: 242) In the case of positive feedback cumulative causation, the developments propel a development more and more away from its origin, while in negative feedback causation the dynamic ensures that the system returns to the original point of departure. A path dependent approach seeks to specify how a sequence of choices by actors drives developments; it uncovers increasing returns and thus focuses on the implications of earlier choices on later ones: “A path-dependent effect occurs when a previous decision, norm or rule reinforces itself, when it determines in part the subsequent development of returns.” (Faist 2007: 242) However, the effects of this can result in actually limiting the choices actors have, be they nation-states, international organisations, NGOs or individual migrants. Cumulative causation is often employed in analysing migration streams and seen as an explanation for chain migration – but it may also establish whether and to what extent politics within transnational spaces develops a life of its own (Faist 2007: 246). A flow of economic, cultural and political resources might emerge within transnational social spaces, once immigrant communities and organisations become established. As a consequence, the governments of emigration countries might reach out for the loyalty of their expatriates by using embassies, consulates and missions. A path dependent process could be seen in the proliferation of transnationally active NGOs since international and supranational organisations like the EU or the UN have an interest in creating a stable environment of interest representation: “Once this process has set in motion, there is an unmistakable trend towards a proliferation of lobby and interest groups.” (Faist 2007: 248–49) In sum, for Faist “the transnational influence of guiding ideas as well as the interests and practices of citizens and collective actors create new venues for the feedback between demos and government by reconfiguring the correlation between demos and territory in a globalizing world” (Faist 2007: 257). But rather than replacing the triadic constitution of nation-states (territory, people, political boundaries), transnational politics complement national and international politics. And instead of de-territorializing politics, they create more complex webs of transactions between different levels of politics in the national, international and supranational level. Looking at the concepts of transnational social spaces discussed in this section, there is obviously a lot that IR scholars can draw from or connect to: the role of the nation-state, non-governmental actors and their relations with states, inter- and supranational institutions, the relationship between domestic and international politics (and questions about the scope

38 of “domestic”), bottom up- and top down processes and the introduction of a new meso-level. But so far IR research has mostly ignored these new approaches emerging in other disciplines, although (or because?) they touch upon the core of IR studies, question them or call for a redefinition. To a certain degree, this neglect can be observed in both directions. The literature on transnational social spaces is highly innovative and comprehensive; but I hope that I am not doing injustice to the authors by claiming that the political implications of transnational political migrant activism are more often referred to than actually analysed. And as stated several times, a major form of migration – temporary contract labour migration – is all but ignored in the literature. To address these open questions, I suggest a framework of transnational political spaces which I will develop in the following chapter.

4. Transnational political spaces

The previous section should have made clear that migrants in general and migrants’ transnationalism in particular have been largely absent from IR research, while a truly transnational dimension of migrants’ political actions is mostly missing in migration studies. Thus, choosing the term transnational political spaces puts at the centre of its attention the political nature of interactions carried out not only by individual migrants and their various forms of organizations but also institutions including government bodies. Although Faist and Pries regularly refer to the political dimension of transnational social spaces, by replacing “social” with “political” I aim for more than just a shift of focus. With my framework I want to address the following questions: Structure of transnational political spaces How are transnational political spaces constructed and maintained? What is the structure-agent relationship, are they mutually constituent? How does the process take place, what is the role of sites of activism and political opportunity structures? Impact of transnational political spaces What are the governance contributions of the central actors in transnational political space? What are the scales of transnational political spaces and how do the different levels influence each other? Is, for example, a grassroots organization more “empowered” in its fight for rights when it is also part of a global alliance? Are there multiple overlapping spaces evolving? Diffusion in transnational political spaces What happens inside transnational political spaces? Can processes of diffusion be observed and if so, which norms, ideas, values, gender conceptions and political cleavages are diffused and how? What are the consequences for spatial positions of actors - for example alliance formation?

Although it seems not a far-fetched idea to speak of transnational political rather than social spaces, the term has thus far been used only rarely and even less often conceptualized. Michael P. Smith and Luis Guarnizo were among the first to use the term and did so with reference to transnational political organization and mobilization at multiple levels within a transnational space: “Constructing transnational political spaces should be treated as the resultant of separate, sometimes parallel, sometimes competing projects at all levels of the 40 global system”; at the most local level this includes “survival strategies” by which transnational migrant networks are socially constructed (Guarnizo/Smith 1998: 6). When defining future directions for transnational studies, Smith and Guarnizo name as one of the central dimensions “the spatial expansion of social networks ‘from below’ that facilitate the reproduction of migration, business practices, cultural beliefs, and political agency” (Guarnizo/Smith 1998: 24). While numerous transnational practices by individual migrants can in sum have an – unintended - political dimension, the focus of this thesis is on the abovementioned migrant organizations and networks. Therefore, questions of inclusiveness/exclusiveness have to be kept in mind as well as the fact that many migrants refrain from intentional political practices altogether. In 2009, I proposed a first outline of the concept with special emphasis on governance implications (Rother 2009e). The same year, an edited volume by Matthias Albert and colleagues was published under the title “Transnational Political Spaces. Agents-Structures- Encounters” (Albert, et al. 2009a). The book aims for a multidisciplinary angle with a strong emphasis on the historical perspective. Only one of the contributions explicitly deals with migration – from a government-centric and historical perspective, Mark I. Choate writes on “National Communications for a Transnational Community. Italy's Promotion oí italianità among Emigrants, 1870-1920.” (Choate 2009a). The introductory chapter by Albert and colleagues defines political space as a sphere in which common representations and identifications are negotiated and formulates the guiding question of the volume: “If political space is no longer perceived as always and automatically congruent with the territory of the nation-state, how are transnational spatial units of the political formed and defined? And how can they be traced and conceptualized?” (Albert, et al. 2009a: 7) The authors want to shift their focus at least partly from the disintegration or de-territorialization of the nation-state caused by migration to “the level of communication, imagery and symbolic practices as well as to the role which the media play in processes of common identity building” (Albert, et al. 2009a: 8). While this focus distinguishes the authors from some of the transnationalists in migration studies (although Pries emphasizes Symbolic representations as well), they nonetheless share the critic of the “territorial bias” (Beck 1998: 9) of the academic disciplines history, political science and sociology. They are especially critical of the traditional view of international politics in IR, in which according to them nation-states touch each other on the very outsides like billiard balls, with governments as the only actors involved and other potential actors marginalized (Beck 1998: 9–10). Transnationalism can overcome this bias by presenting a via media approach which is designed to observe phenomena that are more than

just international but not fully global (yet) (Albert, et al. 2009a: 12). In this view, the transnational and national are not mutually exclusive but can form an interdependent relation of dynamic reciprocal constructions and determinations; also, while transnationalism encompasses representations beyond the nation-state, these always still refer to national frameworks by either denying or appropriating them (Albert, et al. 2009a: 13). Historians have also developed approaches beyond “writing the nation” (Conrad/Conrad 2002) and adopted transnational approaches. Among those is the very active “history.transnational” project, a specialist forum on the history of cultural transfer and the interweaving of transnational relationships in Europe and the world9. The emphasis on “transfer” stems from a new methodological approach where “transfer studies focus on the transmission and communication of particular features between nation-states, mostly through mediating border-crossing actors” (Albert, et al. 2009a: 15). This idea of transfer bears some resemblance to the notion of diffusion which will be discussed below. In their book chapter on “Remapping political space”, Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach use the following definition: “Political space refers to the ways in which identities and loyalties among adherents to various polities are distributed and related, and territorial space is only one of the possibilities.” (Ferguson/Mansbach 2002: 87) Albert and colleagues add that while transnational processes may transcend national spaces by facilitating contracts and transfers between them, this is not the only or exclusive option: new political spaces above and beyond the nation-state framework can emerge as well and “although they may originate in specific national settings, transnational transfers create flexible spaces with their own social and communicative conventions” (Albert, et al. 2009a: 18). There are only a few other authors who touch deal with the concept of transnational political spaces. The sociologist Petra Dannecker examines “The Re-Ordering of Political, Cultural and Social Spaces Through Transnational Labour Migration” (Dannecker 2007). She focuses on migration processes between Bangladesh and Malaysia and addresses the oft- neglected effects of temporary labour migration: “Temporary labor migration is leading to transformations, changes, and constructions of development on different scales which cannot be analyzed in a purely economic sense, but consider the social and cultural context they are embedded in.” (Dannecker 2007: 4) Gender relations may be transformed in the process and new political spaces may emerge between the two countries where development is negotiated (Dannecker 2009).

9 The website is http://geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/.

Leif Kalev, a political scientist, and colleagues diagnose that most of the literature on the transnationalization of politics has handled the subject of political transnationalism in a “rather particularistic” perspective: “The transnational strategies and practices of individuals have gained a lot of attention, while the context of political regime (e.g. how to sustain a functioning democracy in the context of transnationalisation) and governance are often left aside (with the exception of migration policies).” (Kalev, et al. 2010: 72) Arguing from a systems theoretical perspective, the authors define transnational political space as “a functional system, where the collective will-formation, decision-making and governance is conducted, rules and norms for other spaces are created depending on the internal power relations and sources of legitimacy. Thus, it is a kind of a meta-space to other transnational social spaces.” (Kalev, et al. 2010: 73) The authors develop three main types or levels of transnational political spaces that have different ambitions of structuring the political life: The tunnel-like spaces complement and use states. Multi-level models are projected towards the emerging systemic setting of multi-level governance with a still notable presence of the nation state. For the radical version, transnational political spaces replace states in a market model (Kalev, et al. 2010: 84). This kind of categorization and the typologies proposed are certainly important for the field, especially considering the very early stage of research, but they have yet to stand the empirical test, since the article is solely conceptual in nature. Fiona B. Adamson, quoted above for her proposal of a constructivist approach to diaspora, also urges political scientists to draw from concepts coined mostly by sociologists and anthropologists, namely the idea of transnational communities and their potential for a “transformation of home” (Adamson/Demetriou 2007). She suggest adopting Roger Brubaker’s definition for a national minority as also fitting for transnational communities, since he defines them as “not as a fixed entity or unitary group but rather in terms of the field of differentiated and competitive positions or stances adopted by different organisations, parties, movements, or individual political entrepreneurs, each seeking to represent the minority [for Adamsom: community] to its own putative members, to the host state, or to the outside world, each seeking to monopolise the legitimate representation of the group” (Brubaker 1996: 61) (emphasis in original). This definition underlines the very important notion that diasporas or other migrant groups form heterogeneous entities that often contain parties and individuals with competing interests and agendas. Adamson coins the term transnational political field but uses it rather interchangeably with transnational social space. This lack of a clear distinction notwithstanding, she makes the relevant proposition that a fruitful way of analysing the political activities of transnational

43 communities is “to view the interlocking networks which characterize a transnational community as constituting a transnational social space which is partially embedded in and interacts with other networks, institutions and social spaces in its environs, while at the same time retaining its quality as a partially autonomous space defined by a common homeland or migration experience” (Adamson 2002: 159). These identities and networks can function as “bridges” that connect sending and receiving countries. While the actors mentioned and the spatial dimensions in her approach are also relevant for this thesis, my conception of transnational political spaces differs regarding what I argue is the “diaspora centric” or at least “diaspora-informed” nature of her approach. I claim instead that the common homeland does not necessarily have to be the defining feature of the transnational political spaces since migrants from different origins may form and act within such a space as well – in this case, it is be rather the destination country that could count as a common denominator, alas only one of them. Another common point of reference might indeed be the migration experience Adamson mentions but does not really spell out. I argue that rather than the experience of migration per se, the specific migration experience might be a common denominator. Thus, a Filipina migrant domestic worker in Hong Kong might have much less in common with a fellow countryman or -woman who is a so-called highly-skilled professional than with an Indonesian migrant domestic worker. Since both share the specific experience of being a domestic worker with its attached implications, vulnerabilities etc., this may inform their advocacy not only in the place of destination but may also be directed towards their home country. Finally, Ronnie D. Lipschutz makes reference to transnational political space when he claims that a new form of transnational regime has begun to emerge: “A growing number of non-governmental organizations, social movements, and lobbying groups, based in what I call ‘global civil society’, are crossing political and institutional borders to devise and implement arrangements intended to fill those regulatory gaps. In doing so, global civil society actors are not only intruding on what has long been considered the prerogative of sovereign states– international diplomacy– but they are also transgressing into what has been considered the special preserves of scientists and technical experts.” (Lipschutz 2000: 17) This notion introduces another dimension of transnational political spaces – their potential effects on the global and governance level. It bears some similarities with the concept of transnational policy regimes, as proposed by Grande et al. (Grande, et al. 2006). The authors identify four dimensions by which these new architectures of political governance reach beyond the nation state: First, the transnational range, including levels above and below the nation state and transcending the strict division between internal and external politics;

44 secondly, the transnational constellation of actors, integrating a multitude of state and non- state actors alike; thirdly, the functional constitutional logic (funktionale Konstitutionslogik), meaning that these regimes are defined not by territorial borders but along the policy field(s) that require(s) governance; and, fourthly, the institutional character of the regime, consisting of an ensemble of formal and informal institutions, organizations, actors, relations, norms and rules, that are involved in the creation and implementation of collectively binding decisions (Grande, et al. 2006: 122–23). While still being close to established regime definitions, these transnational policy regimes may be a suitable approach to analyse, for example, migration into the European Union. For the study of labour migration between the Philippines and Hong Kong, the approach is of limited use, because these transnational policy regimes require political construction and constitution (Grande, et al. 2006: 132), thus again primarily dealing with attempts to provide solutions to global challenges from above. The particular characteristic of the case study presented here, on the other hand, is that migrant activists aim to reach beyond the borders of the nation state and fight for political rights in a space being established from below – often in conflict with the concerned governments. The uneven distribution of resources and demand and supply of labour is also an obvious obstacle to collectively binding decisions. Still, it is of relevance that the migrant organisations and their advocacy work should also be researched regarding the governance implications. Because of its extensive use and application, the concept of governance is considered, not unlike transnationalism, as “notoriously slippery” (Pierre/Peters 2000: 7, Benz 2004). While the term governance is increasingly used in migration literature dealing with the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific, the authors rarely situate it in the context of the political science discourse on governance. Likewise, as pointed out above, migration was almost invisible within the governance research and the international policy agenda until the millennium (Newland 2005: 1). The existing literature on migration and governance in the Asia-Pacific region uses a distinction similar to the one found in transnationalism, i.e. it distinguishes between governance from above, referring to governance by states or supra-national institutions, and governance from below, being usually exercised by NGOs, promoting self-governance or empowerment of marginalized migrant groups (Piper 2003: 29). The focus of research rests increasingly with the latter group, although some consensus has been reached that both spheres – from above/from below – cannot be neatly distinguished when it comes to migration: ”Governance theorizes a shift from hierarchical and territorially bounded bureaucracies as a mechanism for delivering public goods to networks of global, state, and

non-state actors, leading to the emergence of national and transnational modes of Governance not solely controlled by states” (Grugel 2004: 32). Michael Peter Smith suggests another dimension or scale: Transnationalism from in- between refers to actors who mediate between transnational actors from above and from below (Smith 2005). His reference point is not the global level but for example the role of brokers in the specific migration process, but that does not render his observations less useful. In his writings and an article co-authored with Guarnizo, Smith cautions that when investigating the above and the below of transnational action, researchers must guard against the common mistake of equating above exclusively with global structures or agents and below exclusively with local social fields or actors (Guarnizo/Smith 1998, Smith 2001): “Categorising transnational action as coming ‘from above’ or ‘from below’ aims to capture the dynamics of power relations in the transnational arena. By definition, these categories are contextual and relational rather than essential or immutable.” (Smith 2005: 242) One could argue that in the case of migration, the actors in transnationalism from in-between might be social and church organisations or NGOs whose activists have a middle-class background and advocate on behalf of migrants, but in my case study this is a touchy subject. As I will discuss, the distinction between grassroots activists and representatives of “NGOism” is used (or constructed) as a weapon in competing claims for legitimacy. The overview of the scattered literature that either mentions or could be connected to the concept of transnational political spaces should have made clear that there is hardly a well-defined framework in existence. To address this gap, I propose the following framework of transnational political spaces by starting with two basic questions: What is the political element in those spaces? I use a fairly broad definition of political by subsuming under it all actions that try to influence or formulate policies: For the civil society, this can take the form of advocacy work, demonstrations, consultations, coalition building, supporting political parties, filing reports, awareness building, education and training of members etc. These actions are obviously transnational when their impact reaches across borders. But to have such an impact, actor(s) and addressee(s) can in some instances also reside physically within the same nation-state container unit. Thus, when Filipinos in Hong Kong are organizing a demonstration against the policies of their home country, this is clearly a transnational political action10. But in my definition, consultations of a Filipina domestic worker in Hong Kong with the Hong Kong administration or the lobbying of a Philippine migrant NGO with the Philippine government to stop OFW deployment to Saudi Arabia are also

10 I should stress here again that while Hong Kong is as Special Autonomous Region and not a nation-state, it will be treated “as if” in this thesis since it exhibits several commonalities with a nation-state. 46 transnational in scope and operate within transnational political space. A Philippine trade union sending an organizer to Hong Kong or a Hong Kong trade union supporting Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong are part of this space as well. But as these examples show, non-state actors are not the sole actors in this space and governments can be more than addressees. In this sense, when the Philippine governments adopt a law on Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV), this is also an action within - and constructing – the transnational political space. It is not an act of de-territorializing the nation-state, rather the opening up of a new transnational political space. What is then the spatial dimension of these political actions? As discussed above, transnational migrants are not floating in spaces of flows and act completely deterritorialized, even when they organise their actions in cyberspace, a buzzword which is somewhat out-of- fashion by now. First, place still matters. While, say, OFWs in Saudi Arabia conduct most of their organising online, this happens exactly because of the place they are in: The strict regulations of this particular nation-state force them to explore different political spaces for their advocacy work. In contrast, the “global city” Hong Kong grants significantly more liberties not only to their citizens but also to migrant domestic workers, freedom of assembly being one of them. Thus, places like “Statue Square” in Hong Kong Central provide a frequently used space for political expression: This public and political space stands in marked contrast to the vulnerable space in which migrant domestic workers who have to reside with their employers are situated in for the most part of their weeks (Rother 2012a). I will discuss the specific background of the contested place and space that is Statue Square in more detail in the case study. Second, space is the category I chose over fields or the rather vague notions of diaspora or migrant community, because it highlights the positional characteristics of the actors involved. In this space, actors may move between actual places, but even if stationary, their political actions in one of these places may open up a political space that reaches across the borders of nation-states – which would also answer a third question about the transnational characteristics of this framework. These transnational political spaces are multi- sited or, as Pries calls it in his conceptualization, pluri-local. The term refers to the various geographical places that are part of the transnational social ones; for transnational political spaces I would add, that actions undertaken by migrant activists in one of these places have also relevance or consequences for the other places in these spaces as well. This holds especially true for temporary contract labour migration, where migrants live transnationally less out of choice than out of the circumstances of the migration system that dictates their status.

This leads to the question of the actors involved. Pries pointed to the centrality of actors (“Akteurszentriertheit”) involved, but these are not necessarily exclusively migrants. Among the four dimensions suggested by Pries to analyse transnational units is the political- legal framework. This is also highly relevant for transnational political spaces, since governments are not only the addressees of migrant advocacy but were also involved in setting the framework and deciding on the conditions that made the citizens of the sending countries migrants in the first place. Thus, it is not seen as a contradiction that the nation state still plays a significant role in transnational political spaces. Even a 2003 assessment of the transnational debate in the journal International Migration Review (IMR) came to the conclusion: „The state is here to stay“ (Levitt, et al. 2003: 568). What has been often neglected, is the role of the sending state as well as the role of the migration industry, which may operate in a borderline- legal manner or in a form of public-private partnership with the sending state, with both modes of operation certainly being not mutually exclusive. In a first conclusion, it can therefore be argued that the transnational political space in which labour migration between the Philippines and Hong Kong is negotiated, consists of pluri- local, decentralized, dense and consistent interactions between NGOs and grassroots movements established by the migrants themselves (transnationalism from below), NGOs acting on behalf of the migrants and the private sector, i.e. agencies from the “migration industry” (transnationalism from in-between) and the governments involved (transnationalism from above). This space can also be further enlarged and overlapping spaces are constructed by the involvement of migrants from other nationalities and global NGOs. Also, migrants’ organisations organize themselves in more or less clearly defined alliances, networks of networks or clusters. These observations have guided the research of this thesis to predominantly focus on migrants and their organisations as actors in transnational political space. To analyse their formation and behaviour, network theories have had a lasting impact on migration research. They focus on the collective agency of migrants and communities in organising processes of migration and incorporation and on how informal networks provide vital resources for individuals and groups: “In the context of sending countries they are often analysed as transmission mechanisms for cultural capital (especially information on migration opportunities, networks and routes), while in the context of migrant incorporation into receiving societies the emphasis is more on social capital, i.e. personal relationships, family and household patterns, friendship and community ties, and mutual help in economic and social matters.”(Castles 2010)

Charles Tilly has claimed that by and large, it is neither individuals nor households who migrate but networks (Tilly 1990: 84). There is a significant literature on migrant networks (Gurak/Caces 1992, Lindquist 1993, Sassen 2002, Tsuda 2002, Mazzucato 2010) and the approach is also often used in social movement studies (Saunders 2007). Many of these works deal with family-and-friends-networks of migrants that may help to ease the migratory process and are associated with concepts like cumulative causation, chain migration, and culture of migration. But Tilly’s claim can also be used for political networks. This can hold true obviously for diasporas, where for example political unrest in the homeland may have caused the exodus of a network of people belonging to a specific political spectrum. But it may also be the case in more voluntary forms of migration where members of political or agenda-driven networks migrate or migrants may “carry” their networks connections with them und use them when building up new alliances or even chapters of their former networks abroad. Regional networks may also start organisations in the sending or receiving country, or these organisations may form regional – or global – “umbrella organisations”. Or existing networks of one group of migrants may serve as a model and set the standard for migrant groups that arrive at a later time. In sum, it is important not only to look at how migrants organise themselves and the form and structure of these organisations, but also which ideas, norms, values, practices they are built upon and where these ideational foundations are coming from. In order to analyse these aspects, it will be helpful to look at the concepts of diffusion and isomorphism. Diffusion is a well-established concept in several fields of research. Recent years have seen an increasing interest in the diffusion of norms in IR scholarship, most notably in constructivist approaches (Acharya 2004) with human rights norms being one of the central issues (Risse, et al. 1999, Shawki 2011). In Europeanisation studies the diffusion of EU- propagated norms to new members, accession countries (Featherstone/Radaelli 2003, Schimmelfennig 2005) and other regional organisations is analyzed (Börzel/Risse 2009). Often these approaches are state- and/or elite centric (Rüland, et al. 2009, Elkink 2011). Hans- Joachim Lauth and Gerd Pickel present a model of the “diffusion of democracy” (Lauth/Pickel 2009). They define diffusion, based on the work of Everett M. Rogers, as “a process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time” (Lauth/Pickel 2009: 40). For them, diffusion is, unlike policy transfers or the specific form of governance by diffusion11, usually a voluntary and unintended process, where an innovation seen as attractive is transferred from one country to another with a noticeable effect. But there are also other

11 Radio Free Europe being one example. 49 authors who demonstrate that the “recipients” of these norms can very well play a part in the process and reshape these norms in a process of norm localisation (Acharya 2004, 2009b). In these scenarios, states or regional institutions act as norm entrepreneurs. But activists and civil society groups can also be actors in the process of norm construction (Keck/Sikkink 1998, Finnemore/Sikkink 2001) There is a growing body of research on diffusion and non-state actors: The diffusion of social movements (Hedström, et al. 2000, Chabot/Duyvendak 2002, Della Porta/Tarrow 2005, Givan, et al. 2010), transnational and global diffusion (Byrd/Jasny 2010), norm implementation by non-state actors (Shawki 2011), persuasion and social movements (Stewart, et al. 2001), vernacularization as the process of appropriation and local adoption of globally generated ideas and strategies (Levitt/Merry 2009) and diffusion models of global civil society (Anheier, et al. 2008). In the latter work, Anheier and colleagues outline various analytic approaches to diffusion models. Spatial effects analysis focuses on the spatial aspects of social diffusion and “assumes that the diffusion process in a given system is affected by nearby processes in a nearby or adjacent areas” (Anheier, et al. 2008: 251). These models view diffusion as part of macro contagion models, where one process can influence others as well as being influenced by them; the contagion effects operate in waves rather than isolated events. Event history analysis examines time-dependent processes and its models allow four specific types of diffusion related predictors: intrinsic characteristics, infectiousness, susceptibility, and proximity (Anheier, et al. 2008: 251). Intrinsic characteristics refer to the attributes of actors that can increase or decrease their propensity to adopt behaviours. The authors list as an example the degree of ideological radicalisation of an organisation's membership and the effect it can have on its tendency to engage in a protest. Infectiousness estimates how influential the individual actor’s adoption is on others, the magnitude of the protest or its media coverage being powerful mobilising factors. Susceptibility refers to the responsiveness of an individual actor to others' adoption, and is measured by using social, political and cultural characteristics. Proximity indicators share commonalities with spatial effects analysis and examine the influence actors have on each other based on the closeness of their location (Anheier, et al. 2008: 252). One of the most-cited articles on diffusion in organisations and social movements was published by David Strang and Sarah A. Soule (Strang/Soule 1998). They propose the following definition: “Diffusion refers to the spread of something within a social system. The key term here is “spread,” and it should be taken viscerally (as far as one’s constructionism permits) to denote flow or movement from a source to an adopter, paradigmatically via

communication and influence. We use the term “practice” to denote the diffusing item, which might be a behavior, strategy, belief, technology, or structure. Diffusion is the most general and abstract term we have for this sort of process, embracing contagion, mimicry, social learning, organized dissemination, and other family members.” (Strang/Soule 1998: 266)

The adopter may be a reflective decision-maker and diffusion an individual choice, but conditions outside the actor like broader contextual and environmental processes can shape behaviour (Strang/Soule 1998: 267). In social movement studies, diffusion processes play a central role in explaining the incidence of collective action and the spread of protest symbols and tactics. In contrast to the classical studies on diffusion with their focus on innovation, this research “typically examines the spread of behavioral strategies and structures rather than technical innovations, emphasizes adoptions by social collectivities more than individuals within those collectivities, works with a much larger historical and spatial canvas, and incorporates diffusion as one sort of explanation rather than as the overarching framework” (Strang/Soule 1998: 268). External sources of diffusion may be mass media and change agents, which may be states acting as norm entrepreneurs or in the case of social movement experts, outside activists organising workshops and training sessions or “social movement gurus” like Gandhi whose strategies and tactics are imported into local settings (Strang/Soule 1998: 271– 72). Internal influences operate via information and influence flowing within the adopting population. The flow is assumed to “move grapevine-like from prior to potential adopters” and interaction networks can act as the conduits of diffusion (Strang/Soule 1998: 272). Influence can flow along the lines of close social relations (cohesion through strong ties), but weak ties can also be the bearers of new information. Structurally equivalent actors may choose imitation out of competition, but the latter may also spur differentiation (Strang/Soule 1998: 274). Finally, prestige as well as cultural categories and similarities may cause diffusion. A distinctive form of diffusion has been coined institutional isomorphism12 (DiMaggio/Powell 1983). In their 1983 article, Paul H. DiMaggio and Welter W. Powell ask why there is such startling homogeneity of organizational forms and practices and contend that “bureaucratization and other forms of organizational change occur as the result of processes that make organizations more similar without necessarily making them more efficient” (DiMaggio/Powell 1983: 147). Thus, once disparate organizations in the same line of business are structured into an actual field by competition, the state, or the professions, powerful

12 Isomorphism: the tendency to become alike. 51 forces emerge that lead them to become more similar to one another (DiMaggio/Powell 1983: 148). The authors differentiate three mechanisms of institutional isomorphic change: coercive isomorphism that stems from both formal and informal pressure exerted by other organisations, mimetic processes, where uncertainty is a powerful force that encourages imitation or modelling, where the borrowing organisation draws from a convenient source of practices and normative pressures that stems from professionalization, defined as the collective struggle of members of an occupation to define the conditions and methods of their work (DiMaggio/Powell 1983: 150–52). This concept has been used to analyse policy transfer in the EU, where institutional isomorphism can be a source of legitimacy (Radaelli 2000). In the case of ASEAN, Anja Jetschke and Jürgen Rüland also find institutional isomorphism to be primarily a strategy to achieve legitimacy and keep up a certain appearance although the cooperative format is at variance with the political practice of the organisation: this leads to a decoupling of rhetoric and practice (Jetschke/Rüland 2009).The degree of diffusion observed here might be similar to what Strang and Meyer, in their research on the theorization of diffusion practices, have called a mere “ritualized isomorphism” (Strang/Meyer 1993: 500) I suggest that the concept of isomorphism might not only be valuable for the analysis of international organisations or regional institutions, but also for forms of organisation on the ground: Thus, in the analysis of the various migrant organisations and their clusters in transnational political space, I will specifically investigate if this process of isomorphism takes place. This grassroots isomorphism includes the diffusion of ideas, innovation, ideologies and practices, as discussed in the literature on the diffusion of and within social movements, but also organisational and structural aspects. In migration studies, the concept of diffusion has been used mostly in the research on social remittances, as developed by Peggy Levitt in her article “Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-Level Forms of Cultural Diffusion” (Levitt 1998). Levitt defines social remittances as the “ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that flow from receiving- to sending- country communities. They are the north-to-south equivalent of the social and cultural resources that migrants bring with them which ease their transitions from immigrants to ethnics.” (Levitt 1998: 927) This approach fits well into the studies on transnational social fields and spaces and has the merit of highlighting the impact of migration on the sending societies. Social remittances are created when migrants interact to varying degrees with the host society. Using the interpretative frames they have brought with them from the home country, they try to make sense of their experiences in the destination. The results are various “blending

52 scenarios”: Existing ideas may go unchallenged, new elements may be grafted into existing ones or creolization may occur, where “new social relations and cultural patterns are created by the intermingling of migrant and receiving-country forms” (Levitt 1998: 930). Levitt distinguishes three types of social remittances: normative structures (ideas, values and beliefs), systems of practice (actions shaped by normative structures like religious practices or patterns of civil and political participation) and social capital (Levitt 1998: 933– 35). Regarding the mechanisms of transmission, Levitt claims that these are specifiable since they travel through identifiable pathways and their source and destination are clear: “Social remittances are transmitted between individuals, within organizations by individuals enacting their organizational roles, or through the looser, informally-organized groups and social networks that are connected to the formal organizations.”(Levitt 1998: 936) The transmission may be through personal contact, or through forms of traditional or modern communication. Thus, for Levitt social remittances are usually transferred between individuals who know each other personally. In a recent article titled “social remittances revisited”, Levitt and Deepak Lamba- Nieves further refine and also expand the concept (Levitt/Lamba-Nieves 2011). They argue that migrants’ experiences prior to migration can strongly influence not only their behaviour in the receiving countries but also what they remit back to their homelands. They also acknowledge that besides individual there are also collective social remittances and that “social remittances can scale up from local-level impacts to affect regional and national change and they can scale out to affect other domains of practice” (Levitt/Lamba-Nieves 2011: 1). This is an important advancement of the concept, and in line with the nascent research on political remittances (Um 2007) and specifically (un-)democratic remittances (Rüland, et al. 2009). This body of research analyses how the migration experience can influence the political attitudes and values of migrants (Kessler, et al. 2008, Rother 2009b, Solomon 2009), discusses how democratic remittances can reach the ones that stayed behind (Pérez-Armendáriz/Crow 2010) and uses the concept of political remittances to analyse political activism via collective organisations that operate across borders (Piper 2009c, Piper/Rother 2011). This thesis is situated in this emerging field as well, not the least as it emerged out of quantitative and qualitative research on the political remittances of Philippine return migrants, as will be discussed in the methodological chapter. There is one final aspect that may frame and influence what is happening inside transnational political spaces, and that is the well-established sociological concept of political opportunity structures. The concept is often used in social movement studies (Smith, et al. 1997a, McCarthy John D. 1997a, Maney 2002). It is argued that political and discursive

53 opportunity structures can either facilitate or impede the activities of social movement participants and refers to the political and institutional context in which social movements mobilize (Shawki 2011: 4–5). Political opportunity structure promises a means “to predict variance in the periodicity, style, and content of activist claims over time and variance across institutional contexts” (Meyer/Minkoff 2004: 1458). The interaction of activist efforts and more mainstream institutional politics is emphasized in the explanations. Shawki lists the following as features of the political context of political opportunity structures “government openness, state (repressive) capacity, and the presence/absence of elite allies who support a social movement’s cause” (Shawki 2011: 5). In a literature review the literature Meyer acknowledges that while the essential insight of political opportunity structures – that the context in which a movement emerges influences its development and potential impact – has proven fruitful in the research on the topic, conceptualizations of political opportunity vary greatly, and scholars disagree on basic theories of how political opportunities affect movements (Meyer 2004: 125). As a response he calls for a “need to adopt a process-oriented approach to political opportunities that explicitly examines how they work and how the responses that social movements provoke or inspire alter the grounds on which they can mobilize” (Meyer 2004: 141). In this chapter I have discussed a plethora of phenomena that may be observed in – and frameworks that can be applied to – the actions of migrants and their organisations in transnational political spaces. As some of the examples given hinted at, observations during field work showed evidence of all these approaches and their potentially defining role for transnational political spaces. The challenge of the thesis is now to examine the case study with these tools by attempting to answer the guiding questions formulated at the start of this chapter. I aim to formulate a more systematic framework of transnational political spaces and processes of diffusion taking part within them as a result. In the following chapter I will provide the background for the selection of the case study, the methodology used and the process of data collection.

5. Methodology, case selection, and data collection

As pointed out in the introduction, this thesis aims to be part of the transnational scholarship Sanjeev Khagram and Peggy Levitt have called for (Khagram/Levitt 2008a, 2008b). I also mentioned that while not strictly adhering to a grounded theory approach (Glaser/Strauss 1967), the way the conceptual framework of this book was developed fits into this approach in several respects. In accordance with this approach (while it may not be all that common in IR research), I will describe in some detail in this chapter how the conceptual framework of this thesis developed out of the field work conducted. The starting point of this thesis was the research project “Democratization through Migration?”13 (Kessler, et al. 2008). The objective of the project was to analyse whether the migration experience in clearly democratic/clearly authoritarian countries (based on the Freedom House index) can have an effect on the political and democratic attitudes of return migrants. If this were the case, it could have implications for the democratisation of the home country, since, at the very least, democracy needs what David Easton and Jack Dennis call the diffuse support that a political system receives because citizens embrace the values and norms underlying the political order (Easton/Dennis 1969). Considering that the Philippines is one of the major sending countries of migrants with more than ten per cent of the population residing temporarily or permanently abroad, they may constitute a critical mass that can have a significant impact on the democratisation process at home14. The research design combined quantitative as well as qualitative methods. A standardised questionnaire was to be administered in face-to-face interviews with 1,000 OFWs that had returned from three democratic (Japan, Taiwan and the UK) and three authoritarian countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar und the United Arab Emirates (UAE)) and a further 1,000 OFWs just about to depart to the same destinations (statistical twins). Thirty-seven of the Return Migrants were interviewed a second time using rather open, unstructured guidelines. In addition to developing the questionnaire with Christl Kessler and consultations with SWS which carried out the survey in the Philippines from January to March 2006, I also conducted interviews with Manila-based migrant NGOs to gather background information on the

13 The research project 'Democratisation through Migration?' was conducted between 2005 and 2007 by the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute Freiburg, Germany, in cooperation with Social Weather Stations (SWS), Quezon City. Funding was provided by the Foundation Population, Migration and Environment, based in Stafa, Switzerland. Project members were Jürgen Rüland, Christl Kessler and the author. 14 For research design and detailed results of the study, see (Kessler, et al. 2008; Rother 2009b; Rüland, et al. 2009; Rother 2010b). 55

migratory process, the potential politicisation of migrants, their organisational structure and advocacy work. During the exploratory interviews, it became quickly apparent, that many of these NGOs retained strong relations with partner organisations in the receiving countries and that Hong Kong was a site of particularly intense activism of Philippine migrants outside their home country. This observation proved influential on two accounts: First when during the survey it became apparent that not enough respondents could be found that had returned from the UK and stayed the minimum time of one year in the Philippines, we opted to replace it by Hong Kong as a third category of neither being completely democratic or authoritarian (nor a country, for that matter). This decision proved very fruitful for the project, since it turned out that the Hong Kong return migrants were by far the “most democratic,” which we saw as a clear indicator that temporary migrants judge their host countries less by formal aspects like elections – which they are not allowed to participate in anyway – than by outcomes and the provision of rights that relate to their situation, like freedom of movement or the right to go on strike. (Rother 2009b: 271). The decision also proved fruitful for this thesis, since it inspired the choice of the migrant destination in the case study15. It was clear from the start that the Philippines would be the sending country for the research: As stated earlier, it is one of the main sending countries, the governments actively promote migration and the country traditionally has a very active NGO sector (more on this in the following chapters). A brief stay in Hong Kong in March 2006 brought me in contact with the Asian Migrant Centre (AMC), recommended to me by NGO contacts in Manila as a first starting point. The staff offered to support me on a longer research stay. With theoretical knowledge I gathered on various forms of migrant transnationalism, social movements and governance from below, I returned in February-March 2007 to a five-week research stay to Hong Kong. Here I began what Khagram and Levitt call the empirical transnationalism that involves “the identification, description, mapping, quantification, and categorization of transnational phenomena and dynamics” (Khagram/Levitt 2008a: 5). The one aspect I considered not useful for application was the quantification. Although the concepts of transnational social spaces/fields and my research share many observations with network analysis (Hollstein/Straus 2006, Stegbauer

15 The initial concept was to analyze the migration system between the Philippines and Singapore and its implications on inter-state relations. The latter had been put under severe strain after the execution of the Filipino domestic worker Flor Contemplacion (more details in the next chapter). Among the research questions was also the influence of the common ASEAN membership of the two states. But the comparatively low number of OFWs in Hong Kong and the limited political opportunity structures in Singapore made Hong Kong seem the more promising option. 56

2008), they concentrate mostly on qualitative aspects since quantitative network analysis “focuses on the relations between actors and not on the actors' characteristics” (Adam/Kriesi 2007: 130). In this exploratory research stay, I applied the snowball principle to map out as many organisations by and for migrants as possible. Since AMC provided me with a fairly comprehensive list of contacts to get started, I assumed that most of the migrant NGOs in Hong Kong are closely connected and cooperating with each other. The interviews conducted during this part of the approach were fairly open and focussed on the most pressing issues of the Philippine migrant workers in Hong Kong, the advocacy and strategies of the organisations and – to map the transnational dimension – which partner organisations and contacts they have in the Philippines. From end of March to mid-May 2007, I continued my research in the Philippines conducting interviews with these partner organisations. These efforts were guided by the methodological transnationalism which requires specific kinds of observations and methods for collecting them: “Transnational dynamics cannot be studied at one point in time because they involve multiple, interacting processes rather than single, bounded events” (Khagram/Levitt 2008a: 7). Thus, while I conducted almost 50 “expert interviews” during my research stays with migrant activists, Government representatives, academics, NGO representatives and individual migrants, these provided essential information but still only glimpses into said transnational dynamics. To get a more comprehensive idea of these dynamics, I not only conducted four extensive field trips in the Philippines as well as Hong Kong, but also aimed to watch “civil society at work”. Participant observation played an increasingly important role in my research and was carried out during rallies, training sessions, conferences, campaign activities, advocacy during Senate hearings in the Philippines etc. (see appendix) The second research stay in the Philippines also started to reveal that the migrant civil society was far from being “one happy family”. First cleavages became apparent, with competing migrant organisations commonly referred to as “the other”. As a result, I decided to pay repeated visits to some of my interviewees with this new knowledge. I used the following guiding questions: • How was your organization established, how is it organized? • What is your mission? (norms) • Who do you aim your advocacy at? (Government HK/Philippines, migrants, global level etc.) • Which are your governance contributions? (I did not phrase it this way but asked for services offered, specific political goals achieved etc.) 57

• Who is part of your network? • How do you interact, what is the level of exchange? • Can you identify effects of your advocacy work in HK/the Philippines? • What do you think of/what is your relationship with “the others”? (added dimension in the second round of interviews) The last questions served as a tool to further map out potential clusters of migrant organisations. Interviews were also conducted with academics, government representatives and members of the “migration industry”. It became also apparent that there was a close cooperation with migrant domestic workers from other nationalities, especially Indonesians, so their organisations and representatives were also interviewed. One might argue that focussing on NGO activists, migrants and organisers may paint a wrong picture or would be elite-centred. If so, this would nonetheless constitute a grassroots elite, which furthermore still remains well-grounded: many migrant organisers in Hong Kong work for most part of the week as domestic workers, many of their counterparts in Manila are former migrants. The actual percentage of political active migrants in Hong Kong is impossible to measure since the organisations have a high fluctuation and not all of them keep formal member lists. They might also organise migrants who are not formal members for their rallies. Still, to get a broader picture, interviews with “non-political” migrants were conducted in Hong Kong, as were the in-depth interviews as part of the “Democratisation through migration?” project. As the quantitative data from this project revealed, the high degree and long tradition of activism in Hong Kong may also impact on those who do not participate. Also, political organising and activism is usually a cause of the minority of people, which holds true for the non-migrant parts of societies as well. Comparable to the situation in their home country, many domestic workers might prefer to stay out of politics, spend their Sunday off at meetings of religious groups (some of which discourage political advocacy) or prefer social activities in organizations usually based on their home region (for example, there are several Visayan organizations). These repeated and additional interviews were conducted in Hong Kong in May 2007, in Manila in July/August 2008 and in Hong Kong September 2008. This could have been the end of the fieldwork, had the research in summer 2008 not pointed to a further scale of transnational political migrant activism: Most interviews ended with the parting words “see you again in Manila in November” – bringing to my attention the upcoming second GFMD scheduled for the autumn 2008 in Manila. Thus, comparable to multi-sited ethnography, further data for this thesis has been collected by adhering to the principle that George E. Marcus has described as “follow the people” (and in a way “follow the conflict” as well) 58

(Marcus 1995: 106; 110). A field trip to Hong Kong in late October provided an opportunity to observe the demonstrations leading up to the GFMD, followed by participation as an academic observer and accredited journalist in the Manila GFMD and the parallel events organised by the two “clusters” of migrant organisations. This opened up new dimensions of the transnational political spaces on a regional and global level of advocacy. After the GFMD in Manila, I did not actually have to return to the Philippines and Hong Kong to talk to the main organisers from there. Instead, I met many if not most of them at the Transnational Migrant Platform (TMP) preparatory meeting for the third GFMD in September 2009 in Amsterdam, at said GFMD and its parallel events in November in Athens and at the 99th session of the International Labour Conference (ILC) and its parallel events in June 2010 in Geneva. This was followed by the fourth GFMD and its parallel events in November 2010 in Mexico City and Puerto Vallarta, at the 100th session of the International Labour Conference (ILC) and its parallel events in June 2011 in Geneva and at the fifth GFMD and its parallel events in November/December 2011 in Geneva. Apart from this opportunity to map out of the two distinctive clusters of migrant organisations, these forums provided an important insight into the political-legal framework of migration, which Pries has deemed an important part of the analysis of transnational spaces. The forums also provided access to representatives of governments, international organisations and academics. Besides formal presentations and press conferences, I was able to conduct further recorded “expert interviews” with these representatives and migrant activists. But the “expert interviews” I conducted during my research were outnumbered by the informal consultations, talks and discussions I was able to hold especially during the major global events. These act as sort of a hub of a large number of stakeholders and provide ample space for these informal exchanges – not uncommonly during lunch or coffee breaks. Unlike the formal interviews, these were not recorded or written down but provided invaluable “off the record” information nevertheless. Some of the transcribed interviews were coded using the atlas.ti software, but that was done mostly for the purpose of organizing the information. Between these stays in the field, further data have been gathered by membership in newsgroups, email-lists like “pinoy abroad”, newsletters, and several Facebook groups. While websites and particularly email addresses of the grassroots organisations – and even several Philippine government departments – are notoriously temporary in nature, Facebook is increasingly providing a more stable place for information exchange. From the Mexican GFMD

onward I also started my own blog on the process16, which initiated further contacts with migrant activists and researchers. As pointed out above, methodology for transnational research is still in the process of development and lacks the refinement of more established research schools (some of which it can draw from). But it also has been shown that the bottom up approach of this thesis is congruent with transnational scholarship and in accordance with a transnational ethnography. It also fits into several dimensions of the frameworks proposed by Pries and Faist. As Pries pointed out, it is necessary to explicitly define the specific relation between the (transnational) units of analysis, the (local, national, regional or global) units of reference and the (micro, meso or macro) units of research as these components characterise the transnational perspective and distinguish it from a global or simply comparative point of view. (Pries 2007: 3). While this thesis focuses on the meso-level of organisations, it also took the micro (individual migrants and their political attitudes) and the macro (global fora, global migration governance and advocacy) into consideration. The research also follows Pries call to measure, more precisely, the range of distribution and occurrence of these transnational societal units of analysis, although it refrains from comparing the results with other societal units of analysis. His third challenge to analyse the internal structures and processes of such transnational societal units is also addressed by mapping out the complex interrelations within transnational political space and also looking inside the networks of networks. In accordance with Pries who stressed the centrality of actors (“Akteurszentriertheit”), the main part of this thesis will analyse the three central groups/clusters of actors: governments concerned (sending country and destination), the migration industry and the heterogeneous group of migrants themselves, under which I also subsume their civil society and grassroots organizations. When examining their role in the construction and reproduction of transnational political spaces, Faists’ notions of cumulative causation and path dependency may also prove useful when looking at the stability of these spaces.

16 http://gfmd-blog.com 60

Part II: Case Study

6. Nation-States and the migration industry – the political-legal framework for transnational political spaces

6.1. The nation-state and the governance of migration

As much as it is important to focus on the agency of migrants, the political-legal framework of migration still plays a significant role in their choice of destination, their migration experience and even the possibility to migrate at all. While global institutions exert some degree of influence, the global governance of migration is still a far-fetched goal (Rother 2010d, Grugel/Piper 2011). Recently, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has stepped up its initiatives to protect migrants and domestic workers and adopted in 2011 a convention on “decent work for domestic workers” (Rother 2010a). While the ILO has a unique tripartite structure that brings together governments, employers and trade unions, the aforementioned GFMD is a non-binding, state-led process. It was established outside the UN system, as was the International Organization for Migration (IOM) which predominantly serves the interest of its member states. Thus, global institutions exert only a limited influence on how migration is managed at the state-level. Most of these nation-states consider migration control as one of the last strongholds of their sovereignty. This is why they are eager to retain the authority for setting and controlling the entry and exit-rules on a national level. The European Union (EU) is the one prominent example where states were willing to give up parts of this control, but the EU remains “a cluster of contradictions” (Morris 1997). It displays similar characteristics to a nation-state in regard to its external borders (Bigo/Guild 2005, Bendel 2009). This observation leads to the commonly used description of the “fortress Europe” (Busch 2006), but remains more heterogeneous within. For a migrant, the first point of entry into the EU still plays a significant role and when free labour mobility for EU citizens was introduced, countries like Germany called for temporary exclusion of several Eastern European countries from this liberalization. Member countries also differ in several regards, such as the regulations implemented for migrant labour, amnesty programs for irregular migrants etc. It comes as no surprise, then, that the by comparison to Europe much less-integrated Asian region has no binding multi-lateral agreements on migration. As Tigno argues for Southeast and East Asia, the “myopic economic arrangements that only take into consideration the free movement of capital and material goods excluding the reality of human migration cannot genuinely advance regional integration” (Tigno 2009: 20). He warns that

62 because of these attempts to de-link the goods and capital market from the labour market, states will inevitably have to contend with the problematic and increasing human costs of migration. Since most of the states in Southeast Asia are relative newcomers to the Westphalian state system, norms like sovereignty and non-interference are deeply embedded in their political culture (Acharya 2009a, Rother 2012b). Migration is thus often seen as a challenge to the sovereignty and security of the nation-state and advocacy of sending countries on behalf of their citizens abroad considered as interference in national matters. This also has ramifications for the institutional level, since, as Nicola Piper points out, the states’ actual practice of managing migration is tied to immigration policies rather than labour policies and part of the portfolio of ministries of justice or home affairs rather than ministries of labour (Piper 2006: 10). Thus, the persistence of nation-states to protect their sovereignty can be a hindrance to advancing cooperation on migration. The second factor is the obvious disequilibrium of power between sending and receiving states in the economic and political arena. To keep this balance uneven in their favour, governments of receiving states prefer to negotiate bilateral agreements or rather vague Memoranda of Understandings (MoU) with sending states of migrants - if they are willing to sign any document at all. While trade in other „goods“ is quite often better regulated and protected, the rules of supply and demand apply very much to labour migration: When the government of a sending state decides to issue a deployment ban to specific destinations because it considers the safety of their citizens as threatened there – as the Philippines have occasionally done –, the destination country can often simply resort to another source for the supply of migrants instead of giving in to any demands it considers intrusive (Hollifield 1992). Thus there is little incentive on their behalf for cooperation, since as Koslowski point out “if labour shortages develop during periods of economic growth, states can get as much labour from abroad as they choose, either through bilateral agreements or simply by opening up labour markets to migrants, while at the same time avoiding any commitment to keep these markets open during economic downturns” (Koslowski 2004: 3). This strategy is by no means used exclusively by authoritarian receiving countries, since democratic governments may also fear pressure from their anti-immigration populace to give in to demands from sending countries or migrants. One can also not assume that the sending country and its migrants necessarily share the same interests. This can be due to several reasons. In migration research one can often find the implicit assumption that sending countries are seen as powerless or weak states and therefore do not possess the necessary governance capabilities – or simple do not care about the exodus of their citizens (Bauböck 2003: 709). There are, on the other hand, a growing

number of governments which care a great deal about this exodus, do in fact promote it actively and build up the necessary apparatus for “emigration governance”. But these countries often have to strike a balance between rights and remittances: If there is too much regulation, receiving countries may consider migrants from this source to be not attractive enough anymore. Migrants may disagree with their governments because of too little protection but in some cases also because of too much regulation – which they might consider as an obstacle when competing with migrants from other countries. In sum, migrants find themselves confronted with the dilemma of being “usually trapped between less developed and more highly developed countries with different state structures and power relations” (Piper 2003: 34). Large-scale outmigration can be seen as a result of bad governance of the sending state’s economy or as a deliberate, organized governance effort – or as both, as in the case of the Philippines. In Southeast Asia, multilateral exchange on labour migration takes place predominantly in Regional Consultative Processes (RCPs) like the (discontinued) Manila Process, the Bali Process, the Colombo Process or the Inter-Governmental Asia-Pacific Consultations on Refugees, Displaced Persons and Migrants (APC). These consultations often focus on undocumented migration and trafficking, since these are issues where receiving countries consider regulation to be in their interest as well (Woongboonsin 2006). Talking about the regulation of labour migration in such a framework, on the other hand, might provide the sending countries with more bargaining power, a scenario which the receiving countries consider not to be in their interest. The Colombo Process brings together ten sending countries’ governments but remains an infrequent and informal process with fairly little specific outcome.17 The major document on migration in the region so far is the 2007 “ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers”18. It lists some obligations for sending (promote and protect rights of migrant workers, ensure sustainable alternatives to migration) and receiving countries (protect the fundamental human rights, promote fair and appropriate employment protection). But the declaration remains a non-binding instrument and receiving countries like Malaysia continue to blatantly violate the principles and provisions formulated therein (Rother 2008, Varia/Buchanan 2010: 7–8, Elias 2010). Therefore, the nation-state can be seen as the actor playing the most crucial role when looking at the political-legal framework for migration in the region. But in the actual migration process, migrants are foremost involved with a further category of actors that has proliferated

17 http://www.colomboprocess.org/ 18 http://www.aseansec.org/19264.htm 64

as a result of privatisation and deregulation: the recruiters, brokers and placement agencies constituting the “migration industry”. While they are actually non-state actors, they may be closely intertwined with the migration bureaucracy, which in cases like Indonesia can lead to public-private partnerships with very negative consequences (Rother 2010d: 33). The following sections examine these two major actors in the political-legal framework of migration. The role of the nation-state and the migration industry is discussed from the perspective of the sending country and the country of destination (the latter in this case is not a nation-state but displaying similar characteristics). Besides the Philippines and Hong Kong, the case of Indonesia is also discussed, since Indonesians have become the second-largest group of domestic workers in Hong Kong and there is close interaction with Filipinas.

6.2. The Philippines: role model for “best practices” or unscrupulous “labour broker”? “Education of the children is always given as the main purpose [for migration]. But where are these children going now? They have also become like their parents moving to other countries as migrant workers. In other words, there is something wrong with the education itself here in the Philippines, and there is something wrong also with the culture that is partly migration mentality and there is really something wrong with everything else here, with the values that we are embracing.” (Interview with Edwin Corros, ECMI 8 May 2007)

The Philippines19 is seen as “perhaps the prototype of a labor-exporting country” (Semyonov/Gorodzeisky 2004: 6). In absolute figures, more of its inhabitants emigrate than those of any other country in South East Asia. It ranks eleventh on the global migration scale. According to the Migration Information System in Asia, in 2007 migrants totalled 8.7 million, roughly a tenth of the overall population, who live outside the country as temporary labour migrants (4.1 million), permanent migrants (3.7 million) or irregular migrants (an estimated 0.9 million)20. Migrants come from all regions of the Philippines, predominantly from rural areas. The main destinations of permanent/regular migration in 2007 were the USA (2.8 million), Saudi Arabia (1.07 million), Canada (0.46 million), Australia (0.25 million) and Malaysia (0.24 million). However, Filipinos are to be found in almost every country or territory, even in classical sending countries like Romania. Migration to European countries is usually permanent, and

19 Parts of this overview are based on Rother 2009a and Rother 2010e. 20 http://smc.org.ph/misa/ Other estimates provide significantly higher figures, especially for irregular migrants. 65 partially irregular. The UK has 200,000 Filipinos, most of whom are employed in hotels and catering. There are 108,000 Filipinos in Italy, where the number of irregular migrants is stated as 20,000 to 80,000. Whereas migration to the USA, Canada and Australia is usually permanent, in Asia and the Middle East it usually takes the form of two-year employment contracts. Employment is clearly divided according to gender: male migrants work in the construction industry, factories and on plantations, whereas women work in the household and in care professions. Deskilling among female migrants is particularly striking: for example, many of the domestic workers in Hong Kong and elsewhere have obtained university degrees but still chose the better-paid position of domestic worker abroad. The omnipresent nursing schools in the Philippines are often attended with the objective of migrating to a foreign country later on. The Philippine approach to labour migration has received a lot of praise in policy circles for its “Best Practices to Manage Migration” (Martin, et al. 2004) and for establishing a system of “unrivalled sophistication” (Agunias October 2008: 1). As Rodriguez observed, the former Philippine president Arroyo considered herself to be “the ‘CEO’ of a profitable ‘global enterprise’ that generates revenues by successfully assembling together and exporting a much sought-after commodity worldwide” (Rodriguez 2010a: x): workers that are highly-skilled, proficient in English and hard-working. Carmelita Dimzon, at the time of the interview deputy administrator of general administrative and support services of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), now administrator of the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration (OWWA), described this wide-spread interest in and appreciation for the Philippine approach as follows: “The ILO and IOM have cited the Philippine migration program as model in the region and POEA as a model managing migration program. Our system, structures, framework have been copied by our neighbouring countries. We receive a regular number of visitors, from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, for example Kazakhstan, courtesy of ILO and IOM.” (Interview with Carmelita Dimzon, POEA 21 August 2008)

It may be worth investigating if this exchange leads to the diffusion of Philippine “best practices” and institutional isomorphism. But among migrant organisations this positive view is countered by a critique of these policies as inefficient and not providing sufficient protection for migrants; researchers also question the neo-liberal policies of the Philippine state and the resulting commodification of labour (Rodriguez 2010a, Guevarra 2010, Briones 2011: 134). How did this large-scale, state-promoted export of labour come into existence? Philippine labour migration is far from being a recent phenomenon – the country has a long 66 tradition of permanent or temporary contract labour migration that can be analysed as having taken place in three consecutive waves (Tolentino 1996, Gonzalez 1998). Labour migration on a notable scale began shortly after the US took over as colonial power in the beginning of the 20th century, when the first Filipinos found employment as plantation workers in Hawaii and later on in California. The second wave started after the end of World War II, when highly skilled Filipinos migrated to the USA, US military bases or to Australia, which resulted in a significant brain drain. The government reacted by introducing the balikbayan (returning citizens) program, which is in place until today. The intention of the program was to introduce several incentives to motivate those Filipinos who had permanently left the country to return regularly to their homeland as investors, or at least spend some money as tourists. Rafael sees this program as a first indicator for the declining attractiveness the country held for many of its citizens (Rafael 1997: 273, Law 2002: 207). In the 1970s, these measures were directly followed by a third wave that continuously gained momentum until the present day and displayed a new quality compared to its predecessors. Until then, the Philippine state had taken only reactive measures to face an already existing phenomenon; now, the state took on a much more active role. The aim of the large-scale Overseas Employment Program was to specifically advance temporary labour migration. President Ferdinand Marcos installed the program as a response to increasing unemployment, rapid population growth and declining wages in the Philippines, with the added benefit of raising the foreign currency stock through remittances (Law 2002: 207). Thus, the push-factors of a declining economy at home met the pull-factors of the booming oil- exporting Gulf States that needed construction workers for their ambitious infrastructure programs. The demand for work opportunities abroad grew so rapidly that the state became unable to accomplish the necessary recruitments without assistance. This resulted in a proliferation of recruitment agencies, which form the migration industry of the country (Tigno 2004: 9). In order to cope with the governance demands of the ever-increasing number of OFWs, in 1982 the Philippine state merged existing institutions and founded the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA). They are under the supervision of the Department of Labour and Employment (DOLE). Basically, the POEA deals with OFWs until their departure from the Philippines, while the OWWA is responsible for the migrants during their time abroad. These two new institutions were installed at a time when the economic boom in East and Southeast Asia – the “Asian miracle” – took off. The negative side-effect of this boom for the Philippines was an increasing demand for domestic work, a form of migration that not only

led to brain drain but often to deskilling. Many well-educated Filipinas were willing to accept this kind of work, which made little use of their skills but at least offered significantly higher payment than employment in their original profession back in the Philippines. This development was part of two global trends emerging around the same time. The first is the feminization of migration (Castles/Miller 2009: 12), with an increasing number of female migrants being employed in “the narrow range of reproductive labour21 characteristically assigned to female migrants, for example as live-in maids, care givers, entertainers, sex workers and other service employees” (Yamanaka/Piper 2005: 2).The second trend is the globalization of domestic work resulting in “nanny” or “global care chains” (Hochschild 2000, Ehrenreich/Hochschild 2003, Yeates 2009), or, as Carling has suggested, “‘transnational care chain” since he fails to see anything inherently global about this chain (CARE International 2008: 13). The willingness of the Philippine government to accept this loss in human capital in exchange for foreign currency (which is sent home as remittances), becomes evident when examining the Executive Order 857, proposed in 1982: Its goal was to oblige OCWs to remit at least 50 per cent of their earnings made abroad through Philippine banks (Law 2002: 208). But the government had to withdraw the “forced remittance” proposal due to pressure from migrant organisations, especially the ones based in Hong Kong (see chapter 7). The ousting of Marcos had no major effect on the Philippine governments’ policy to promote labour migration; in 1988, Cory Aquino, his democratically elected successor, spoke for the first time of migrants as being “national heroes” which make a major contribution to the development of the country. Thus, the democratically elected administrations basically continued to act as a “labor broker” (Rodriguez 1999), based on the politics of temporary labour migration initiated by Marcos. Cases like the execution of the domestic worker Flor Contemplacion in Singapore in 1995 only led to minor and temporary revisions in the active promotion of labour migration. The term “national heroes” is used to soothe the unease felt by many Filipinos with regard to the massive negative side-effects of the migration flow: Families are torn apart, the migrants are put under severe emotional stress, exploitation and abuse through agencies and employers are common in several destinations. This did not stop the previous President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) – in power while the fieldwork for this thesis was conducted – to successfully aim for more than one million deployed OFWs annually. She praised the approximately eight million Filipinos living temporarily or permanently abroad as “Overseas Filipino investors”

21 “Reproductive” work refers to those activities related to: (1) human reproduction and (2) maintaining and sustaining human beings throughout their life cycle (Yamanaka/Piper 2005: 2), see also (Truong 1996: 32). 68

(Department of Labour and Emplyoment (DOLE)). Migrant remittances have constantly amounted to around 10 per cent of the gross national product in recent years. The trend continues under the current Benigno Aquino III administration as well: The Philippines remain the world’s fourth-largest remittance recipient after India, China, and Mexico, and in their latest “East Asia and Pacific Economic Update” for 2011, the World Bank reports that remittances sent to the Philippines stood at US$13 billion through August, growing by 6.9 per cent compared to a year earlier (World Bank 19 November 2011: 11–12). Thus, one striking aspect of the Philippine policies on labour migration during the last 40 years is that their fundamentals have been largely unaffected by the particular governments in power or even political systems in place. Tigno assesses the migration policies of the Philippine government as being “strongly influenced by business and bureaucratic groups at home that have much to gain from continuing and expanding [them]” (Tigno 2000: 62). Defenders of the government policy point to Republic Act 8042, “An Act to institute the policies of overseas employment and establish a higher standard of protection and promotion of the welfare of migrant workers, their families and overseas Filipinos in distress, and for other purposes”22. This act was adopted in 1995 in response to the aforementioned execution of a Filipina domestic worker in Singapore and is based on the legislation called “An Act Providing a Magna Carta [sic] of Overseas Filipinos”. The provisions of the act constitute a fairly unique attempt at migration governance by a sending country in the region. One of the provisions is to limit the deployment of OFWs to those countries that can guarantee ample protection; in addition, illegal recruitment agencies are threatened with high penalties while their victims are offered legal assistance. The assistance promised in the Act includes a clear transnational component, since it also refers to Filipinos during their time abroad: The “protection of Filipino migrant workers and the promotion of their welfare, in particular, and the protection of the dignity and fundamental rights and freedoms of the Filipinos abroad, in general, shall be the his/her [sic] priority concerns of the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and the Philippine Foreign Service Posts”. This above-standard protection should be provided by labour attachés and, in destinations with a particularly high number of OFWs, by “Migrant Workers and Other Overseas Filipinos Resource Centers”. With regard to the underlying policy, the law contains the controversial statement that “the State does not promote overseas employment as a means to sustain economic growth and achieve national development”, which clearly contradicts the actual governmental practice.

22 The complete text of the Act can be found under http://www.poea.gov.ph/rules/ra8042.html 69

Asis considers the Magna Carta provisions not as a “complete failure“ (Asis 2006), since they also offer several orientation and information programs. The most important among them is the Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar (PDOS), established already before the 1995 Act, where migrants may get information about their rights and obligations as well as about specific characteristics of their deployment destinations. While this may sound good in theory, these programs are often conducted by private recruitment agencies due to of lack of government capacities. In several interviews, NGO representatives and migrants who had gone through this program reported that the privatisation of these services has often resulted in a strong emphasis placed on the aspects of remittances and obligations and very little emphasis on the rights of the migrants. Some migrant NGOs have reacted and now hold PDOS as well, with the goal of offering programs that go beyond the minimum requirements set by the state. But the verdict of rivalling NGOs is that this is a highly problematic step and a clear sign of “selling out” and becoming part of the state agenda. Several amendments were made to the Magna Carta since its adoption, with major changes having been introduced rather hastily in 2006/2007. As a result, several of these laws have been inadequately monitored regarding their implementation. For example, in 2006 the Lebanon war once more cast a spotlight on the unprotected situation of Filipino domestic workers abroad. Returned or repatriated Overseas Filipino Workers reported abuses and two Filipinas died in their attempt to escape from their employers23. As a response, President Arroyo introduced a “supermaid”’ programme in order to provide better training to housemaids, but this initiative was quickly withdrawn again following public criticism and ridicule. Fr. Edwin D. Corros, Executive Secretary of the Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (ECMI) at the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, was frequently quoted in the media with his assessment that calling a program “supermaid” must have been “the product of a person who has no brain at all” (Interview with Edwin Corros, ECMI 8 May 2007). As a result, the concept was repackaged, sometimes called “the new POEA guidelines,” and a series of new measures were introduced at the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, specifying the certification of maids, a minimum wage of US$ 400 and a minimum age of 25. As a result, household employees must undergo training or assessment for the National Certificate for Household Service Workers of the Technical Education and Skills Development Administration (TESDA) and the OWWA ‘Language and Culture Certificate of Competence’. NGOs criticised this as a further means of extracting fees. The higher age limit was propagated

23 http://philrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Caught-in-the-crossfire.pdf 70 by the government as a measure of protection for migrants, assuring they were more mature when leaving the country. Critics argued that it is rather questionable to link maturity to a certain age and that the higher age limit could also be seen as a restriction of freedom. Many migrant NGOs like the Asian Migrant Center (AMC) in Hong Kong complained that they had not been consulted sufficiently; their subsequent lobby work in the Consultative Council on Overseas Filipino Workers (CCOFW) (see below), led to a reduction of the minimum age to 23 years. The regulations for Overseas Performing Artists (OPA) were also tightened. OPA is a euphemism for the Filipinas who work mainly in Japan as nightclub hostesses on the borderline to prostitution. In this area, the US State Department exerted pressure on both countries in its Trafficking Report (US Department of State 2010). According to the new regulation, migrants must provide proof of their artistic qualifications, which led to a rapid reduction in the number of Overseas Performing Artists. The establishment of the minimum wage of US$ 400 for domestic workers was largely welcomed. Implementing these regulations is a challenge, since Philippine institutions cannot easily influence labour market regulations in destination countries. But they can exert influence through the setting of rules for the recruitment and placement agencies, although here, too, the problem lies in the monitoring of these measures. Finally, the POEA guidelines state that from March 2007 onward, any person seeking employment overseas from a registered agency should not pay any placement fees. But when assessing this new regulation, the Mission for Filipina Migrant Workers (MFMFW) came to the conclusion that “the undeniable fact, therefore, is that placement fees are still being collected by recruitment agencies. Also, overcharging is still rampant among recruitment agencies” (Mission for Filipina Migrant Workers (MFMW) 2007: 5). When the 2008 global financial crisis started to have an impact on labour deployment, President Arroyo issued Administrative Orders (AO) Nos. 247 and 248 in December 2008. AO 247 tasked the POEA to “execute a paradigm shift by refocusing its functions from regulation to full blast market development efforts, the exploration of frontier, fertile job markets for Filipino expatriate workers” (Office of the President (OP)). This included identifying new destination countries and occupational groups. AO 248 (Office of the President (OP)) instructed the Department of Labour and Employment and the OWWA to provide PHP 250 million to support migrants whose employment contract was prematurely dissolved due to the financial crisis. These returnees were to be provided with training measures and small loans for business set-ups. However, migrants reported that they were asked to provide numerous forms of evidence and overcome many bureaucratic hurdles (Corros 2009). The regulation also

shed a light on the wide-scale neglect of reintegration measures by the Philippine government (Asis 2008: 95). In January 2010, a legislative procedure was introduced in order to add stricter regulations regarding irregular migration to the 1995 Migrant Workers Act. The particular objective of this measure was to end the widespread phenomenon of “contract substitution”, in which migrants sign a contract in Manila that complies with the regulations but are then forced to sign a contract with worse conditions in the destination country. Under the new regulations, both recruitment agencies and government civil service employees can be penalised.

Engaging migrants: the nation-state’s perspective All in all, some twenty state institutions are involved in the labour migration process. There are various forms of interaction with migrants and migrant organisations. The Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) was founded in 1980 and mainly focuses on permanent migrants. The aim is to maintain contact with expatriates and to motivate them to visit their home country and make investments there, as well as to become involved in charitable activities (Interview with Rino David Paez, CFO 13 August 2008). It also stages specific Pre-Departure Orientation Seminars (PDOS) for migrants who intend to leave the country for good. With regards to temporary migration, the POEA and the OWWA are the two major institutions which OFWs are involved with in the migration process. Of all the agencies, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration has come most under criticism. It is a member- based organisation that requires payment of US$ 25 for the duration of an employment contract. According to the so-called omnibus policy, membership is mandatory in order to obtain an Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC). In return, members receive some insurance such as life insurance and accident insurance. Training measures like the Seafarers’ Upgrading Program (SUP) are also offered. What appears on paper to be a useful offer is the subject of widespread public criticism. In numerous interviews, migrants and NGOs reported problems in asserting their claims towards the OWWA. There are regular complaints about the misuse of the OWWA budget24. In addition, the OWWA provides staff for the Philippine Overseas Labour Offices (POLOs) and Labour Attachés at the embassies and consulates. Chronic understaffing appears

24 For example, in February 2004, just a few months before the presidential elections, PHP 530 million were transferred from the OWWA Fund to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp (Philhealth). This money was supposed to finance free health insurance for destitute Filipinos. During the election campaign, the team of President Arroyo then distributed Philhealth cards that were valid for one year, bearing her photo. 72 to make work more difficult. In the interviews with thirty-nine return migrants conducted for the “democratization through migration” project, an ambivalent picture of the services offered became apparent. Positive experiences contrasted with complaints about condescending treatment and a lack of support. The embassy in Saudi Arabia appeared to be a particularly negative example. Complaints were voiced in several interviews with NGO representatives that OWWA staff at the embassies urges Filipinos not to take legal action against exploitative employers (Kessler, et al. 2008). Besides public protest, what are the political opportunities structures for migrant representatives to influence the policies of the POEA and OWWA? In principle, migrant workers are represented in the governing boards of the two agencies, but whenever a new appointment is announced there is a huge debate among migrant organisations about their legitimacy (see also Agunias June 2010: 52). A council that promises a more inclusive approach was formed in 2001 by then-labour secretary Patricia Santo Tomas: The Consultative Council on Overseas Filipino Workers (CCOFW). It was perceived as a permanent advisory board that brings together the government agencies concerned, migrant NGOs and other civil society organisations. The goal was to provide regular feedback on public policies, programs and services, but, as the former director of the Scalabrini Migration Center (SMC) and CCOFW- member Fabio Baggio stated in 2008 “for the past six years, the CCOFW has been experiencing some hardships and NGOs repeatedly complained about their insufficient involvement in the decision-making process regarding policies and programs concerning overseas Filipino workers” (Baggio 2008: 123). In the second half of 2008, the CCOFW had undergone some form of revival, mostly as a response to the new regulations that had been introduced and were challenged by migrant organisations. Among those discussed were the minimum age and wage, issues of health insurance and a highly controversial suggestion by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to introduce a mandatory psychiatric test for female domestic workers. This proposal was a result of several cases in destination countries with a high number of domestic workers like Jordan or Lebanon, where the migrants had tried to kill themselves or their employers. While the Philippine government of the time considered potential psychiatric problems to be at the source of these incidents, migrant organisations pointed to abuses and the vulnerability of domestic workers. There was also disagreement on several other topics. When interviewed, POEA deputy administrator of general administrative and support services Carmelita Dimzon, who had been with the POEA since 1982 and had “seen how the overseas employment program has grown, has expanded, has metamorphosed at was it is today”, was unable to comprehend that

73 opposition to the minimum wage did not only stem from the receiving countries but also from some domestic workers: “It is quite ironical that we are doing this for the protection of the workers, but the workers go out in the street and say this is anti-deployment. Because they say, why are you increasing it to US$ 400 US$, you are depriving us of this employment opportunity, see, they cannot understand it. They rather get US$ 200… ” (Interview with Carmelita Dimzon, POEA 21 August 2008)

There was little opposition to this issue raised among migrant organisations, but some of them had issues with the age limit. The debate highlighted the fragmented nature of the migrant organisations. As Dimzon reported, “It was also the NGOs who said they should be older, they are more mature, emotional mental stability and all these things. The other board members agreed so they came up with that policy. But then some other NGOs members came and said can we just reconsider 25, so there was another meeting and it went down to 23. I think they are happy now with 23.” (Interview with Carmelita Dimzon, POEA 21 August 2008)

Edwin Corros, who had worked for 10 years with migrant workers in Taiwan before returning to the Philippines, was among the supporters of the 25-year-age-limit. According to him, most of the migrants who came to the Catholic Church for help because of physical and sexual abuse had been very young. Apart from being emotionally unprepared, they also lacked the skills those migrants aged 25-years or older possessed, which heightened the danger of their abuse. For that reason he also supported the new assessment. As a result, he was also critical of the debate, since “even before the package came up, there was already a consultation that was done by the government with other NGOs. It was only after it was published into the open that particularly many of our left-leaning groups who are also working with migrants are starting to actually lambasting the package when it was already discussed in an earlier consultation. For us, since we lobby the same, we were also somehow betrayed; It has become rather a political issue. […] Their political agenda, you come to realize, is simply to tackle this government in order to take over.” (Interview with Edwin Corros, ECMI 8 May 2007)

Clearly, Corros does not want to be associated with the “left leaning groups,” a label that refers to the members of the “grassroots cluster” (see chapter 7). He explained that some of his caution derived from experiences he had earlier made with members of the cluster while being in Taiwan, underlining the transnational component of this division, i.e. political

74 experiences which were made abroad have an influence on advocacy back home addressing the situation of migrants home and abroad. Instead, Corros is affiliated with the Philippine Migrants Rights Watch (PMRW), an alliance formed in 1995 and being constituted of a fluctuating membership (sometimes due to disagreement on advocacy issues): none of these organisations are members of the “grassroots cluster,” several belong to the “NGO cluster” (see chapter 7). But the ECMI does not want to be affiliated too closely with either of these clusters, and rather positions itself in the group of the “non-aligned”: Some of us cooperate rather with church groups than with others. Because then you don’t carry other’s hidden agendas, because you know exactly you identify as a church than being infiltrated by other groups, where we are not sure, what colour they represent.” (Interview with Edwin Corros, ECMI 8 May 2007)

This fragmentation of civil society and migrant representatives poses some challenges for the governments, since it makes selecting which groups to talk to and how to assess their legitimacy rather difficult; on the other hand it could be seen as a strategic advantage, since the government may play one group against the other, or at least the government does not need to fear a strong, unified voice speaking for the sector. Who is allowed to participate in the CCOFW then? Carmelita Dimzon describes the government’s approach as follows: “We allow them to participate. But of course, we know who are the genuine ones and who are not the genuine ones. We do not have a system of accreditation. We cannot say, OK, your organisation is the best and this is the worst. We are not in a situation to say that publicly. So, all of them who have been registered as an NGO, as a foundation and who have an advocacy to fight for, we welcome them. But of course, as I said, we know who are the real ones and who are the not so good ones.” (laughter) (Interview with Carmelita Dimzon, POEA 21 August 2008)

In sum, it can be said that the Philippines have formulated a more coherent and comprehensive migration policy than most other sending countries But no matter how “sophisticated” one considers the migration governance of the Philippine nation-state, at its core is a “full blast market development effort”, as AO 247 frankly put it. The labour brokerage is a direct result of the failure to provide adequate development at home. This failure is glossed over with a rhetoric of “national heroes” – “Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes”, as Guevarrra’s study on the transnational production of Filipinos as migrant workers is entitled (Guevarra 2010). Besides the rhetoric, in some cases there seems to be an actual sense of pride of the “high value” of OFWs, that Dimzon uses to praise in front of employers: “If I am invited to speak before this group, I tell them: Hey, you have to pay more for quality. You consider

US$ 400 too much? But for that you can get a Filipino worker!” (Interview with Carmelita Dimzon, POEA 21 August 2008) In sum, at the “home front” some exchange is indeed taking place with NGO representatives through the on-off CCOFW. Migrant organisations also try to lobby elected representatives or form an alliance with party-lists (see chapter 7). There are also congressional hearings where migrant representatives are consulted. I was able to attend a congressional hearing on 28 February 2006 where Ellene Sana of the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA) gave a statement with regard to the situation of Filipino migrants in detention and death row in Saudi Arabia. At least under the Arroyo administration, the attitude behind Philippine government policies seemed to have been more defensive than inclusive. And while the outsourcing of the recruitment process to private agencies might have increased the efficiency of the deployment, this has also opened the doors for severe cases of abuse.

The migration industry In the late 1970s, the Philippine state realised that it did not possess the capacities to handle the placement of OFWs all by itself and allowed private recruitment agencies to be established. In the early 1980s, the Philippine Government made a temporary attempt to limit the involvement of private agencies. Only a few years later, this strategy was reversed: not only were new firms allowed, but the minimum requirement for annual placements was reduced from 400 to 200 workers per agency. This can be interpreted as a sign of market saturation to which the state did not respond by advocating stronger concentration in the sector, but instead with a relaxation of requirements. This relaxation led to a further increase in the number of agencies. The original policy of achieving a state monopoly of the migration process thus switched from the selection of workers and the creation of jobs by “government- to-government contracts” to the ad hoc and de facto deregulation of the sector that continues up to the present day. Agencies that have infringed the law may have their licence temporarily or permanently revoked. Often, though, all they have to do is pay a fee: the POEA does not have enough staff to effectively monitor the agencies (Agunias October 2008). On the POEA website, migrants can check whether their potential agency is accredited. This list also serves to inform potential employers abroad. Agencies that have been recognised as “excellent” or “top performers” owing to their previous work are highlighted on this website. Once employers have found an agency, they turn to the POLO at the nearest Philippine embassy or consulate. In principle, the employer pays for the costs of the recruitment, the transport etc. and at the time of research the “placement fee” an agency could charge from the OFW which

76 had been limited to one month’s salary was entirely abolished. But in reality, before as well as after that measure there were numerous reports that overcharging was a common practice. Representatives of the recruitment agencies naturally take a different view towards this criticism and they complain of being treated as scapegoats by the NGOs. In an interview, Victor E.R. Fernandez, JR., President, and Elsa U. Villa, Vice-President of the Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc. (PASEI) complained about the over-regulation of the sector and the hostile attitude of the government towards them (Interview Victor E.R. Fernandez, JR., President, and Elsa U. Villa, PASEI 17 March 2006). The representatives of the brokers regularly issue warnings that the Philippines are about to lose their competitiveness to other countries because of too much regulation – for example to Indonesia which is seen as “a viable source of domestic labour because its local agencies do not face any state-mandated placement fee ceiling that limits the amount of fees they can collect from placing applicants” (Guevarra 2010: 103). Since there is no limitation of the placement fee, Indonesian agencies are seen as having the opportunity to partner with a greater number of brokers on the “other end” of the migration process: Being based in the destinations they find employment for domestic workers and their fees are often covered by the placement fees. But the message the representatives of the migration industry were mostly trying to get along in the interview, was to highlight the amount of benefits they provide for the workers and that those non-mandatory measures were superior to strict regulations. One of those benefits was the Associations’ Workers Welfare Enhancement Program (WWEP), a insurance program, denominated in US$, for OFWs which they considered to provide better and faster protection and assurance compared to the OWWA program, for which they had to enrol the workers mandatory and at their expense. Another program was offering negotiations and mediations replacing litigations in cases of conflicts – usually between migrants and their employers abroad – in order “to move the cases forward faster” (Interview Victor E.R. Fernandez, JR., President, and Elsa U. Villa, PASEI 17 March 2006). Based on the list of benefits the first program indeed seemed to exceed the OWWA offers, which are of a fairly low volume. Both programs are clearly in the spirit of deregulation, aiming to substitute mandatory by voluntary or at least not state-regulated measures. Another PASEI measure was to declare the years 2005-2015 as the “Decade to Eradicate Illegal Recruitment” – certainly a worthy goal with the added benefit of shutting down competition that has a comparative advantage by not adhering to the mandatory regulations. While certainly not all agencies can be accused of overcharging and violating standards, migrant organisations in their daily work usually have to deal with the “black sheep” and thus are prone to take a hostile stance towards “the migration industry” as a whole. One

notable exception highlighted this rule: The story of Jun S. Aguilar, President and CEO of the Filipino Migrant Workers Group (FMWG). According to Aguilar, this is the only group where former and present OFWs have set up their own agency. The group does not charge any placement fees but collects those exclusively from the employers. Aguilar underlined that “we have sent thousands of workers to the Gulf States, we did not have any case filed against us, no single case of repatriation, not a single cent charged from the workers” (Interview with Jun S. Aguilar, FMWG 14 August 2008). The group originated in Saudi Arabia, where Aguilar worked for 13 years as an OFW. He was exposed to exploitation right from the start: In 1985, he paid 12,000 PHP to an agency for placement in Saudi Arabia. Arriving for departure at the Manila airport he had to sign a blank paper in order to receive his passport and flight ticket. When he wanted to collect his first salary in Riyadh, he was presented a signed statement that he owed money to the agency – an often-reported practice of exploitation. Aguilar decided to stage a protest against the agency and complained to the labour attaché in the Philippine embassy in Saudi Arabia. His protests were successful as was his career as a mechanical engineer and marine engineer. What places him in a transnational political space is his decision to not just start a business after his return but also to become politically active. As head of the Filipino Migrant Workers Group he is a member of the above discussed CCOFW and in close contact with several groups from the “non-aligned” and the “NGO cluster.” With the latter and with FMWG members abroad he lobbied jointly for the introduction of overseas absentee voting. He also started a new party – the “Party of the Global Filipino” Partidong Pandaigdigang Pilipino (PPP). Frustrated with the party-list system (to be discussed in chapter 7) and the fragmentation and polarisation within the migrant community, he initiated a party with offices based not only in Manila but in several countries abroad: “We have so many NGOs, yes, but these are bits and pieces – only a national party representing the sector as a whole can have the necessary clout” (Interview with Jun S. Aguilar, FMWG 14 August 2008). This success has not materialized yet, and in the 2010 elections – instead of running – the PPP endorsed two senatorial candidates and a party-list25. In 2011, several migrant organisations discussed nominating Aguilar for the POEA or OWWA board, but he chose to support two other candidates26. Thus, he continues his agency on various levels – but not within PASEI, where he served as one of the director before leaving the association in 2000: “My objective was very clear, I joined them because I wanted to weed out the misfits in the industry, there are so many bloodsuckers out there –

25http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/05/18/10/ofw-groups-land-middle-and-lower-party-list- rankings 26 Source: Discussion in the yahoo newsgroup “pinoy-abroad-forum”. 78

but I had to leave them, I felt I could not reform them.” (Interview with Jun S. Aguilar, FMWG 14 August 2008) This overview has shown that as a country dependent on money sent home from abroad, the balance between rights, regulations and remittances in the Philippines is a delicate one. When the president herself declares a goal of one million deployments or more per year, government bodies like the POEA or OWWA may think twice before issuing deployment bans or stronger regulations, since this could reduce the number of OFWs and remittances. Warnings of the recruitment agencies that the Philippines may be losing its competitive edge because of too many regulations might have similar effects. There is some space provided for engaging the migrant sector, and in the CCOFW the migrant organisations were shown to have actually exerted some influence, but the council is plagued by several problems, among them irregular meetings and questions of representation and legitimacy of the actors involved. Still, the way the political-legal framework in the country is organised is often seen as a model – by international organisations, other sending states and in some cases even by migrants from other countries. When Philippine activists are confronted with the demand of migrants from other countries, namely that their home states should provide similar provisions, they see it as a case of “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king.” The following section will provide an overview of a sending state that in many regards falls under the category “blind”.

6.3. Comparison: Indonesia – a case of “bad practice?”

Besides the Philippines, Indonesia27 is the main exporter of workers in South-East Asia and one of the largest countries of origin for international labour migration (Sukamdi, et al. 2000: 3). This is a fairly recent trend. State-regulated international labour migration in Indonesia dates back to 1979 when the export of 100,000 labour migrants over a period of five years was included in the national development plan. Since then, there has been a significant increase: the latest available figures provided by the government speak of 680,000 Indonesian labour migrants (called Tenaga Kerja Indonesia or TKI for short) who left the country in 2006, which corresponds to an increase of more than 350 per cent since 1994. For 2008, the estimated figure was 800,000, and as in the Philippines, this figure was to be increased to at least a million per year.

27 Parts of this overview are based on Rother 2010c. 79

Also like the Philippines, the majority of the migrants are contract workers in low- skilled occupations and the contract duration is 2 years as well. The feminisation of migration is even more obvious than in the Philippines: in 2006, some 80 per cent of the migrants leaving Indonesia through official channels were women. The female migrants are mainly employed as domestic workers in the private sector in SouthEast Asia and the Middle East and as caregivers and nurses in Japan, Europe and the Middle East (Findeisen 2008: 336). There are several gender-specific characteristics in the migration process: Women who intend to work abroad require the written consent of a male head of the family and there is a general attitude of patronisation by government institutions and agencies. Male labour migrants, on the other hand, can migrate more easily and are mainly employed in agriculture, the construction industry and the transport system in countries like South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. There is also permanent migration, mainly of workers in skilled occupations who settle in OECD countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. These migrants include students as well as well-trained workers (mainly to Australia) and marriage migrants (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) .2008: 20). According to estimates, about four million undocumented migrants currently live abroad (Tirtosudarmo 2009: 25), while the ILO estimates the number of irregular migrants as being at least two to four times as high, with Malaysia being their main destination. Official remittances in 2007 were estimated at 6 US$ billion (Tirtosudarmo 2009: 26). Although the official foreign currency transfers from abroad only constitute a small proportion of the GDP, the remittances by labour migrants play an essential role in offsetting the balance of payments (Findeisen 2008: 338). Also, the per capita remittances per migrant are significantly higher than the average labour wages in Indonesia (Sukamdi, et al. 2004: 149). But most foreign currency is brought into the country through unofficial channels. Migrants often bring their savings back to Indonesia in person when they return at the end of their contract abroad. This strategy carries some risk, because at the point of return migrants are often treated as “cash cows” at the infamous “Terminal 3” at Sukarno Hatta airport in Jakarta. Officially, this terminal was introduced to provide better services for the migrants, but in reality, it has become a place of extortion, where a wide range of actors from government officials, police officers and bank employees to bus drivers try to extort money from the returnees (Sukamdi, et al. 2004: 157, Rother 2008: 14). For example, if migrants want to return to their home town, they are collected at the airport by go-betweens and taken back to their villages at high cost. This exploitation is state-sanctioned: In May 2005, the Ministry of Labour and Transmigration passed a law that forbids migrants’ families to pick up their returning

relatives from the specially designed Terminal 3, claiming that this was a measure of protection. Several governmental institutions are involved in the process of labour migration. Since in 2004 the Law on the Placement and Protection of Migrant Workers was introduced, migration affairs have mainly been the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour and Transmigration. Beyond this, Presidential Decree No. 91 dating from 2006 created the National Agency for the Protection and Placement of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI)28, which is not assigned to any ministry, and charged it with handling the sending and protection of migrants (Findeisen 2008: 354). The agency is to ensure that migrants have direct access to information, to advise them and examine documents (Asian Migrant Centre (AMC) 2007: 17). However, according to Riwanto Tirtosudarmo from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, rivalries and a lack of coordination exist between the National Agency for the Protection and Placement of Indonesian Migrant Workers and the Ministry of Labour. In the course of the decentralisation process, more competencies are now to be given to local government offices in the regions, which would reduce the influence of the National Agency ((Tirtosudarmo 2009: 35). Internal rifts within the national agency pose further problems: While the director was externally recruited, the majority of employees came from the administration, chiefly the Ministry of Labour. There is also a consortium of ministries, the BKPTKI, which has been tasked with labour migration since 1999. BKPTKI stands for Keanggotaan Badan Kordinasi Indonesia (Coordination Authority for the Placement of Indonesian Migrant Workers)29. No major initiatives appear to have been undertaken by BKPTKI so far. Moreover, the member departments (e.g. the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment) pursue sometimes conflicting interests. In the destination countries, the immigration offices, the Indonesian embassies and the consulate generals are responsible for data processing, migrant support and advice. In practice, the large number of institutions often leads to a lack of coordination and transparency between the ministries, especially between the Ministry of Labour and the National Agency (Tirtosudarmo 2009: 35). Migrants who have emigrated via government-controlled channels are supposed to be supported in the destination country by the Indonesian embassy, the consulate general and private agencies. But in interviews with migrants and migrant organisations there were

28 National Agency for the Placement and Protection of TKI - Badan Koordinasi Nasional Penempatan dan Perlindungan Tenage KerjaIndonesia – Bekornas PPTKI. 29 The BKPTKI consists of 11 institutions: Department of Labor and Transmigration, Department for Foreign Affairs, Department for Internal Affairs, Department of Justice, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Religion, Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Ministry of Police Force. The Policy Department and the Governor of Bank Indonesia are also involved in the migration process. 81

complaints that very little support was provided and the attitude was rather one of control than of assistance (see also: (Wee/Sim 2004). The limited agency migrants, especially women, possess in the migration process is highlighted by a so-called one-door exit system, as described by Sim (Sim 2009: 55). Female migrants in particular are not able to travel to the selected countries as free and independent employees. Instead, besides the required written consent by a male head of the family, the entire legal migration process is channelled and monitored by a large number of private recruitment organisations (PJTKI or PPTKIS)30, the Indonesian Government and private entrepreneurs (Wee/Sim 2004: 169). The Indonesian Government obliges all potential migrants to register with licensed private recruitment agencies (Sukamdi 2008). This places labour migrants under the protection of these agencies with regard to training and placement. There is also a risk of the recruitment agencies forming cartels. Tirtosudarmo assesses Indonesian migration policy to be geared towards the interests of the political and economic elite, and towards achieving two objectives: to reduce unemployment as a potential source of social unrest and to increase state income indirectly by means of remittances and directly by a number of state fees (Tirtosudarmo 2009). One main problem appears to be the lack of monitoring of the entire migration process, especially of the agencies in Indonesia and the country of destination. In addition, Indonesia is known for widespread corruption at the national as well as the local level (von Luebke 2009). The threat of extortion when returning to Indonesia has been described above, but in the case of domestic workers, the most severe exploitation often happens before they actually leave the county: according to Sim, “debt bondage mostly affects Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong because it is systemic and built into the structure of labor export from Indonesia. The debts that Indonesian women workers bear are “incurred” in Indonesia.” (Sim 2009: 51) This is to a large part due to the role of the recruitment agencies.

The migration industry in Indonesia The fact that the dominant form of migration out of Indonesia is irregular migration could be considered as a rational choice on behalf of the migrants: they perceive the official channels to be more complicated, more expensive and not necessarily less exploitative. In practice, migrants, who usually originate from the West, Central and East Java regions and from East Nusatenggara, are made aware of the possibility of migration by informal go- betweens (referred to as cajos). These initially act as mentors and sponsors for the migrants,

30 PJTKI - ‘Perusahaan Jasa Tenaga Kerja Indonesia’: National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers. 82

most of whom are women aged 21 to 35, to facilitate their transport to one of the private recruitment agencies and to initially pay for this transport.31 The migrants then have to pay back these services at a high interest rate from their subsequent wages (Hugo 2002: 169). Article 34 of Law No. 39/2004 on the Placement and Protection of Migrant Workers specifies that migrants must be informed about the recruitment process, the relevant documents, their rights, the situation, conditions and risks in their destination country (International Organization for Migration (IOM) 2010). Information is to be provided on the one hand in “holding centres” in which migrants wait for their documents and for domestic workers at training facilities, usually called camps, run by the private recruitment agencies. There are also three-day orientation seminars organised by the government (Zulbahary 2005:6). Despite ministerial decree No. 07/2005 “On the Standard of Holding Centres for Intending Indonesian Migrant Workers”, the women are often kept for a disproportionate time and under difficult conditions at these 300 or so training camps, often in remote locations and under the pretext of preparing them properly for migration (Ford 2005:10)32. After often spending months, or up to as much as 2 years (!) at the training camp, and before actually migrating, the women have to pass practical and theoretical tests at the camp, participate in an orientation seminar on handling household appliances and prove they have the required foreign language skills. Some of them are also employed as cheap labour in their own country and are not allowed to see their families for months or leave the camp. According to Eni Lestari, an Indonesian migrant activist in Hong Kong – and leading member of the “grassroots cluster,“ this training can take the form of “a brainwashing, where you have to give yourself in” (Interview with Eni Lestari, ATKI/AMCB/IMA 3 September 2008).33 She herself had to stay for “only” 5 months but she knew of many fellow migrant domestic workers who had to stay for a year or longer. The morning sessions usually consisted of language training, which Lestari considered useful, while the afternoon had lessons on cleaning, taking care of elderly or cooking Chinese food. Lestari criticized that the training included several aspects that where not applicable in Hong Kong. And while some minimum knowledge on cultural aspects or using electricity was provided, “they tell us more on how to be a good maid, how to obey. For example, if you did not attend class you will be punished, you have to clean the whole dormitory by yourself, it is really

31 The minimum age for migration is 21 (UU39/2004). However, this is often circumvented by issuing counterfeit passports. Younger women can therefore be recruited (Rudnyckyi 2004: 418). 32 A report on the conditions at such holding centers can be found at: http://www.caramasia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24 33 Rudnyckyj also quotes a migrant domestic worker using the term cuci otak, an expression for brainwashing. (Rudnyckyi 2004: 419). 83 a punishment. They make these rules for us to suffer. Many get bored or start to rebel or get injured when they try to jump over the fence.”(Interview with Eni Lestari, ATKI/AMCB/IMA 3 September 2008) Lestari was surprised to learn that this form of training had caught the interest of many other governments in the region and that even the Philippines were now trying to copy it (with the new POEA guidelines), so part of her advocacy aims to “exposing this scam.” This is because costs of these preparatory measures, transport and documents are later deducted from the women’s wages, depending on the length of their stay at the camp, the destination country and employment contract (Findeisen 2008: 343)}. Due to these regulations they incur substantial debts, in some cases leading to what Sim considers “debt bondage” (Sim 2009). In the case of Hong Kong, Indonesian migrant domestic workers have to relinquish seven whole monthly wages for a contract duration of two years, which corresponds to 34 average monthly wages in Indonesia. According to ministerial decree No. 157/2003, the migrants must be insured by their local employers. In reality, the insurance that covers cases like household accidents, sickness and death, has to be paid before they go to receiving countries or in the form of wage deductions. (Zulbahary/Elanvito 2006: 22-23 (no page numbers provided in document)) While the examination of the Philippine migration governance has revealed several points of critique, the assessments of the Indonesian approach in the literature and policy reports as well as among the migrants and their organisations interviewed were – in comparison – unequivocally negative. Not only does the state not succeed on preventing exploitation, it apparently also takes part in the systemic extortion of fees from the migrant workers. According to Sim, Indonesian migrants view private sector agencies as “extensions of state bureaucracy with suggestions of an overlap of public and private interests in labor export from Indonesia” and feel “that they are held hostage to a system, which has little incentive in serving their interests”, while Indonesian migrant activists view “their government as their worst enemy” (Sim 2009: 71). In the following section I will discuss how this group of migrants has arrived as “newcomers” in a migrant destination where Filipinas had already been a long-established group: Hong Kong, where the different status of these two groups has also resulted in different levels of exploitation.

6.4. Hong Kong – the “global city” as the cradle of Philippine migrant activism

Among the Philippine labour migrants (of both sexes), Hong Kong continuously ranks as the second most popular destination, with Saudi Arabia being the first. As of August 2008, there was a total of 252,000 domestic workers total in Hong Kong, making up the lion’s share of the migrant workers in Hong Kong (Email correspondence with Miss S.M. Lai, Labour Department Hong Kong 17 September 2008). About 49 per cent (124,300) of them were from the Philippines and 48 per cent (120,500) from Indonesia. The remaining domestic workers came from Thailand, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Singapore. This number of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong marks a decrease of 30,000 compared to the peak in the mid-1990. It is no coincidence that this decrease began at the same time that Indonesian labour migration started to take off and began to rise from close to zero in the mid-1990s to the present numbers. In this thesis, I argue that Hong Kong has been established as a “hot spot” for migrant organizing and processes of diffusion. But for these processes to happen, the political-legal framework has to provide at least certain political opportunity structures. Although the case of Jun Aguilar made reference to some form of organizing in Saudi Arabia, in authoritarian states it would simply not be possible to organize as publicly and on the same scale as in Hong Kong – much more so for domestic workers. So how is it possible then that the Special Autonomous Region (SAR), which is neither a democracy nor a fully sovereign state, nevertheless provides several of these structures for an often marginalized group like migrant domestic workers? In a historical analysis, Elizabeth Sinn describes early Hong Kong as a “space of flow,” where “a combination of factors created a free, open and safe environment to facilitate through movement” (Sinn 2008: 13). For modern-day Hong Kong, Nicole Constable has described the socio-historical context of the former British colony as a postcolonial “global city” and a “neoliberal space of exception” (Constable 2009: 162). Even after the handover of the former colony from the British to China in 1997, efforts are made to maintain the liberal image of Hong Kong as „Asia’s World City“. Aihwa Ong sees the SAR as an on-going experiment for the permission of certain freedoms in a capitalist environment (Ong 2006: 110–13). Compared to the city-state of Singapore, where migrant domestic labour is excluded from labour rights and the right of assembly is not granted to migrant workers, Hong Kong provides migrants with more space for activism. Thus, basic democratic rights like freedom of speech, the right to assembly and the right to organize and the possibility to take legal action in case of abuse or breach of contract are granted. But these are strictly separated from citizenship rights – a provision that distinguishes migrant domestic 85

workers from the “highly skilled” expats who can obtain a certain status after several years in the SAR. Migrant domestic workers are hired on the basis of 2-year-contracts which can, in principle, be renewed infinitely. As a result, it is not uncommon for them to stay for more than a decade, sometimes even two, in Hong Kong, but they still remain “permanent temporary migrants” without any chance to change their status34. This distinction between highly skilled migrants and domestic workers would be much harder to maintain, if the latter were recruited from mainland China. While it is not official policy, this need for a distinction can be seen as one of the main reasons why the former crown colony has resorted to the “import” of domestic labour from abroad for more than 30 years. Another reason – given off the record by interview partners – was the fear of intermarriage once mainland domestic workers had entered the SAR, again making it hard to deny them the right of residency. Thus, entry- and exit rules are very much at the heart of this decision, combined with specific traits ascribed to Filipinas as being docile and perfect helpers and possessing excellent English skills. The start of hiring domestic workers from abroad (the term commonly used in Hong Kong is FDH – Foreign Domestic Helpers) can be dated to the first half of the 1970s. There was increasing demand for domestic workers for several reasons: For once, the supply of local domestic labour was decreasing since young women began to prefer factory work or, later, employment in the service industry to the traditional role of a live-in domestic worker in a private household. As a result, the remaining amahs (Chinese maids) became too expensive – and apparently too self-assured – even for well-off Hong Kong families. Nicole Constable describes how from the 1970s onwards there had been a strong sense among potential employers that the amahs were “not as good as they used to be” and quotes an editorial from the early 1970s complaining that the few remaining local domestic workers were “money- grabbing, unscrupulous and downright difficult”, had become increasingly particular about the sort of work they were willing to do and interfered in the child-raising of young families (Constable 2007: 28–29). But at the same time the supply for these services was running short, while the demand for domestic workers was increasing because of the rising employment rates of married women (Constable 2007: 24ff). These developments can be seen as part of the international division of reproductive labour; reproductive labour is defined here as “the labor needed to sustain the productive

34 A recent ruling that allowed a Filipino domestic worker in Hong Kong to apply for citizenship gave the impression that this policy may change: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15090597 But representatives of Hong Kong migrant organizations that I consulted at the Swiss GFMD in November/December 2011 expressed their conviction that this was just the beginning of a long juridical process and unlikely to lead to major policy changes. 86 labour force. Such work includes household chores; the care of elders, adults, and youth; the socialization of children; and the maintenance of social ties in the family.” (Parreñas 2001: 61ff) By taking over these chores, migrant domestic workers enable both parents to take up a profession. As a result of the migrants – often parents themselves – being abroad, usually family members or local domestic workers are taking over this reproductive labour in the home country, leading to the aforementioned transnational care chains. For Parreñas, this division of labour “is a structural relationship of inequality based on class, race, gender and (nation- based) citizenship. In this division of labour, there is gradational decline in worth of reproductive labor.” (Parreñas 2001: 73) Rothman has poignantly questioned the commonly used terminology by pointing to the different categories assigned to reproductive labour: "When performed by mothers, we call this mothering...; when performed by hired hands, we call it unskilled." (Rothman 1989: 43) Apart from being subject to discrimination and their labour being considered to be of lesser worth, domestic workers often find themselves in a very vulnerable position, since they mostly work in the private space of the household. This is noticeably the case in Hong Kong, where – unlike the few remaining local amahs – migrants are exclusively employed as live-in domestic workers. For 6 days of the week they are expected to be working in the household of the employer or on “stand-by”, resulting in a high workload: In the survey for the “democratisation through migration” project, among the 166 Filipina return migrants from Hong Kong the average number of hours worked in a week was a staggering 78 hours (Kessler, et al. 2008: 56). In an email correspondence, Miss S.M. Lai from the Policy Support and Strategic Planning Division of the Labour Department, Labour and Welfare Bureau, provided an overview of the Hong Kong government’s stance towards migrant domestic workers. She stated its aim “to strike a reasonable balance between employers’ and employees’ interest in a way which is commensurate with the pace of Hong Kong’s economic and social development” and that “The Government has always considered FDHs a valued part of Hong Kong’s workforce, and recognizes their significant contribution to the society. This explains why Hong Kong is one of the few places which grant equal and full statutory labor rights and benefits to migrant workers including FDHs, regardless of their nationalities.”(Email correspondence with Miss S.M. Lai, Labour Department Hong Kong 17 September 2008)

Apart from these statutory provisions, migrant domestic workers are further protected by a Standard Employment Contract which sets out key and mandatory employment terms. Among those are wage levels not lower than the minimum allowable wage (in 2008 3,580 HK$ 87 per month), free accommodation, free food (or food allowance in lieu), free medical treatment and free return passage. While there are on-going negotiations about a minimum wage for local workers in Hong Kong, at the time of research migrant domestic workers were actually the only sector for which a minimum wage had been set. Lai also stressed that the Hong Kong government did not tolerate any abuse or exploitation of migrant workers. The Labour Department provides a range of free services to which the migrant workers have full access, including conciliation service for migrant workers having labour disputes with their employers. She stated that, like local workers, migrant workers also have equal access to justice. Thus, any aggrieved migrant worker may seek redress through legal proceedings if his/her statutory rights are infringed and may be granted legal aid if he/she meets the eligibility criteria. Translation services are to be provided for both civil and criminal proceedings. Since migrant domestic workers enjoy the same employment rights and benefits under the labour laws of Hong Kong as local workers, in case of infringement of these rights they can approach one of the ten branch offices of the Labour Relations Division of the Labour Department for advice and assistance, including free conciliation service. If migrant domestic workers and their employers cannot resolve their dispute through conciliation and the domestic worker decides to pursue her claim further, the conciliation officer will refer them to the Minor Employment Claims Adjudication Board (for claims not exceeding HK$ 8,000) or the Labour Tribunal (for claims exceeding HK$ 8,000) for adjudication. Under its ordinance (Cap. 25), the Labour Tribunal may transfer a case to the Court of First Instance of the High Court if it considers appropriate to do so. In case the employer still fails to pay wages or other payments, domestic workers can approach the Legal Aid Department for assistance in petitioning for bankruptcy against the employer. Furthermore, migrant domestic workers, like local workers, can apply for the Protection of Wages on Insolvency Fund if their employers become insolvent and cannot pay them wages. Also like local workers, under the Employees’ Compensation Ordinance migrant domestic workers are entitled to a package of benefits in the case of work‐related injuries. If a domestic worker sustains an injury or dies as a result of an accident or prescribed occupational disease arising out of and in the course of her employment, her employer is liable to pay compensation including general sick leave payment for temporary incapacity, lump sum compensation for permanent incapacity, medical expenses and/or funeral expenses. Among the further social services offered are counselling opportunities and four refuge centres for women (three run by NGOs and one by the Social Welfare Department) serving victims of violence. Domestic workers are also eligible for 10 weeks of paid maternity leave if they have

been employed for not less than 40 weeks immediately before the commencement of scheduled maternity leave and employers face substantial fines if they dismiss a pregnant helper (Hong Kong Labour Department June 2011). Once more, this policy stands in marked contrast to the approach in destinations like Singapore where pregnant domestic workers have to leave the country unless they take an abortion on the quiet.35 The government also undertakes efforts to make migrant domestic workers aware of their rights. One of these efforts is, e.g., a special guidebook that is distributed at the airport, offices of the Labour Department and the Immigration Department, which is where the domestic workers apply for their identity documents after arrival in Hong Kong (Home Affairs Bureau July 2011). The guide is updated annually, provides a wide range of information including contact details of several migrant organisations and is available in seven languages, namely English, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Thai, Hindi, Nepali and Urdu. Further guides include “A Concise Guide to the Employment Ordinance”, “Practical Guide for Employment of Foreign Domestic Helpers – What Foreign Domestic Helpers and Their Employers Should Know” and “A Concise Guide to the Employees’ Compensation Ordinance”. There is also a publicity video for domestic workers and exhibitions including panels on their rights and benefits are organized at their meeting places. Miss Lai sums up the government approach as follows: “The Government fully recognises the contribution of FDHs to Hong Kong, and in this connection, we endeavour to accord them the same and equal statutory protection as local workers. We do not tolerate any exploitation of FDHs, and will continue with our effort to ensure that their statutory and contractual rights are fully protected. We will step up our efforts in educating both the helpers and employers on their rights and obligations. Enforcement and prosecution actions will be taken against unscrupulous employers and employment agencies. We will continue to adopt a responsive, caring and compassionate, yet impartial approach in providing redress for aggrieved helpers.”(Email correspondence with Miss S.M. Lai, Labour Department Hong Kong 17 September 2008)

This overview shows that the approach the Hong Kong government takes towards migrant domestic workers is marked by adherence to the rule of law, fairly specific regulations, information campaigns and, as repeatedly stated in the communication, a general expression of appreciation. Since these policies are indeed more advanced and “enlightened” than those of most other migrant destination countries in the region, one is inclined to ask why it was

35 See http://www.healthxchange.com.sg/News/Pages/100-pregnant-maids-sent-home-a-year.aspx 89

Hong Kong that turned out to be the cradle of Philippine migrant activism. The reasons for this development can be found in the political opportunity structures provided, the intrinsically transnational nature of Philippine migrant activism (the first protests in Hong Kong were actually direct against the Philippine government, see chapter below) – and the instance that, all the provisions notwithstanding, there are still issues of contention remaining. The first issue is the minimum wage. While it is considered attractive by Philippine standards (above the salary of a university professor back home) and its rough equivalent of US$ 400 was the reference which the POEA based its minimum wage regulation on in the new guidelines, it gave rise to protests nevertheless because of the way it is determined. As Miss Lay diplomatically phrased it: “Employers are required to pay their FDHs wages not lower than the MAW [minimum allowed wage] (currently set at HK$3,580) set by the Government. The Government reviews the MAW regularly. In accordance with the long‐established mechanism for reviewing the MAW, the Administration takes into account the prevailing general economic condition and employment situation in Hong Kong, as reflected through economic indicators which include the relevant income movement, price change and labour market situation.” (Email correspondence with Miss S.M. Lai, Labour Department Hong Kong 17 September 2008)

In other words, there is no process of negotiations involved and the wage may be lowered as well as raised on very short notice. At its highest point in 1998, the wage was at HK$ 3,860. But when the Asian financial crisis hit the region, the government decided to reduce the wage to HK$ 3,670 and in 2003 the wage was further reduced to HK$ 3,270. After that the wage was incrementally increased again to HK$ 3580 in July 2008; currently, for standard employment contracts made on or after 2 June 2 2011, the applicable minimum allowed wage is HK$ 3,740 per month. In addition to the wage and the fees for agency, October 2003 saw the introduction of the Employees' Retraining Levy, commonly referred to as “levy”. This levy amounted to HK$ 400 - “coincidently” exactly the amount by which the minimum wage had been decreased just before – and was used for “retraining programs” for local women to become “local domestic helpers”. Some of these women were recent mainland immigrants or had once worked in manufacturing jobs (Constable 2007: 36). The introduction of the levy was a response to growing resentment towards foreign workers among the Hong Kong population. Measurements were also increased to prevent “moonlighting” by foreign domestic workers – referring to the practice of illegally working for more than one employer and thus competing with local domestic workers who usually work on an hourly basis and not as live-in.

The introduction of the levy was highly controversial – not just among migrant domestic workers, who took to the streets, but there were also critical statements in newspaper editorials and from politicians and the issue was brought to court. But when the levy was finally waived, this decision turned out to become even more controversial. In July 2008, Sir Donald Tsang, Chief Executive and President of the Executive Council of Hong Kong, presented an "extraordinary measures for extraordinary times" package, part of which was the temporary waiver of the levy. He announced that the levy would be waived for a 2-year period on all domestic workers employment contracts signed on or after 1 September 2008 and would not apply to on-going contracts. This led too much confusion amongst domestic workers and employers with the latter starting to terminate contracts (which can be done with one month’s notice and without giving reason) in order to benefit from the waiver. The measure was widely scorned in the press with an editorial in the South China Morning Post calling it “farcical.”36 The negative reactions notwithstanding, a further suspension of the levy from two to five years (now encompassing the years 2008-2013) was announced. The case of the levy demonstrates how even a non-democratically elected government is tempted to give in to perceived or factual popular sentiments when it comes to the issue of migration. Measures like the wage-decrease or the levy suspension are announced without any form of prior consultations with the migrant sector. There is one body that brings together migrant organisation and government representatives: the “Ethnic Minorities Forum” which was established in July 2003. As Shirley Chan from the Race Relations Unit, Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, communicated by email, its objective is “to maintain dialogue with representatives of the ethnic minority community and non‐ governmental organisations active in provision of services and/or promotion of equal opportunities for ethnic minorities. It meets quarterly and provides a platform for exchange of views on matter of concern/interest relating to the ethnic minorities.” (Email correspondence with Shirley Chan, Race Relations Unit 27 August 2008)

But migrant organisations and the government side have different expectations of the forum. As one migrant activist formulated this difference in an off-the-record statement: “They want to talk about cultural events, we want to talk about rights.” Shirly Chan acknowledges this discrepancy but ascribes it to the mandate of the forum: Membership is open to all ethnic minority groups and the members are free to suggest items for discussion. According to our past experience, most migrant groups were

36 Editorial (31 July 2008). "Time to end farcical levy on domestic helpers". South China Morning Post. pp. A14. 91

primarily concerned about the labour laws or labour relations which are beyond the purview of the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau. In such circumstances, we either referred the questions to the Labour Department or invited an official of the Labour Department to lead the discussion in the forum. So far, most participants regarded the forum is able to bring to the Government's attention the difficulties and aspiration of Hong Kong's minority communities.” (Email correspondence with Shirley Chan, Race Relations Unit 27 August 2008)

There may be one more reason why the Hong Kong government found it hard to negotiate about the levy with the migrant’s organisations: As in the Philippine example of the POEA guidelines, migrant organisations did not present a unified position on the issue. On the contrary, positions were sharply split, and the dividing line ran exactly across the cleavage between the “NGO cluster” and the “grassroots cluster”. While the minimum wage debate may be considered a standard issue in labour relations, the second point of contention has more fundamental implications: the New Conditions of Stay, commonly called “two-week-rule”, which refers to the most controversial term. The by now not-so-new conditions had been implemented on 21 April 1987, and they can be considered the first major cause for migrant advocacy directed towards the receiving government in Hong Kong. They have stayed high on the advocacy agenda ever since. Up until their introduction, migrant domestic workers had the chance to change employers within their first year of employment. A primer released by the United Filipinos in Hong Kong (UNIFIL-HK) migrant organisation sums up the conditions as follows: “A change of employment will not be allowed in the first two (2) years of the employment contract.

Those who break their contract will not be allowed to submit a new and valid contract before they leave Hong Kong.

When a FDH contract is terminated, she will be allowed to stay in Hong Kong for at most two (2) weeks.

As a matter of policy, if the contract is not completed, the FDH should process a new working visa from the country of origin.” (United Filipinos in Hong Kong (UNIFIL-HK) April 2001)

The reasons given for the introduction were similar to the ones given for the levy – to protect the local labour force and to prevent “job-hopping and moonlighting.” As UNIFIL-HK points out, the Two-Week Rule was a matter of policy decided by the Governor (since at the time of introduction Hong Kong was still a British colony) and applied by the Immigration 92

Department. It was not a law passed through the normal legislative process with any debate, for instance, in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) (United Filipinos in Hong Kong (UNIFIL-HK) April 2001). While the administration claimed the measure was also to the benefit of the migrants – i.e. providing greater stability of employment – the main result was increased insecurity and vulnerability of the migrant domestic workers and a way of denying them their “right to abode” in Hong Kong (Wee/Sim 2005: 189–91). Obviously, as a result of this rule domestic workers will be very reluctant to report abuses in fear of having to return home prematurely. Employers can fire them with one month’s notice for any reason, which provides abusive and exploitative employers with an unjust leverage. There are a few exceptions in cases of severe abuse, but the burden of proof lies with the migrants. Migrants might also be uncertain if the employer will have to pay for their return fare and especially on the first half of their contract they will be afraid that they have to return before they have earned enough money to cover the costs of migration. Considering the excessive fees charged by some of the agencies, the migrants may have to return with high debts instead of the income they hoped for (Lee/Petersen 2006). Furthermore, in case the migrants decide to take legal action, they are not entitled to any compensation during this period and are dependent on welfare and accommodation in one of the shelters provided by migrant and church organizations. Wee and Sim also point out an unforeseen consequence of the “two-week rule”: an emergence of increasing numbers of illegal migrant workers who stay longer than the two weeks because they are unable to find an employer in this time-span but are unwilling to return home in debt, where they will hardly be able to start a new contract to return to Hong Kong (Wee/Sim 2005: 190). Thus, the “two-week rule” foils many of the well-intentioned policies and declarations by the Hong Kong government. In the interviews and during a visit to a shelter, migrant organisations reported a wide number of abuses: emotional abuse, rape, physical harm as in being burned with a hot iron etc. (Visit and interview with staff and occupants of a shelter for distressed migrant domestic workers 23 May 2007) These may not be the rule, but they are not an exception either based on the number of cases that have been reported and the demand for shelters as “protected spaces”. Besides abuse by the employers, there is also a form of exploitation where the agencies are involved: the practice of “underpayment and overcharging”. There are marked differences between the two dominant groups of migrant domestic workers when it comes to exploitation: A study carried out by the Asian Migrant Centre (AMC) found that 93 per cent of the Philippine domestic workers in the survey were able to take at least four days leave every month (usually every Sunday), as guaranteed by the Hong Kong government, but only 56 per cent of the Indonesian were able to do so.

Indonesians are also subject to high charges by the agencies – most of them pay the equivalent of 7 months wages, so for almost the first third of their contract they work to pay back the agencies. This has obvious consequences for the attitude towards complaints and reporting abuse: If an Indonesian domestic worker runs into problems with her employer after the first 4 months, she would clearly be hesitant to take measure, because of the fear of having to return home without a cent earned, a debt to the agency equalling 3 months’ pay and maybe even the costs for the return flight to shoulder. While current regulations in Hong Kong state that no more than 10 per cent of a migrant worker’s first month salary shall go towards paying a recruitment fee, the fees approved by the Indonesian government are often deducted in monthly instalments totalling 90 or even 100 per cent of the monthly wage: “So, not only do the excessive agency fees promote underpayment of workers but they are in violation of Hong Kong law. Unfortunately, the government of Hong Kong does not actively investigate and enforce this law. Instead they require a worker to come forward and report the violation to them while the violation is occurring.” (Asian Migrant Centre (AMC) 2007) Besides this overcharging there is also the common practice of underpayment. A 1999 survey by the AMC found that an exorbitant 90 per cent of Indonesian migrant domestic workers were paid less than the minimum wage. (Asian Migrant Centre (AMC) 2007: 27). This percentage dropped to 42 in 2005 and to 22 per cent in 2007, which might have been due to increased organising and awareness-raising among the Indonesian migrants. Although representative numbers are hard to come by, there was wide consensus in all interviews conducted about the situation in Hong Kong that the Indonesian migrants were more vulnerable to exploitation and that the respondents in their day-to-day work encountered significantly more cases of abuse among Indonesians compared to Filipinos. A 2001 survey by the AMC came to the conclusion: “The cross-tabulation reveals that the Indonesian FDHs are the worst-affected by wage violations: almost 48 per cent of them are underpaid. This problem is low among Thais (less than 4 per cent), and almost unnoticeable among Filipinos (less than 1 per cent) (Asian Migrant Centre (AMC) February 2001: 27). As cynical as it sounds, the fact that there is a greater potential for exploiting them may actually be among the reasons for the rapid increase in the number of Indonesian domestic workers. When turning to the representatives of their home country, Indonesians are also less likely to expect help but are rather treated with an authoritarian attitude. As Ford observed “there is no labour attaché position even in major receiving countries and the Indonesian government has a very patchy history of advocacy on behalf of migrant workers who experience difficulties overseas” (Ford 2005: 12). The attitude and neglect is well-documented in the research by Sim who also provides proof for unofficial agreements between the

94 consulate and local agencies (Sim 2009). This can be seen as a continuation of the highly problematic public-private partnership between government of and migration industry as discussed in the section on Indonesia above. There is also a continuing narrative of efforts to keep migrants docile and obedient. It starts in the training camps in Indonesia, as Eni Lestari reported: “It is brainwashing by imposing certain values and removing any kind of confidence. You are told that you should be a maid, never say no, if you have any problems abroad, call your agency, don’t call anyone else, you will not get help and most importantly don’t be friends with Filipinas because they don’t like Indonesians - we are so many now and they think you are overtaking their job.”(Interview with Eni Lestari, ATKI/AMCB/IMA 3 September 2008)

This appeal to be obedient is not only made by the private recruiters but apparently also by institutions of the Indonesian state. According to several NGO interview partners in Hong Kong, Indonesian migrants are allegedly brought straight to the embassy after their arrival, where they are actively discouraged from getting into contact with NGOs – and Filipinas – considered as “troublesome.” As a reaction to this practice, representatives of the International Social Service (ISS) in Hong Kong try to get into contact with the Indonesian migrants straight at the airport before they go through immigration in order to inform them about their rights (Interview with Representative ISS 5 September 2008). In other words, they try to protect the Indonesian domestic workers from the discouragement by their own government. Again, in comparison the Philippines fare significantly better although their services offered were considered far from ideal by many respondents. According to a Philippine NGO representative, interviewed in March 2007, deployment to the Philippine consulate in Hong Kong is seen as especially challenging among diplomatic staff – not because the relations with the SAR are exceptionally strenuous, but because the staff is under the permanent scrutiny of the outspoken and well-organized fellow Filipinos. Fittingly, when meeting up for an interview, the consulate staff gave a somewhat defensive impression. When being told that my previous contacts had been mostly NGOs, the labour attaché remarked “we are not as bad as they might have told you” and referred me his assistant, who gave me an overview of the services on offer. Many of these services evolve around the issue of labour disputes. The consulate has a 24-hour-hotline – with many calls being received at night-time when the distressed domestic workers finally have some time off. When a formal complaint is received, the OWWA invites the parties involved, namely the domestic worker and the placement agency. The OWWA then 95 offers a conciliation process, a voluntary mode of settling disputes leading to a settlement rate between 97 and 98 per cent: “We are not pressing both parties, but most domestic helpers want to settle it here and get their money before they go back to the Philippines.”(Interview with assistant labour attaché Philippine consulate Hong Kong 23 May 2007) In fact, during the course of the interview one domestic worker came into the office to formally end one such dispute and confirm that she would make no further claims. Obviously, this is the preferred solution for the consulate and migrants may be as eager to close the case, but usually the outcome of the settlement is that the domestic worker only gets part of the outstanding wages. Otherwise the consulate endorses the complaint at POEA: “If there is no settlement we report the issue back to Manila because the problem originates in Manila.” (Interview with assistant labour attaché Philippine consulate Hong Kong 23 May 2007) Among the further services that are offered are a post-arrival orientation seminar at the end of each month and the provision of a shelter for distressed migrant domestic workers. Regarding negotiations with the Hong Kong government, the consulate naturally has to take a diplomatic stance. There is no bilateral agreement between the Philippines and Hong Kong and the assistant labour attaché found it unlikely that one might materialize in the future – “maybe with China instead”. Pressed for the problems Filipinos might encounter in Hong Kong, the interviewee conceded that the “non-security of tenure” which was caused by the “two-week rule” was among the main problems. As with the POEA interview, the interviewee expressed some form of pride about her fellow Filipinas: “They are very smart, very hard working - that are the traits the employers want” (Interview with assistant labour attaché Philippine consulate Hong Kong 23 May 2007). She conceded that working as a domestic worker in Hong Kong often did not match the skills of the migrants, since “most of the OFWs here are actually teachers,” but this “waste of talent” was only temporary since many of them were planning to move onwards to another place like Canada or Europe. Regarding the plethora of migrant organisations, she stated that the NGOs were seen as partners and that there were constant consultations. On the other end, Cynthia Tellez, Director of the Mission for Migrant Workers (MFMW) and one of the longest-serving migrant advocates in Hong Kong, acknowledged that “the relationship is very civil, but we are expecting more because we know they can do more, they have the resources, although they say we don’t have the resources, can you help us, which is a shame…” (Interview with Cynthia Tellez, MFMW 13 March 2007)

6.5. Summary/Discussion

The above overview of the role of the respective governments of the Philippines, Indonesia and Hong Kong as well as the role of the Philippines and Indonesia in Hong Kong has shown that the state certainly matters in the creation of transnational political spaces. The two major groups of migrant domestic workers present in Hong Kong have come to the SAR not by coincidence or by agency alone, but because of the political-legal framework established by their states of origin. The clear differences in status and migration experience of the two groups are also due to the political and, although one has to be cautious with generalisations, cultural differences in their home states. What both groups have in common is that they are migrating because their countries of origin fail to provide them with sufficient employment opportunities and economic prospects. Both countries have also established channels for legal migration. But the Philippines have a longer tradition of exporting labour, promote employment abroad more actively, if not aggressively, use a rhetoric of migrants as “national heroes” and have established a “culture of migration” (Asis 2006) which makes migration seem like a natural choice and part of everyday-life and discourse. While I am aware of the pitfalls of generalizations, the social background of the domestic workers makes a difference as well: often university-educated migrants from the Philippines that go through the migration process in relatively autonomous manner may bring more social capital with them to Hong Kong than female Indonesian migrants from poor rural areas who require the written consent of a male head of the family. Although not a high-profile source, this quote from the website “Pacific Business News” she some light on the differences: In a short piece from 5 September 5 2004, entitled “Could Indonesian maids replace Filipinas in Hong Kong?” it is reported that “The [labour] ministry unofficially confirms that there [is] some sentiment in Hong Kong that maids from democratic nations are harder to manage than maids from other societies.”37 This particular difference is reinforced by the policies of the respective nation-states. As discussed above, Indonesian migrants are discouraged in a transnational manner from making use of their rights: first in the training camps back home, next upon arrival in Hong Kong through the consulate and once more when returning through the infamous “Terminal 3” where patronizing policies and regulations are enacted. This strategy of discouragement goes hand-in-hand with efforts of extraction and exploitation, for which, by all accounts, the Indonesian state and the “migration industry” form an unholy alliance.

37 http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2004/09/06/daily3.html Ironically, at present Indonesia is the only fully democratic country in the region according to the Freedomhouse report. 97

In comparison, the Philippine state shines brighter by having established several institutions and legislations catering to migrants (or to their export, as critics might argue). By placing OWWA representatives and labour attachés in major countries of destination, the state also reaches out to its citizens abroad. The introduction of overseas absentee voting might also be seen as one such measure, although it is a highly bureaucratic and complicated process. During the time of research several new policy measures – the new POEA guidelines – were introduced, but their assessment differed significantly: While the state promoted them as measures for protection, migrant organisations complained about their involvement being a case of too little, too late and questioned the motives behind several of the measures. Still, the Philippine government offers some form of consultation mechanism in the home country as well as in the destination, which may be plagued by irregularity and its non-binding nature, but allows the migrant organisations some influence as was demonstrated in the case of the age limit. Negotiations are further complicated due to issues of legitimacy and representation of the migrant sector and the divisions therein. In contrast to the Philippine approach, Amy Sim describes a meeting between migrant organisations and the Indonesian consulate in Hong Kong which was supposed to be an exchange about the high placement fees but ended in a “standoff”: “In their assessment of the meeting, migrant leaders were of the opinion that the outcome was due to the Consulate’s inability to engage in truly consultative and democratic bilateral discussions. As an observer, it seems to me that the Consulate has yet to realize that they dealing with migrant activist leaders who have expectations of how a dialogue should be conducted among equals.” (Sim 2009)

In both countries, the migration industry plays a significant role in the migration process and the de facto migration experience. For Indonesia, the delegation of duties to private agencies goes so far that Sim considers it an “outsourcing of governance” (Sim 2009: 63). After early attempts by the state to manage the migration process by itself, the Philippines have also decided to let the private sector handle it. Ever since, the degree of regulation remains a contested issue among migration industry, migrant organisations and the state. In theory, there are several reporting mechanisms for abuse and the licences of the agencies can get revoked, but in practice disputes between migrants and agencies are often settled with no further consequences for the industry, and fees in case of misconduct are comparatively small. As any professional body, the service exporters lobby for their cause by calling for deregulation and voluntary measures and consider themselves discriminated by the government and wrongly accused by migrant organisations.

The approach that Hong Kong takes towards migrant domestic workers is strongly influenced by the tradition of the British legal system and bureaucracy. Several rights, measures of protection and labour regulations are open to migrants, and the government representatives contacted for this research repeatedly stated that the same rules apply to migrant and local workers alike. An issue that was not addressed during the communication is the discriminatory practice that leads to a de facto two-class society of migrants: the “highly- skilled” expats who can work their way towards resident status and the migrant domestic workers which may come from skilled professions as well, but enter Hong Kong with a status that provides them with hardly any chance to change its temporary nature. Worse, the new conditions of stay deny migrants the “right to abode” and put them in an even more vulnerable position. The way that these conditions and other measures like the minimum wage or the levy came into existence are also testament to the non-democratic nature of decision-making when Hong Kong was still a British colony, as well as nowadays in the Special Autonomous Region. Consultations with migrant organisations are limited, while on the other hand the administration deserves credit for its information campaigns and services offered. In chapter 2 I have discussed the limited attention International Relation studies have so far given to migration studies. When looking at the cases discussed here, which certainly deal with an international issue, it is remarkable how little international relations in the sense of state-to-state interactions are actually involved. There are no bilateral agreements or even MOUs between the sending countries and the destination. There are also very little reports of regular consultations between the sending state governments or their representations with the Hong Kong government. One exception where migration and bilateral relations got intertwined was the Hong Kong reaction to the May 1998 riots in Indonesia: Reports that ethnic Chinese women were raped during riots in Jakarta in mid-May led legislators in Hong Kong (and Taiwan) not only to threaten the cut-offs of development aid, but also to thread of the expulsion of Indonesian migrant workers.38 But these threats did not become policy. Likewise, the Manila hostage crisis on 23 August 2010, when a tour bus was hijacked by a former Filipino police officer and eight Hong Kong tourists were killed, led to fears of retaliation amongst the domestic worker community in the SAR. But on a political level the discord between the two governments mostly focused on the poor performance of the Philippines police and government (Yan 2011). Thus, there is fairly little bilateral interaction taken place between sending countries and destinations, but even less so on a multilateral level. There is however a forum for sending

38 http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/reports98/indonesia3/intro.htm 99

countries in the region: The Colombo Process, a Regional Consultative Process (RCP) on the management of overseas employment and contractual labour for countries of origins in Asia. The first Ministerial Consultations for Asian Labour Sending Countries were held in 2003 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, bringing together the first ten participating states Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.39 The IOM- supported process is informal and has since then met in Manila, Bali and Dhaka in 2004, 2005 and 2011. But the assessment POEA Senior Representative Dimzon gave in 2008 was fairly sceptical: “But in the end, you know, whatever we have agreed, sometimes it is not complied with. For the example, we as the Philippines suggest to make the minimum wage of 400 US$ mandatory. But then the representative from Colombo says: Oh, we allow 120 or 150 US$. Why? Because the conversion from the US dollar to the Rupiah of Sri Lanka is higher at that time. Sometimes we suggest a common information base, for example in case of bad employers, but other countries are not honouring such blacklists. You know the problem here is, it is not binding, it is not legally binding you don’t have a superbody that oversees this, and that makes sure, that the Philippines complies, or that Indonesia complies. It is more a matter of goodwill, a common understanding among this states that have the same interests. So we always sign it… [the declarations, S.R.]” (Interview with Carmelita Dimzon, POEA 21 August 2008)

As a result, sending countries may have to look for other strategies beyond common diplomatic relations. One strategy would be to take indirect measures and for the nation-states to become transnational actors themselves. Since the billiard ball analogy has been used to criticize the traditional view of international politics in IR, in which nation-states touch each other on the very outsides like billiard balls, with governments as the only actors involved and other potential actors marginalized, this strategy could be compared to an indirect shot of a billiard ball.40 For example, the Philippine government cannot influence to labour politics and wages in Saudi Arabia and may not enter into formal into negotiations about this issue. But by setting a minimum wage of US$ 400 for migrant domestic workers it can target the agencies or employers in the destination country. In the Saudi case, the Philippine government also set the minimum income required from applicants for domestic workers three to four times as high as the requirement set by the Saudi government, thus actually surpassing a regulation set by the receiving country (Bello 9 February 2011: 26). This, of course, still poses the challenge how to effectively monitor if this wage is actually being paid.

39 http://www.colomboprocess.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48 40 Unfortunately, the German expression „über Bande spielen“ has no direct translation. 100

This example does not apply to the Hong Kong case, since the wage paid there was used as a model for the minimum wage, but the Philippine government nevertheless influences labour relations and the migration experience of their nationals in Hong Kong indirectly by the regulation of the agencies, measures like the new POEA guidelines, healthcare provision, training and assessment requirements and the above-mentioned consultations with its citizens and the introduction of absentee voting. It can also react to abuses happening in Hong Kong by holding the Philippine partner agency responsible. When mapping out my concept of transnational political spaces, I referred to the centrality of actors, as pointed out by Pries, which do not necessarily have to be exclusively migrants. This chapter has shown that the nation-states and the migration industry play a significant role in the creation of these spaces. What is transnational about their roles, what is political and what is the spatial dimension? The agencies are transnational actors since they have branches or partners in the region countries; hence, they are physically present in specific places in both sending country and destination, but their action in one place can also affect what happens in the other. This becomes even more apparent when looking at the Indonesian example, where government representatives may join in acts of extortion and, as Eni Lestari put it, “brainwashing”, which can lead to a transnational exploitation of the migrants. On the other hand, agencies in Manila may be held responsible for abuses that happened in Hong Kong. This can be seen as a first indicator for the spatial dimension because the positional characteristics of the actors involved are of relevance. If one accepts the notion that nation-states can become transnational actors as well, then the Philippine state is one such actor. Its regulations influence citizens living abroad, and their conditions – and advocacy, as shown in case of the CCOFW case – may also have an effect on legislation made at home as well as for elections. Legislation and elections also serve as indicators for the political nature of these interactions that go beyond the social ties migrants keep with their home country as is the focus of the transnational social fields approach. This dimension is reinforced by the specific nature of the emigration analysed in the case study above, the latter being almost exclusively of a temporary manner, since migrants have no choice other than returning to their country of origin. Regarding the destination of the migrants, there is a transnational component since the government has interactions with a significant number of people on its territory that are not its citizens and who experience their employment or cases of exploitation on its territory in ways that are influenced by the politics of the sending state and the transnational migration industry. On the side of the destination, regulations made by the government in Hong Kong

101 may also affect the home countries of the migrants, i.e. a decrease of the minimum wage will also lower the amount of remittances sent to families back home. The destination may also provide political opportunity structures for migrants which they may use to address politics in their home country. While all these examples undermine the “container model” of the nation-state by demonstrating that politics, people and territory are not exclusively bound to each other anymore, this still does not make the states involved “de-territorialized” nation-states. Rather, states still exert a major influence over their territory, but this relationship is not exclusive anymore (regardless if it ever was): they may make politics for their citizens living in another territory and the actions of those citizens may have an effect on their home country. Vice versa, nation-states may accommodate non-citizens on their territory, whose advocacy is directed towards their home state. Thus, based on the cases examined so far, transnationalism adds a new dimension to the relationship between nation state and territory but does not make it obsolete. Still, when looking at the research questions I posed at the beginning of chapter 4, it becomes clear that several of those have been only partially answered or even unanswered. Regarding the structure of transnational political spaces, states may play a distinctive role through their labour export/import policy and regulations, but this particular observation does not provide a sufficient answer to the question of how transnational political spaces are constructed and maintained. The questions regarding the impact of transnational political spaces have only been answered regarding the potential for a state to become a transnational actor. The same is true regarding questions about diffusion or institutional isomorphism; while the interest of other countries in the way the Philippines manages migration may be an example for these processes, based on the analysis so far, this will likely take place outside the transnational political space in question here. The next chapter therefore broadens the scope of analysis and will examine the actor that has so far been only peripherally addressed peripherally in the research: the migrants themselves and their organisations or civil society organisations working on their behalf. These actors from below – as opposed to the state being an actor from above - will be the focus of the next chapter.

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7. The migrants and civil society

7.1. Political space in the Philippines: Party lists, civil society and the split of the Philippine left During the period in which most of the research for this thesis was conducted, the political climate was dominated by controversies over President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, commonly referred to as GMA. Her presidency, which Paul D. Hutchcroft has termed “the Arroyo imbroglio” (Hutchcroft 2008), was marked by almost constant allegations of fraud and corruptions, scandals and crises. The political climate at the time is well summarized by this quote which still only mentions some of the controversial issues41: “Over the course of her seven years in office, an already crisis-prone democracy has faced an unusually high number of travails, including an uprising by the urban poor that nearly breached the walls of the presidential palace on May Day 2001; a botched military mutiny in July 2003; corruption scandals involving the first family; allegations of presidential involvement in fixing the 2004 elections; a failed coup-attempt-cum- popular-uprising in February 2006 that led to the declaration of emergency rule; concerted attacks on the press; an alarming spike in extrajudicial killings; impeachment attempts in 2005, 2006, and 2007; two major bribery scandals in 2007, one involving the chief election officer and the other, brazen cash payouts from the Palace to congresspersons and governors; and a November 2007 bombing at the House of Representatives that killed a notorious warlord congressman from Mindanoa.” (Hutchcroft 2008: 141–42)

Consequently, the rejection of, sometimes even the contempt for GMA was a constant theme in the interviews with migrants and migrant organisation, no matter which “cluster” they belonged to. Her presidency was seen as a danger to the already fragile state of Philippine democracy. The return to democracy had started in 1986 with the ousting of President Ferdinand Marcos in the “People Power” Revolution and the democratic election of Corazon Aquino (Wurfel 1988, Timberman 1991, Thompson 1995). But twenty years later, the day of the People’s Power Revolution anniversary, 22 February 2006, was marked not by celebrations but by demonstrations and the declaration of a state of emergency by the government. These measures were criticised by former President Aquino in a speech given the same day in the streets of Makati, Manila.

41 For example, there was a further impeachment attempt in 2008. 103

These short-lived measures were introduced by GMA who was serving her second term at the time. This is uncommon, since the constitution of the Philippines states that “The President shall not be eligible for any re-election. No person who has succeeded as President and has served as such for more than 4 years shall be qualified for election to the same office at any time.”42 But the former President Josef Estrada, whom she had served as Vice President, was forced to step down in January 2001 with less than 3 years in office and after massive street protests called “People Power 2” (Landé 2001, Hutchinson/Tordesillas 2001, Hedman 2006). As a result, GMA had served the remainder of his term and was elected in May 2004 to serve her own 6-year term. There were suspicions during this term that she was aiming to stay in power for an even longer time by the introduction of charter or constitutional change, often referred to as “cha-cha”, which would have turned the Philippines from a presidential into a parliamentary democracy. But this change did not materialize and in June 2010, Benigno Aquino III, son of Corazon Aquino, became her successor. The allegations finally led to the arrest of GMA on November 18, 2011, when she was arrested following the filing of criminal charges against her for electoral sabotage. Aurel Croissant categorizes the Philippines as a defective democracy in a phase of stagnation; in an assessment in 2003, he saw a continued exhibition of considerable defects with respect to stateness, the rule of law, institutional stability and political integration the Philippines (Croissant 2004: 161). This assessment is mirrored in the ranking of the Freedom House Index: the Philippines were down-graded from “free” in 2005 to “partly free” in 2006, due to the declaration of a state of emergency and ”credible allegations of massive electoral fraud, the government's intimidation of the political opposition, and pervasive corruption.” Until the latest rankings in the 2011 edition, the Philippines only remained an “partly free” “electoral democracy” in the Freedom House Index, with the political rights rating improved from 4 to 3 due to comparatively peaceful and credible presidential and legislative elections held in May 2010. In a 2007 Freedom House report, Hutchcroft attested the Philippine democracy a combined “popular exuberance with the major flaws of elite dominance and institutional weakness” (Hutchcroft 2007: 1) and saw recent trends suggesting “that Asia’s oldest democracy has become increasingly dysfunctional in several important ways” (Hutchcroft 2007: 2). Among the trends Hutchcroft refers to were concerns about the competence and integrity of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), the abundance of political parties without a party system per se, the influence of money and coercion on electoral outcomes

42 http://www.chanrobles.com/article7.htm 104 through vote buying, military involvement in the killings of hundreds of leftists, activists, and church personnel as well as the undermining of press freedom by killings of journalists and a poor record of prosecuting those responsible (Hutchcroft 2007: 3). While the presidency of Benigno Aquino III is until now seen as an improvement in several regards, there are fundamental structural obstacles to a well-functioning democracy in the Philippines that have so far plagued all presidencies to varying degrees. Riedinger lists as such structural constraints e.g. acute poverty and disparities in wealth, substantial foreign debt, on-going communist and Muslim insurgencies, and a history of exclusionary politics. Due to the social configuration of the Philippines several problems arise, among them the power of regional and provincial “strong-men”, patron-client relations and personal and group identifications along regional and ethno-linguistic lines. He adds that “among the poor, dependency relations, cultural norms, differentiated interests, repression, and electoral institutions have stood as obstacles to effective mobilization and political participation” (Riedinger 2003: 178). Among these obstacles, Riedlinger sees the country’s history of exclusionary politics as one of the most important contextual features for democracy and democratic consolidation (Riedinger 2003: 179–80). For him, even in the years that were at least nominally democratic (1946-1972 before the introduction of martial law in the Philippines), politics was exclusionary in nature and being dominated by traditional regional and local elites. Until today, Philippine local politics is seen as dominated by political families and clans, with some of them exerting influence since first elections were introduced by the Americans in the early 20th century (Cuarteros 2010: 184). According to Cuarteros, from the 1998 up to the 2007 elections, provincial governors and political clan members as holders of local power have controlled 64-80 per cent of all provinces (Cuarteros 2010: 185) In the 12th Congress House of Representatives, elected in 2001, of the 214 members, half belong to established political clans, while many of the other representatives were starting power networks of their own or had close relatives in elective posts (Datinguinoo/Olarte 3-4 December 2001). Other authors attribute the democracy deficit in the Philippines also to the continuing influence of the United States who, after granting their colony independence in 1946, had almost immediately “neo-colonialized” it by other means like economic dependency, hindering an early post-war land reform that other countries in the region like Taiwan and South Korea had introduced as a foundation for a building a middle class and by strengthening the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as an ally in the fight against communism (Thornton/Thornton 2008: 58). This threat of communism was also seen to come from within, leading to the blacklisting of not only members of the Communist Party of the Philippines

105

(CPP), but also nearly all veterans of the Huk (Hukbalahap) guerrilla army, that throughout the war had defended peasants against oppressive landlords who had sided with the Japanese. Now their calls for land reform and egalitarian measures were seen as signs of socialism (Thornton/Thornton 2008). Mark Thompson argues that, similar to Thailand, the “independent” and “vigorous” bourgeoisie of the Philippines had a destabilizing impact on democratic politics43 and identifies an “uncivil society” in the Philippines (Thompson 2011: 58). This assessment refers to the controversial role of civil society in “People Power II,” which removed a populist but democratically elected president from office. The Philippines are considered to be home to one of the most active and certainly largest groups of civil society organisations in the region –more than 70,000 NGOs have been formed (Loewen 2005: 15). In her article “The Philippines – Fractious Civil Society and Competing Visions of Democracy,” Jennifer C. Franko defines civil society as “a public space between the state, political society, economic society, and private life where individuals attempt to build autonomous collective citizen engagement on different levels around issues that matter for public policy” (Franco 2004: 102). This broad definition goes beyond the scope of NGOs and other organisations, but in the Philippine discourse, civil society is regularly used as an equivalent term for these groups. The terminology is far from being well-defined, some terms are used interchangeably and putting an organisation in a certain category, i.e. calling it an NGO instead of a grassroots movement, may be motivated by a political agenda. This confusion notwithstanding, the definitions proposed by Fabros and colleagues manage to sum up the most common uses (Fabros, et al. 2006: 15): According to them, social movements are seen as being a part of – but not completely encompassing – civil society. The term social movements mostly refers to political action by poorer and otherwise disenfranchised sectors of the society. These sectors or sectoral groups can be based on class (labour, peasants), non-class (women, youth, indigenous people) and issue-based (human rights, environment, migration) formations. These organisations are generically referred to as people’s organisations (POs) or grassroots movements. In contrast, NGOs are seen as support organisations for POs and are therefore also called NGP-POs. Obviously, not all NGOs may indeed serve the people’s interests, or their competitors may accuse them of not doing so. Political blocs, finally, refer to pre-party political formations with affiliated NGOs and in some cases POs (Fabros, et al. 2006: 15).

43 In contrast, he argues that in Indonesia, where the bourgeoisie was politically weaker, democracy has become more stable. 106

Development of social movements in the Philippines The formation and relations of the two clusters I am going to analyse cannot be fully understood without some background on the development of social movements in the Philippines. The following paragraphs will point out the events that shaped the political space in which these movements are operating. Going back all the way to the situation after Philippine independence, the crushing of the Huk movement had only temporarily weakened the socialist/communist movements in the country. The socialist/communist activists became the main leaders of the nationalist movement that rose in the 1960s as a reaction to the continuing socioeconomic injustice in the country. The movement was supported by highly politicised students and its radicalisation led to the emergence of the CPP, with its leadership following the Chinese model of communism (Tadem 2006: 18). President Marcos seized the opportunity with which the growing unrest and political upheaval provided him and declared martial law on 21 September 1971. He gained the support of the Filipino middle class by promising stability and economic welfare; since he failed to fulfil his promises it is sometimes argued that “Marcos was the best recruiter of the CPP” (Tadem 2006: 24). The CPP and its mass organizations, called the national democratic (ND) movement, continued to follow the “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” ideological line and built up its own armed forces, the New People’s Army (NPA or CCP-NPA) (Tadem 2006: 29). Recruitment was especially successful among the peasant sector and in the 1980s the NPA had over 30,000 part- or full-time guerrillas under arms. To reach victims or opponents of the martial law regime who did not want to join in the armed struggle, the strategy of “united front” politics was used “to take advantage of the political opportunity presented by other emerging opposition groups; the Party set up the National Democratic Front (NDF) to act as the umbrella organization for a broad united action against the martial law regime” (Tadem 2006: 31). When the former Senator and most prominent leader of the opposition against Marcos, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, husband of Corazon Aquino, was assassinated on 21 August 1983, the movement against the dictatorship gained significantly in strength. It also led to the emergence and growth of sectoral groups, among them General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action (GABRIELA) (Segovia 2008: 90–91). The organisation was founded in 1984 after a women’s march against Marcos drew 10,000 attendants. Besides being an acronym, the name refers to Gabriela Silang, a Filipina general in the eighteenth century that led an uprising against the Spanish colonists. After Marcos had been ousted and martial law came to an end, the CPP had to find a position in the new democratic space and towards the Aquino government. When in 1986 their leader and founder Jose Ma. Sizon was released from prison, it agreed to a dialogue with the

107 government and a ceasefire between the NPA and the AFP. But this truce did not hold for long; the Aquino government and General and later president Fidel Ramos set a counterinsurgency plan in motion, including the formation of anti-communist vigilante groups as well as death squads (Tadem/Tigno 2006: 47). Further contributing factors to the end of negotiations were Aquino’s failure to deliver upon her promises of a land reform and most of all the Mendiola Massacre or “Black Thursday” of 22 January 1988, when state security forces fired upon a demonstration of peasants in front of Malacañang Palace (the residence of the Philippine president) and 13 marchers were killed. Still, there were differing views within the left, with the group of the popular democrats (popdems) aiming for a broad left front and arguing for the need to “take advantage of the current political dispensation to expand the “democratic space” (Tadem/Tigno 2006: 48). This democratic space clashed with the CPP policy of “democratic centralism” according to which the party has supremacy over mass organisations and other affiliates. It finally came to a “showdown” and split announced on 10 December 1992. This was fuelled by a document with the title “Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors”. Its author was Armando Liwanag, which was/is allegedly a pseudonym for CCP founder Jose Maria Sison, who had moved to exile the Netherlands in 1987. His supporters started to divide the party in “revolutionaries” and “counter revolutionaries” (Rocamora 1994: 107). The document was an assessment of the previous 14 years of the national democratic movement and came to the conclusion that the Party’s many problems would best be solved by the “reaffirmation” of its basic principles, like adherence to the theory of Marxism Leninism or the strategic line of encircling the cities from the countryside. The document also contained a “serious warning” against opposition: “At every level of the Party, in any organ, the central leadership must not hesitate to remove from the Party any element who is responsible for any major deviation or error but who instead of accepting responsibility continues to systematically attack the Party line or is incorrigible and resorts to any of the aforesaid tactics to deflect or defeat the purpose of the rectification process. We must also serve warnings to those elements who resort to ultrademocracy by campaigning outside of the appropriate Party channels or going beyond the bounds of the Party.” zitiert in: (Rocamora 1994: 110– 11)

This “reaffirmation” was rejected by a substantial number of members, thus leading to a split into “reaffirmists” and “rejectionists”. This split also had repercussion on the mass movements and POs, with human rights NGOs and human rights coalitions being among the worst affected (Clarke 1998: 118). Over 50 per cent of the members of the central committee 108

were expelled. In the NPA, the reassessment led to the “Second Great Rectification Movement” that ended a massive internal purge of the movement which in the 1982 and 1989 had led to the accusations – and in more than 700 cases also killings – of its members. They were accused to be Deep Penetration Agents (DPAs) working for the government with the task to infiltrate the CPP-NPA-NDF (Quimpo 2008: 77). A harrowing account of these killing can be found in former NFA fighter Robert Francis Garcia’s book “To Suffer Thy Comrades. How The Revolution Decimated Its Own” (Garcia 2001). The split was also the direct or indirect cause for the formation of several new groups and organisations (Segovia 2008: 226). The rejectionists re-examined their strategies and repudiated the Maoist tenet of the primacy of the armed struggle, opting to focus instead on other forms of political struggle, mainly the electoral struggle (Quimpo 2005: 12). This strategy was enforced when the Philippine Congress passed the Party-List System Act in 1995. Ely H. Manalansan, Jr. quotes former Supreme Court Chief justice Artemio Panganiban, according to whom the party list system was intended as “a social justice tool designed not only to give more law to the great masses of our people who have less in life, but also to enable them to become veritable lawmakers themselves, empowered to participate directly in the enactment of laws designed to benefit them” (Manalansan, Jr. 2007: 49). The Act provided that 20 per cent of the House of Representatives were to be reserved for party lists to “enable Filipino citizens belonging to the marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations and parties, and who lack well-defined political constituencies but who could contribute to the formulation and enactment of appropriate legislation that will benefit the nation as a whole, to become members of the House of Representatives”44. The first party- list vote was held as part of the general elections in 1998 with a broad participation form leftist candidates, although in recent years there had been repeated accusations of “fake partylists” being installed by the government, especially under the GMA administration. A common feature of most party lists is that they distance themselves from the highly personalized “trapo” (traditional politicians) parties and focus on issues and concerns of the masses instead (Interview with Cristina Palabay, GWP 2 May 2007, Interview with Kitt Melgar, Akbayan 10 May 2007). The split of the Philippine left is mirrored in the party list system with the Bayan coalition usually being associated with the “reaffirmists” in the communist/national democratic tradition and the Akbayan Citizens' Action Party or AKBAYAN seen as a the “rejectionist” group in the social democratic tradition (Quimpo 2008: 64/54). Bayan stands for

44 http://www.chanrobles.com/republicactno7941.htm 109

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Nationalist Alliance) and was founded by the national democrats in September 1985 (Weekley 1996: 47). Among its members is the party-lists Bayan Muna (People First or Nation First), which had gained the maximum of three seats in the elections of 2001, 2004 and 2007, but lost one seat in the 2010 election. Since a party list can win no more than three seats, it can pay out to have several party lists representing one political camp. In this regard, in 2003 the GABRIELA organisation launched its own party list and won one seat in the 2004 and two seats in the 2007 and 2010 elections each. Migrant issues, especially the situation of migrant domestic workers, rank high on the agenda of GABRIELA. The Bayan coalition has repeatedly accused the Philippine government, especially the GMA administration, to produce false accusations, demonize them and harass its representatives. For example, weeks before the March 2007 election, Bayan Muna party list representative Satur Ocampo was detained for weeks on murder charges from an alleged 1984 communist purge in Leyte45. There were also accusations that under the GMA government's anti-insurgency campaign against the NPA several members of Bayan and Bayan Muna were killed. The alliance of Filipino Migrant Associations MIGRANTE is also part of the coalition and there are Bayan chapters abroad in the United States. AKBAYAN is usually situated in the “other” camp, although the party recently published a letter on its website emphasizing: “To state that Akbayan was entirely founded by former NDF members does not capture the richness of the group’s historical experience and does injustice to the prospects and promises of post-EDSA politics. It instead paints an all-too-simplistic picture: that the rivalry between Akbayan and Bayan Muna originated from the 1992 split within the CPP, which is really not the case. That Akbayan differs from Bayan Muna is shown by their positions vis-à-vis human rights, but the glaring difference is also revealed by its various political engagements in recent years.”46

The author, Aaron Rom Moralina, Instructor at the Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University, apparently uses this distinction to emphasize that AKBAYAN was founded by several groups and individuals, among them independent socialists, social democrats, unaligned grassroots activists and ex-communists, including former members of the CPP/New People’s Army/National Democratic Front. These were “inspired and challenged by the opening of democratic space.”47 The motivation of the latter is obviously to emphasize the

45 http://davaotoday.com/2007/04/09/philippines-satur-back-on-campaign-trail-palace-afp-finally-admit-roles- in-anti-bayan-muna-drive/ 46 http://www.akbayan.org.ph/news/53-akbayan-was-not-a-cpp-breakaway-group 47 http://www.akbayan.org.ph/news/53-akbayan-was-not-a-cpp-breakaway-group 110

independency of AKBAYAN and refuse the assumption that it is a mere splinter group of the CPP. The AKBAYAN social democratic stance can also be seen in the support it receives from the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), the political foundation of the German Social Democrat Party (SPD)48 (Herberg Dezember 2006). Currently, the first representative in the Philippine House of Representatives is Walden Bello, an activist and critique of global economic policies, an academic and book author (“The Anti-Development State”)(Bello, et al. 2004) who had returned from the USA to the Philippines. He sees elections not merely as a tactical instrument to get one’s agenda across while still remaining an outside political force, but instead it aims to find a way “how substantive democracy can be pushed within the tradition of formal and elite democracy so that there is a continuation in some way, as well as having some elements of a break” (Quimpo 2005: 13). In the 2010 elections, AKBAYAN supported Aquino as presidential candidate. Bello also became Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Overseas Workers' Affairs (COWA). This overview provided some background on the scenario described in the introduction, where Bello had accused CCP founder and chief ideologist Sison in 2004 of putting him on a “hit list” for counter-revolutionary activities. Sison remains in exile in Utrecht in the Netherlands and a highly controversial figure that for several years stood on the European Union’s terrorism list until his removal in September 2009 (Werning 8 November 2009). Officially, Sison is no longer involved in operational decisions of the CCP and said to serve from Europe in an advisory position. But there are accusations of him having ordered the killings of former CCP members Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara in 2003 and 2006 which landed Sison on said list. Since the Philippines revoked his passport he cannot leave the Netherlands (hence the video message in Athens). His main political affiliation nowadays is with The International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS). He is chairman of this “international formation of more than 350 organizations from 40 countries “promoting, supporting and developing the anti-imperialist struggles of the peoples of the world”49 that has several ties to the “NGO cluster.”

48 http://www2.socdem.asia/2010/social-democratic-parties-in-southeast-asia-chances-and-limits/ 49 http://ilps.info/index.php/en/ 111

7.2. On any given Sunday: Private, public and political spaces in Hong Kong

The transnational political space for migrant activism of which Hong Kong is part of includes several specific geographical spaces. This becomes very obvious if one approaches Statue Square in Hong Kong Central on any given Sunday: The atmosphere resembles “Little Manila”. Thousands of Filipina migrant domestic workers spend their weekly day off to gather on the square as well as in the shops and on the footbridges surrounding it. They sit on newspapers, eat home cooked food, play cards, exchange gossip – and may join a demonstration. The public space provides the Filipinas with the weekly opportunity to become visible. During the week they may go shopping for their employers or bring their children to school, but most of the time they remain in the private and, as was discussed above, vulnerable space of the household. Living conditions in Hong Kong are usually cramped and the rooms provided for the live-in domestic workers are often accordingly tiny. If the employers live in the suburbs of the “new territories” this may heighten the sense of isolation, although the advent of mobile phones and the internet provide some form of social interaction. Statue Square, on the other hand, provides the Filipinas not only with the opportunity for personal interactions and social gathering but is also surrounded by a service industry catering especially to their needs. The nearby shopping mall, appropriately named “World Wide Plaza”, is cramped with Filipinas waiting in line to transfer remittances, buy Filipino food – or send home “balikbayan boxes” – these "repatriate boxes" are filled with gifts for families back home, can be sent at reduced rates and are exempt from taxes upon arrival in the Philippines. The gatherings are held in the spirit of a tambayan (Filipino slang for „hang-out-spot”) but are not as informal as it might seem to the outsider. When Filipinas enter the space, many “prefer to meet individuals coming from their own ethno-linguistic region in the Philippines, who speak the same dialect and most often have the same acquaintances back home” (Peralta-Catipon 2009: 33). They form a small peer group, barkada, which is marked by a unique social structure with specific roles – i.e. seasoned domestic workers becoming mentors for newcomer and providing them with advice (Peralta-Catipon 2009: 35). While as such Statue Square has been established as an important and much-needed social space, it is not without irony that this development is by no means the result of a planned policy and historically the Square had by no means been a democratic space. Rather, as Lisa

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Law demonstrates, from the late nineteenth century onwards it was considered a space for elite, Western men and, up until the end of World War II, the Hong Kong Club positioned there banned membership to “women, foreigners and anyone of ‘unsuitable background’ (including Jews)” (Law 2002a: 1630). Until the early 1980s, the area was mainly a space of traffic busy with cars and foot traffic on overhead pedestrian walkways. But when in 1982 the administration decided to close off the area for traffic on Sundays, the growing Filipina migrant community quickly occupied this newly opened space. This development was not met with enthusiasm by many residents who objected to the visibility of this group of servants and wrote letters to local newspapers complaining about noise and littering. As a consequence, the administration tried to erect barriers and there was a proposition that the domestic workers should rather congregate in underground car parks (Law 2001: 272) – making them invisible again. But this did not happen and by now Hong Kong residents seem to have arranged themselves with the situation. Although it is not officially promoted as such, the administration may see the Sunday gatherings as a cosmopolitan sign of being “Asia’s world city” and travel guides like the “Lonely Planet” have started to refer to the phenomenon and provide a brief background. (Stone, et al. 2008: 50) Thus, besides the legal system etc. the political opportunity structures In Hong Kong include a literal space for migrant activism. When the number of Indonesian started to grow, they began to establish their own gathering point – Victoria Park in Causeway Bay, located near the Indonesian consulate. The gatherings of the migrants as such may already be seen as a political demonstration – by becoming visible once a week, they show their strength in numbers and, while they may not have the right to abode, they can temporarily occupy a central public space. But from the 1980s onwards, Hong Kong Central had also become a space for political organising, advocacy and demonstrations. During my fieldwork, hardly a Sunday went by where there was not some form of political action. This may be smaller events like information booths or theatre plays where migrant domestic workers enact their situation in the household. But demonstrations are frequent as well: These may be ad hoc events, organised in response to political issues or events in Hong Kong or in the Philippines. But there is also a fixed calendar of events: International Women’s Day (March 8), Labour Day, International Migrants Day. The latter is commemorated on December 18, the date the UN adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrants Workers and Members of their Families in 1990. Filipino migrant groups were among the first who celebrated this day in 1997, leading to the recognition of the day by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 4, 2000.

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But Statue Square is not only a place of migrant solidarity but also of divisions. It was there that I became aware of the cleavages among the migrant organisations in Hong Kong for the first time: During the commemoration of International Women’s Day on March 11, 2007 (usually the Sunday following the actual date is picked), I was observing a program of speeches, music, dance and theatre organised by the Coalition for Migrants’ Rights (CMR). This was stopped temporarily, when a huge protest march approached and passed by. While many of the demands displayed on the banners seemed very similar to the ones I had just heard – scrap the two-week rule, reverse the minimum wage cut – some were more radical in nature and I was informed on Statue Square that these were “the Others”. Thus, for the first time I encountered the distance between “NGO cluster,” organizing the events on the Square, and the “grassroots cluster”, passing by.

7.3. Hong Kong-based activism

Chapter 6 has shown that it was the political-legal framework that, at least in parts, enabled or set the conditions for the political actions of the various groups. This section analyses the different actors, their particular positions in the transnational political space and how their actions may have an influence on other actors situated at other positions in this space. Besides the various positions there are also different scales at which the advocacy is directed at: The national/transnational level (destination, home country, solidarity advocacy with groups from other countries) as well as the regional/global level. Finally, processes of diffusion are mapped out as well. As stated in the methodology chapter, I used the snowball principle to map out the migrant organisations and their relations to each other. There are several ways such an analysis could be structured. One could discuss the two main clusters separately and demonstrate for each one of them how they act and interact in Hong Kong, the Philippines and beyond. Or one could look at the different places and scale shifts (Tarrow/McAdam 2005, Tarrow 2005). of activism – Hong Kong, the Philippines, global advocacy – and discuss for each of them the roles the clusters play therein. This approach may seem to clash with the transnational paradigm to a degree, which states that “container states” are not the main level of analysis anymore and that a process in one place cannot be analysed without looking at the other place(s) it shares ties with. I still have opted for the latter structure, since the order chosen demonstrates how migrant activism in the destination can have repercussions on the sending country and vice versa and how issues can move up to the regional and global level and vice versa. It also highlights the cleavages between the groups

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and how these have remained between the different levels or scales of activism – and poses the question to which degree these are issue-based and to which they are rather due to ideological and organisation differences.

7.3.1 “The “grassroots cluster”

If one needs further proof for the difficulties a country-based chapter poses opposed to a cluster-based discussion, a look at the business card of Dolores R. Balladares should be sufficient. On the front of the card, it introduces the domestic worker as the chairperson of the United Filipinos in Hong Kong – “an alliance of Filipino migrants’ organizations founded in May 1985” and of UNIFIL-MIGRANTE-HK. But when looking at the back of the card, the transnational political space in which her activism takes place starts to unfold. It lists: - Head Office: Migrante International, Cubao, Quezon City, Philippines - Local Affiliation: Asian Migrants’ Coordinating Body (AMCB) – Members from Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. c/o APMM Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR - Regional and Local Partners: Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) The Mission for Migrant Workers (Hong Kong) Society Bethune House Migrant Womens’ Refuge - Other International Network & Affiliations: International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) Marche Mondiale des Femmes (World March of Women)

If there was room left on the card, it would by now probably include a global affiliation as well: The International Migrants’ Alliance (IMA), a global migrant organisation started in Hong Kong in June 2008. Thus, migrant activism in Hong Kong has come a long way in the past 30 years. It can be traced back to the establishment of the Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers (MFMW) on 3 March 1981. The founding of the mission was a reaction to the growing numbers and growing problems of Filipino migrant domestic workers. The Mission was established as an ecumenical effort by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), a fellowship of ten mainline Protestant and non-Roman Catholic denominations, and ten service-oriented organizations in the Philippines. It cooperates with several partners in Hong Kong, among them the Resource Centre for Philippine Concerns, the Holy Carpenter Church (Anglican) and an Ad

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Hoc Committee of religious and lay persons from the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Hong Kong. The starting point for the mission was a 3-month survey in late 1980 to assess the situation of the migrant domestic workers. Cynthia Tellez came to Hong Kong for the survey – and stayed on ever since as director for the MFMW. The mission’s offices are located on the grounds of St. John’s Cathedral, an Anglican church in Hong Kong central with Statue Square being nearby. From the start, the main focus of the mission has been on organizing and empowerment. Organizing Filipinas turned out to be fairly easy since many of them had already formed organisations, often based on their home provinces50, and most attended mass on Sundays. Therefore, the team of the mission went “church-hopping” to invite migrants and encourage them to start their own group with the main objective being on advancing their rights. As a result, the first fifty domestic workers formed the Association of Concerned Filipinas. Although small in numbers, for Tellez this provided their claims with more legitimacy: “We believe that no matter how many women we assisted have been successful or victorious in whatever they wanted, it does not have much effect on government policies if they are not organised to speak for themselves.” (Interview with Cynthia Tellez, MFMW 13 March 2007) Government policies in this statement refer to the regulations of the Hong Kong administration but also to the Philippine situation since, because of the temporary nature of their migration, “the migrants are very much concerned on what is going on back home”. Thus, the advocacy in Hong Kong had been transnational in scope from the very start, and the first campaign of the newly formed organisations was directed to a political issue emerging in the Philippines. In 1982, President Ferdinand Marcos announced a decree which would have forced all OFW to remit at least half of their income through Philippine financial institutions (Law 2002: 208). Workers who did not comply with the order were threatened to not get their visas processed and thus preventing them from further migration after return. The decree was met with large opposition due to practical reasons, since these institutions were seen as inefficient by the migrants, and as a matter of principle: “The bottom line was: we have already made a sacrifice by leaving our family. We did that because the government did not provide us with decent paying jobs in the Philippines. We did our best and they want to teach us what to do with the money we earn.” (Interview with Cynthia Tellez, MFMW 13 March 2007) While the mission contacted its networks back in the Philippines in order to gather information on the decree, the Alliance of Concerned Filipino spearheaded a campaign in Hong

50 By now there are more than 300 social, religious and political Filipino organizations in Hong Kong. 116

Kong and called on other organisation to join them. In 1984, a loose alliance was formed between ten domestic worker organisations. The United Filipinos against Forced Remittance (UNFARE) addressed a statement to president Marcos, claiming: „To force us to remit is a curtailment of our freedoms and an intrusion into our private affairs.“ (Constable 2007: 160) As a response, the order was first reduced by 50 per cent and finally lifted completely on 1 May 1985. Building on the momentum of this success, the alliance was institutionalised and renamed to UNIFIL. It continued its campaigns after the democratic transition under the Aquino government and succeeded in having a customs tax imposed in 1987 revoked. The MFMW has continued its strategy of services and empowerment. Its support team handles around 1,500 cases per year – legal advice, immigration matters, support when going to offices or the court etc. They have also founded the Bethune House Migrant Women’s Refuge in 1987 to provide a temporary shelter for distressed women migrants of any nationality, with on-going cases in Hong Kong. These services can be seen as governance contributions from below, since comparable services are offered by the Philippine consulate and the Hong Kong administration only to a small degree or not at all. To acknowledge the growing diversity of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, the mission dropped the “Filipino” out of its name in 2006 and is now called Mission for Migrant Workers. This development highlights the spatial dimension of political activism since it demonstrates the importance of relational positions in transnational political space. The organizers recognized that migrants stemming from different origins but being situated in the same location may join forces to fight for common goals. But they also felt that migrants from the same origins being situated in different destinations may have a common agenda. In this regard, the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrant Filipinos (APMMF) was created through the MFMW’s effort in 1984 for the purpose of reaching out to migrant workers outside of Hong Kong. It underwent the same change of scale as the MFMM and was renamed to Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) in 2002 with the aim of building a strong movement of migrants of different nationalities in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. But the first phase was focussed on organising Filipinos based in different countries. As APMM coordinator Aaron H. Ceradoy reported, Migrante International (MI), now an alliance of 90 Filipino migrant organisations in twenty-two countries “was one of the products of APMM organising in the 1980s” (Interview with Aaron H. Ceradoy, APMM 14 March 2007). UNIFIL-HK was a member of the ad-hoc committee that started the process of the creation of MI and remains its principal partner in implementing its programs in Hong Kong. A further indicator of how these organisations form a cluster can be found when looking at the 2011 Regional Board of Directors of APMM: Cynthia Tellez (APMM) is the secretary, and the list of

117 board members includes Dolores Balladares (UNIFIL-MIGRANTE-HK), Garry Martinez (Chairperson, MIGRANTE International), Eni Lestari (AMCB) – as well as an academic who in her writings praises the cluster as a true grassroots movement, while “the others” are depicted as an example of “NGOism”. APMM is financed by the NCCP and churches in Europe, Canada and sometimes the U.S. It has established missions in South Korea, Macao, Taiwan, Japan, Australia and supported underground organizing in Saudi Arabia. Its aim is to build networks with local churches, local unions and other groups in order to establish a support mechanism for migrant workers. This service-orientated approach is combined with advocacy and organising. Ceradoy defines several levels for advocacy of the migrant movement: “They have advocacy on the Philippines and national issues that migrants face, but they also try to raise their concerns to the regional and international level.” (Interview with Aaron H. Ceradoy, APMM 14 March 2007) Since MI, formally founded in 1996 and with headquarters based in Manila, was seen to be at the forefront of organising Filipinos around the world, the “5-year-plan” by APMM in 2007 was to build a global alliance of grassroots organisations (more on the IMA below). Regarding the advocacy in Hong Kong, Ceradoy described the strategy behind it, according to which grassroots migrant organisation should be at the forefront while it was the task of the NGO to provide assistance. When it came to the relations with the consulate, the assessment by APMM was ambivalent; while there was support on issues like the wage increase, this would end as soon as the interests of the Philippine government were at stake. The strategy of the migrant organisations nevertheless is to address both sending country and destination: a migrant women’s summit organized by UNIFIL and other organisations in 2006, for example, drafted a set of demands for the Philippine and Hong Kong government. There is also cooperation with the pro-democratic (i.e. not linked to Beijing) Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) whose leadership Ceradoy considered progressive but its membership was harder to convince to support issues like a wage increase of migrant domestic workers, since among the union members might be employers as well. There was easier cooperation on the global level, when APMM and HKCTU were among the organisers of the people’s action week against the sixth WTO Ministerial Conference held in Hong Kong in December 2005. When examining the interactions and close linkages of the cluster members discussed so far, one gets the impression of a snowball effect: MFMM supported UNIFIL and founded APMM, both of which were instrumental in starting Migrante International, which operates on a global level and has its headquarter in the Philippines. This can be seen as a first indicator that takes place on an organisational level within this cluster diffusion: Concepts of how to organise migrants, the importance of self- or grassroots- organizing and the rights-based

118 perspective are developed by Filipinos in Hong Kong, exported across the region through APMM and “reimported” through Migrante to the Philippines from where they are diffused to ninety member organisations in twenty-two countries. Since the various organisations being established as a result of this “snowball process” share similar traits in their organisational form as well as their underlying advocacy, they can be considered to be a product of “grassroots isomorphism”. The third research question dealt with the issue if these processes of diffusion also have the potential of spreading political norms, ideas and cleavages. This can include political issues from the home country being diffused to the destination and even further. One indicator that such an political agenda may be at stake is the membership of Migrante in the Bayan coalition linked to the “reaffirmists” in the Communist Party of the Philippines. This affiliation also has an effect on Hong Kong, as can be seen in the strategy formulated by Ceradoy: “We explain to migrant workers who organize that the organization they are building is not only there to address the immediate situation of the migrant workers in Hong Kong. This is important, but we also need to participate in the Philippine movement in terms of having long-term changes in Philippine society. That’s why we encourage them to become members of Migrante International. We also have advocacy issues in the Philippines like the arrest of Bayan Muna representative Satur Ocampo. That is an issue in the Philippines, but we bring it here because it is part of the situation of Filipino migrant workers.” (Interview with Aaron H. Ceradoy, APMM 14 March 2007)

He criticised the arrest as part of the harassments of the party-list groups who were vocal critics of the Arroyo administration. The quote demonstrates how Philippine politics in general and a political agenda in particular are diffused within the cluster. As part of the organising, Filipino domestic workers are “explained” that while their immediate concerns are important, the main direction of their advocacy should be social and political change in the home country. Migrants are encouraged to join Migrante International which conducts advocacy for their cause in the receiving countries and in the Philippines but is also connected to a specific political camp in the home country. The example of the detainment of Ocampo sheds light on the process in which transnational political space is formed. As discussed in the theory chapter, Pries defines space as the relational position of elements that is structured by human activity. In this case, the arrest of a political ally at a specific place in the Philippines (the Supreme Court in Manila) prompts political advocacy by a collation (Bayan) in the Philippines, whose member MI is linked to UNIFIL and APMM in Hong Kong. The information and need for advocacy is communicated through the member organisations and leads to targeting the Philippine government at a 119 specific place (demonstrations in front of the Philippine consulate in Hong Kong) as well as communicating the issue by the migrants to friends and relatives back home. The transnational space in which this advocacy takes place may have been initiated through the political-legal framework, but is defined by the large numbers of domestic workers migration and refined by the organisations described which are instrumental in diffusing social capital, political ideas etc. within the space. Once established, even political advocacy that has no obvious connection to migration issues can spread through this network. This is in line with the definition by Strang and Soule according to which “diffusion refers to the spread of something within a social system” (Strang/Soule 1998: 235). The arrest of Ocampo was widely seen as being motivated by the upcoming elections. Vice versa, the reaction of the Hong Kong-based members of the cluster could also been seen in this light because they supported a member of the Bayan coalition, as Ceradoy stated: “We are actively campaigning for GABRIELA because this is the one running the migrant agenda” (Interview with Aaron H. Ceradoy, APMM 14 March 2007). The support actually went beyond campaigning – Cynthia Tellez of APMM had become a spokesperson of the newly-formed Hong Kong chapter of GABRIELA Women’s Party (GWP). She described her motivation as “having to accept that after having been with the migrants here all these years you somehow have to move faster. It was not possible ten or 20 years ago, somehow we felt it was useless to get involved with that; but you have to deal with the government somehow.” (Interview with Cynthia Tellez, MFMW 13 March 2007) Tellez saw her active position and involvement in the party’s campaign as the consequence of a longstanding cooperation. Even before the establishment of the party, the GABRIELA organisation had been supporting migrant women’s issues and the GWP had been helping the MFMW and its allies to raise issues in congress. There was also assistance in cases of rape and other abuses where GABRIELA had given the mission access to their lawyers and support network; one particular case of cooperation had been the verdict against Flor Contemplacion in Singapore. Before the endorsement of GABRIELA party list was agreed upon in 2007 there had been attempts to launch a dedicated party for OFWs – Migrante Sectoral Party. But it failed to garner any seats in the 2004 elections which Tellez ascribed to the very complicated provisions of the OAV provisions and for which she blamed the GMA administration for having no political will to let migrants exercise their votes. The example of Migrante Sectorial Party shows how OFWs have become political players engaging and sometimes physically moving within the transnational political space comprising Hong Kong and the Philippines. The density of these transnational interactions can be seen in the case of Connie Bragas-Regalado, who was, at the time of research, the

120 chairperson of MI and secretary-general of the IMA. By 2007 she had returned to Manila, but before she been based as a domestic worker in Hong Kong for 13 years. From 1994-2004, she was chairperson of UNIFIL-HK and spokesperson for the AMCB. While in Hong Kong, Connie Bragas-Regalado was appointed by the SAR Secretary for Home Affairs as a member of the Committee for the Promotion of Racial Harmony. She became also chairperson of the Migrante Sectoral Party in the Philippines and was number one nominee in the 2004 elections. After the failure in 2004, Migrante Sectoral Party was not abolished but put on hold and it was announced that in 2007, instead of running itself, the party endorsed GABRIELA for the party-list election. To proof its commitment to the migrant cause, GWP reserved one of its three seats to a migrant domestic worker. The slot went to Flora Baniaga-Belinan, a social worker, who had spent 12 years working as a domestic worker in Hong Kong where she became an MIGRANTE activist. There she also had founded Pinatud A Saleng Ti Umili (organization of domestic workers from Cordillera) and done volunteer work for a counselling institution for distressed OFWs. After her return to the Philippines she started the Migrante Chapter Metro-Baguio and became Deputy Secretary-General for external affairs of GWP. Flora Baniaga-Belinan ran an intense campaign and was involved in setting up the GWP chapter in Hong Kong, building upon her transnational networks. Hong Kong was seen as an especially promising case since it had been the site with the highest voter turnout of all OFW destinations in 2004. This was certainly helped by the comparatively small distances that have to be covered to reach the polling station in the SAR, the availability of good public transportation and the high level of organising. Still, the process remains far from being straight-forward, especially since migrants need to register in a certified voter list beforehand. The OAV provisions allow migrants to vote for twelve senatorial candidates as well as for one party list. Tellez described the challenges of campaigning, which included bringing the voters list out to the New Territories since migrant domestic workers employed there would not go all the way to Hong Kong central just to check if their names were on the list. This mobilisation and support for potential voters was undertaken by UNIFIL- HK in cooperation with GABRIELA members. Tellez complained about the consulate which had been reluctant to provide her with a copy of the voter list although it was a public document. The activists also brought the list to State Square on Sundays so that the migrants could check their registration. This service provided was combined with campaigning for GABRIELA: “We are trying to make them know what GWP is doing, the track record it has, and all the bills it has passed.” (Interview with Cynthia Tellez, MFMW 13 March 2007) Tellez also described the goal of countering “black propaganda” by the mainstream parties: In a strategy similar to the arrest

121 of the Bayan Muna representative, there had also been accusations by two women against GWP representatives of murdering their husbands. Besides campaigning, the members also had to provide some basic voter education: “We have a lot of information campaigns, explaining to the migrants that not only should they vote for GWP since we are the most active for their cause, but also answer questions like: ‘What is a party list?’” (Interview with Cynthia Tellez, MFMW 13 March 2007) A further goal was the recruitment of members; in March 2007, the GWP Hong Kong chapter had 2000 card bearing members – while the interview with Tellez was conducted, volunteers were actually laminating GWP membership cards in the MFMM offices at St. John’s Cathedral. At that time, GWP Hong Kong had five officers and the same amount of subchapters in different places in the SAR which had organised their own meetings. Although in the following May election GWP only reached two out of three possible seats, Flora Baniaga-Belinan was not elected for congress and there was a sharp decline in absentee voters in Hong Kong, GABRIELA still managed to get 52.9 per cent of the total party list votes among the absentee votes of Hong Kong. The case of the absentee voting campaigns in 2004 and 2007 provides an example of the several levels on which transnational political spaces can be constructed. As in the definition by Thomas Faist, transnational social spaces are sustained ties across borders and “combinations of ties, positions in networks and organizations, and networks of organizations that reach across the borders of multiple states” (Faist 2004: 337). The same holds true for the political dimension discussed here. On the individual level, Flora Baniaga-Belinan and Connie Bragas-Regalado had certainly established closed ties between the Philippines and Hong Kong by being migrant domestic workers on repeated two-year contracts for twelve respectively 13 years. But it has also become evident how their positions in this space have changed over time and how they have used these aspects of relation to their benefit: When becoming the chairperson of Migrante Sectoral Party in Manila, Bragas-Regalado could built upon her previous position as UNIFIL chairperson in Hong Kong, and Baniaga-Belinan could use her network ties “on both ends”: for starting a Migrante chapter in the Philippines and for helping to establish a GWP chapter in Hong Kong while running for congress. I was able to observe another specific position of these two activists in the transnational political space of the “grassroots cluster” when attending a campaign event on April 22, 2007 in Quezon City, Manila. Both women were present when several Senatorial candidates in person or through members of their staff signed an “OFW Covenant with the Senatoriables”. The four provisions called for it “to be resolved

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that we commit to leading Congressional Inquiries that will formulate policies that address the allegations of corruption and criminal neglect by Philippine government agency officials against OFWs;

That we will oppose the extraction of unjust and exorbitant amounts from OFWs, especially under the guise of increased protection [for example the up to P 10,000 for the National Household Service Worker Certificate training by TESDA);

As it is hereby resolved that we commit to supporting the passage of a Magna Carta for Seafarers and a pro-OFW Charter that will truly embody the aspirations of countless OFWs and their families;

That we will formulate policies for national industrialization and genuine land reform as a means towards the forging of a Philippine society where families are no longer forced apart because of the need to survive.”

Among the signatories was later President of the Senate and 2010 Presidential candidate Manny Villar. Clearly, since OFWs could also vote for Senators, they formed an attractive and potentially valuable constituency for the candidates to court. The location of the campaign event, Quezon Circle, was decorated by MIGRANTE and GWP flags, underlining the close ties of the two members of the “grassroots cluster”.

The grassroots level While MFMW and APMM describe themselves as support NGOSs, they consider UNIFIL the grassroots or people’s organisation at the forefront in Hong Kong. The organisational structure of UNIFIL is based on a congress held every two years which each of the 25 member organisations is required to attend. They send six delegates as official representatives who elect the five officers for the executive committee. From the congress a council of representatives emerges which holds monthly meetings. Dolores T. Balladares stressed the transnational nature of the advocacy by UNIFIL-HK: “Mainly we are doing campaigns on different issues of migrant workers – not only in Hong Kong but also in the Philippines. Basically, we always try to link the issues from our homeland to the issues here in Hong Kong.” (Interview with Dolores T. Balladares, UNIFIL-HK 20 March 2007) This stance is also reiterated in the missions statement of UNIFIL, according to which “the member organizations are united in the struggle to defend the rights and welfare not only by migrant workers but also their families by upholding the struggle of the Filipino people for a society based on justice, lasting peace, social progress, independence and free from incursions of foreign elements.”51

51 http://www.unifil.org.hk/uniprimer.html 123

Although UNIFIL has a centralized organisation, the members can also organize their own activities. The umbrella organisation provides services like paralegal training, counselling and networking to its members, with the seminars being addressed to the member organisations rather than to the individual members. For these seminars, UNIFIL may ask the support NGOs for assistance. As for recent campaigns, Balladares also referred to the arrest of congressman Ocampo, “whose rights were violated by our own law”; as a response, UNIFIL organised a picket – a protest action in front of the Philippine consulate. Besides Philippine politics, the network is also involved in international and global advocacy, i.e. a then upcoming “people’s tribunal” with respect to the human rights issues in the Netherlands or the WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong. According to Balladares, migrant workers from various nationalities had made a big contribution in the anti-WTO protest actions which had been the result of an intense preparation process: “We prepared long for that campaign because at the beginning we found it difficult for a common migrant worker to understand the WTO. So we tried to study and further analyse the issue and then made a point against the WTO that a single migrant worker will understand.” (Interview with Dolores T. Balladares, UNIFIL-HK 20 March 2007) Again, this can be seen as a process of diffusion where not only information, but a political agenda is spread through the system. Migrant domestic workers are made aware of how global political processes may have an influence on their individual situation. In the case of the WTO, a central focus of the campaign was protest against the negotiations for GATS (General Agreement on Trade and Services) Mode 4: The GATS defines four modes of trade in services, with Mode 4 referring to “the orderly movement of persons”, i.e. the temporary migration of workers. Opposition to these negotiations – which, as of now, have not come to a conclusion – was not restricted to the “grassroots” cluster”; most interview partners warned of it as an attempt of the modification of labour with little emphasis on rights. On the local level, UNIFIL organises a seminar workshop on issues of racial discrimination targeted at newly-arrived domestic workers, which provides the organisation also with an opportunity to recruit further members. The seminar is usually held with support from the race relations unit of the Home Affairs Bureau of the Hong Kong administration. While there is thus cooperation with the Hong Kong administration, the UNIFIL chairperson remained very critical of the Philippine government and its consulate in Hong Kong: “If we do not go to the consulate and hold a rally or protest, they won’t provide us with their services voluntarily” (Interview with Dolores T. Balladares, UNIFIL-HK 20 March 2007). She complained about the consulate’s preference for settlements in cases of contract violations – migrants

124 were usually told that they should not complain, be content and were thus discouraged to fight for their rights. UNIFIL was also part of the camp of migrant organisations that completely opposed the new POEA guidelines: Their agenda was to scrap them completely and start anew. The introduction of a minimum wage and the end abolishment of placement fees for domestic workers were considered as a “minor step” since these were measures the government should have taken before. But there was strong opposition against the new training and assessment regulations which were seen as means for further extractions of money from migrant workers. That suspicion was fuelled by her negative view of the Philippine president: “From the experiences we had with GMA, fraud is rampant. But, of course, if they can get more money [through the new fees, S.R.], they can do a lot – they can bribe people, they can bribe politicians. That is why we guard our votes carefully, we are going to tell our families to not vote for these people under the GMA administration.” (Interview with Dolores T. Balladares, UNIFIL-HK 20 March 2007) Once more, this can be seen as an example on how Philippine domestic politics has become an issue abroad and has led to agency through organisational as well as personal (families, friends) ties being directed towards the Philippine government. Balladares considered the migrants to be a political force to be reckoned with: “We have a big clout here and in the Philippines so we can tell people not to vote for trapos – traditional politicians who make promises in every election. For this they spend a lot of money, so when they get elected they try to get it back. We are very conscious of the programs of political parties – if they do not have a program for the migrant workers and they support anti-people and anti-migrant worker policies they should not expect anything from us, we will not vote for them.” (Interview with Dolores T. Balladares, UNIFIL-HK 20 March 2007)

It comes as no surprise, then, that Balladares is a member of GWP. But her political socialisation dates back to the Philippines where she became an activist through involvement in the student movement. This is not unusual for migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong and demonstrates how organisational strategies etc. can be diffused not only through networks but also at an individual level. At the time of interview, Balladares had been a domestic worker in Hong Kong for twelve years. When she arrived in 1995, it took her eight months to get into contact with the mission which assisted her in problems with her contract. She then first became first a member of the organization of domestic workers from Cordillera, which had been founded by Baniaga-Belinan and is a member of UNIFIL. In 1996, Balladares was elected as one of the UNIFIL officers and remained in that position in the following years. The interview 125 was conducted on a weekday at the UNIFIL office which is in located in the same building as APMM, since Balladares is employed as a domestic worker; she needs to ask her employer for permission to go out on weekdays. This can restrict organizing work to Sundays, but Balladares is in the position “that my employer understands what I am doing here – she is also working in an NGO. Luckily, there are no children to take care of, when I had to do this it was much harder to take time off.”(Interview with Dolores T. Balladares, UNIFIL-HK 20 March 2007) While Filipino domestic workers often have an education above a high school degree and it is not unusual for the activist to bring social capital with them from the Philippines in the form of organisational experience, Indonesian migrant tend to come from a different background. This was the case with Eni Lestari, who wanted to go to university after finishing high school, but her family did not have the sufficient funds and the situation became worse with the Asian financial crisis in 1997. She had heard from other people in her village that Hong Kong was a good destination for migrant domestic workers with decent pay and holidays. When she was unable to find employment in Indonesia and her two younger siblings needed money to finance their education, she signed up with a recruitment agency. As discussed above, she had to endure the conditions in the training camps for five months and was repeatedly told not to have anything to do with Filipinas when arriving in Hong Kong. When she arrived in the year 2000, she soon began to feel exploited by her employer. She was not allowed to take her weekly day off, did not receive the full minimum wage, had to share a room with the teenage son of the family, sleep on a piece of cardboard on the floor and was forced to eat pork which she could not accept as a Muslim. Only in her fourth month was she allowed her first day off; when she met other Muslims in Victoria Park she realized how badly she was treated. After six months she finally ran away from the family and stayed in a shelter – the Bethune House founded by MFMW. There she came into contact with Filipinas for the first time, met members of the “grassroots cluster” and learned about organising: “That is how I started to be an activist, they gave me lots of insights about migrants’ live and our prospects and future and what to do.” (Interview with Eni Lestari, ATKI/AMCB/IMA 3 September 2008)

The process of diffusion – and grassroots isomorphism – also becomes evident in this quote from an “Inside Indonesia” interview: “The whole experience made me wonder why Indonesian migrant workers do not have their own organisation, like the Filipinas did. The Indonesian Migrant Workers Union had just been established but not many migrant workers knew about it. And there was plenty of room for more migrant worker groups. So I asked some Filipino friends about 126

how they went about setting up their organisations. They explained how to register them under Hong Kong law so that we can do things like use public spaces for events. They gave me some examples of what migrant worker group constitutions look like. I studied them with friends and together we put together our own constitution.”52

The concepts of organising, developing strategies, using public spaces for political action were thus diffused to an Indonesian by Filipino migrant workers while staying in Hong Kong. The way the new alliance was organised is also consistent with DiMaggio/Powells three mechanisms of institutional isomorphic change – in this case the mechanism of modelling applies, where the borrowing organisation draws from a convenient source and models may be explicitly diffused explicitly by organizations, such as consulting firms or industry trade associations. (DiMaggio/Powell 1983: 151) In this case, one grassroots organisation modelled itself after another (with some support from the NGOs in the cluster) and this process also happened “on the ground” – which is why I call it grassroots isomorphism. The Filipino model for organising was UNIFIL, and the new Indonesian alliance established in October 2000 was called ATKI – Association of Indonesian Migrant Workers with Eni Lestari serving as coordinator and spokesperson. Almost at the same time, in December 2000, another Indonesian umbrella organisation was formed: The Hong Kong Coalition of Indonesian Migrant Workers Organization KOTKIHO. But Eni Lestari was not interested in cooperation, since there were “different views in many aspects” – and KOTKIHO was part of the NGO cluster. Thus, the Indonesian newcomers formed their associations long the existing cleavages of the Filipinos in Hong Kong. Among the first initiatives of KOTKIHO was a survey carried out in 2001 to find out which were the most pressing problems Indonesian domestic workers encountered. The result was that the most important issue were the excessive fees followed by underpayment. A 2005 survey led to similar results. Therefore, the KOTKIHO members decided to focus on overcharging. ATKI, on the other hand, made the underpayment issue its priority, which was the explanation given by Lestari for the differences between the groups. In the years 2005- 2006 KOTKIHO started an investigation, collected policy information, laws etc. to find out the framework for the high fees charged to Indonesians: “But at first our argument was very weak, because we did not understand the component of the fees. And you cannot just tell the government ‘please remove the fees, they are to exploitative’, we have to tell them why, how etc. So, for one and a half

52 http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-100-apr-june-2010/learning-to-lead-24041312 127

years we really studied and educated ourselves, we also conducted group discussions with other nationalities, the Filipinos, the Thais to compare our situation.” (Interview with Eni Lestari, ATKI/AMCB/IMA 3 September 2008)

Once more the Indonesians were open to concepts, ideas, strategies and information coming from migrants from other nationalities. They also founded a cause-oriented alliance that bears more than just a little resemblance to the Filipino UNFARE alliance of the 1980s: United Indonesians Against Overcharging (Persatuan BMI Tolak Overcharging or PILAR). The alliance brought together 23 member organisations from different backgrounds, including religious and cultural groups. PILAR held monthly meetings with updates and forum discussions, so its focus went beyond being a political campaign but also included an educational and organisational process. According to Lestari, many groups were requesting further education which led to programs on leadership training and how to run an organisation. She described many of the newly founded groups as traditional type organisation that did not have a general assembly, only sometimes elections or an appointed official, no program and no stated vision: “I think the same process has happened for the Filipinos in the 1980s and they had the organisational background, while for us, we have just started quite recently.” (Interview with Eni Lestari, ATKI/AMCB/IMA 3 September 2008) Again, while the newly found Indonesian organisations may not mimic the existing Filipino ones, they certainly use the latter as a model, constituting a further process of grassroots isomorphism. In April 2007 the new alliance launched a signature campaign for the reduction of fees and achieved more than 30,000 signatures in less than four months (Sim 2009: 67). Another success was the campaign against a policy which prevented newcomers on their first two-year contracts from changing employment agencies at all, while repeat migrants had to present their cause and the decision was at the will of the consulate; ten months after it had been issued it was officially cancelled (Sim 2009: 70). The activism in Hong Kong also started to have repercussions in Indonesia. According to Lestari, the migrant workers did not have any political party that was specifically supporting their cause; while the President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) had stated his support for migrants before his election in 2004, this had not resulted in any concrete policy measures. As a response, ATKI established its own branch in Jakarta that is mainly working on the campaigning and advocacy level. ATKI Jakarta is also trying to educate groups in Indonesia about the issue of overcharging which according to Lestari was not well known among civil society organisations in her home country. In 2007, the office was staffed by a former ATKI-HK member whose contract had been terminated and received some minor financial support from Hong Kong. 128

Thus, the transnational political space between the Philippines and Hong Kong had in this instance been expanded to Indonesia: Indonesians come to Hong Kong, are given an impetus and enabled to organize by the well-established group of the Filipinas through processes of diffusion and grassroots isomorphism. Subsequently the Indonesians bring back their advocacy and organisational structure to Indonesia. This space can expand even further and on a different scale, as the examples of the Asian Migrants' Coordinating Body (AMCB) and the International Migrants’ Alliance (IMA) demonstrate. The AMCB was formed as the result of a cultural festival in 1995 and 1996 in Hong Kong, in which migrants from different nationalities participated. This led to a ‘Declaration of Unity’ and the founding of the AMCB in December 1996. Besides Filipinas (United Filipinos in Hong Kong UNIFIL-HK; Filipino Migrant Workers’ Union FMWU-HK) and Indonesians (Association of Indonesian Migrant Workers in Hong Kong ATKI), its member organizations constitute migrant domestic workers from Thailand (Thai Regional Alliance TRA- HK, TWA, und Friends of Thai, FOT), Nepal (Far East Overseas Nepalese Association, FEONA) and Sri Lanka (Association of Sri Lankans in Hong Kong, ASL). When Connie Bragas-Regalado returned from Hong Kong to the Philippines to join Migrante International, Eni Lestari succeeded her in coordinating the alliance. The AMCB is a transnational network in several regards, since its member organizations are already transnational in character and it unites migrant organizations from different nationalities, and there is mutual support in organizing and campaigning in Hong Kong. A third aspect in which the AMCB acts transnationally is the direction and scope of its advocacy, which is directed towards the Hong Kong administration, the sending countries of the members and the regional and global stage. By uniting migrants who not only come from different backgrounds and home countries but also have different levels of experience in organising, it also provides a space for grassroots isomorphism: “We even assist each other in expanding and consolidating our respective organizations. There were times when one member organization of AMCB helped in establishing a chapter of a co-member organization of different nationality before passing over the chapter to its mother organization.” (Lestari 2008: 120)

According to Lestari the AMCB faced its greatest test and “political baptism” when the WTO ministerial meeting was held in Hong Kong in 2005. AMCB managed to mobilize more than one thousand migrants to join the march in order to “denounce WTO and neo-liberal globalization being peddled by imperialist nations which resulted to massive forced migration of people.” (Lestari 2008: 121)

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The anti-imperialist rhetoric Lestari increasingly uses in her speeches can also be seen as a product of diffusion, since it is in consonance with the political rhetoric of the Bayan coalition in the Philippines. This causal relation is only posited, of course, but another example underscores this: a video clip posted on youtube53 by UNIFIL-HK on September 1, 2007 shows Lestari giving a speech in front of the Dutch consulate in Hong Kong and demanding the release of Sison. In this speech, she describes how she met Professor Sison when she attended the 2nd international meeting of the ILPS in 2004 where he was elected as chairperson and expresses her conviction that “he is not a terrorist”. She also lauds him as being a long-time inspiration for progressive women. In all likelihood, Eni Lestari had probably not heard of the Sison case before she came to Hong Kong. But her speech is a prime example for why I consider Hong Kong a “hot spot for diffusion” and locate her speech in a transnational political space: An Indonesian migrates to Hong Kong and comes into contact with the “grassroots cluster” that has established a sophisticated array of organisations which occupy various positions in the cluster: from providing services like shelter (the Bethune House were the initial contact took place) to ethnic-transnational (ATKI, UNIFIL), transethnic-transnational (AMCB) and global migrant activism (IMA). But when ideas, strategies and organisational structures are diffused in this transnational political space, they can also carry ideological “baggage” from the Philippine partner organisations in the cluster: In this case solidarity with the chief ideologist of the Philippine communist party and the firm conviction that he is neither a terrorist nor responsible for the killings of former comrades. Modern communication takes this advocacy one step further – by posting the speech on youtube it caused some debate in transnational cyberspace: while some of the posts expressed solidarity with Sison, other commentators from the Philippines were upset and posed the question if she really knew what the NPA was about: “Eni Lestari, are you a Filipino? If not...you dont know what you are talking about. The CPP/NPA are a group of Terrorist/EXTORSIONIST. How do you think Joma Sison is surviving in Netherland after all this years. Life is hard in my country, the NPAs are making it harder. I hope Joma Sison rot in jail!”.54.

Thus, the debate over the role of the Communist Party of the Philippines reached the cyberspace via a speech given by an Indonesian domestic worker in front of the Dutch consulate in Hong Kong. Furthermore, political cleavages are diffused as well. In her speech given at the IMA founding assembly, Lestari introduced AMCB with the following statement:

53 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stus20awhyo 54 Post by “Alexander 2149” on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stus20awhyo 130

“Please always put the “B” after AMC so it is AMCB, for if not, you will talk entirely of a different entity with a different understanding with us on forced migration and other related issues. If not, then you will not be talking of the true grassroots migrant workers in Hong Kong. Thank you.” (Lestari 2008: 120)

This caution obviously refers the Asian Migrant Centre which is at the heart of the “NGO cluster”. Admittedly, the need to distance herself from that organisation may be due to different ideas on policy issues. But one might question how severe these differences really are – putting underpayment or overcharging first on the advocacy list does not seem to be an unresolvable dispute. There was a also deep divide on the levy (s. below), but it appears as if differences in ideology are at the heart of the split, and the latter are informed by the reaffirmist/rejectionist heritage of the two clusters. In a “what if..” scenario, one might speculate if the Indonesians had still formed two camps that did not cooperate with each other if there had been no two pre-existing clusters when they arrived in Hong Kong. While there is clearly a strong divide between the two clusters, there is also a strong degree of solidarity within them. On 19 October 2008 I was invited to join in a fairly typical “activist Sunday” of the AMCB. It started with joint demonstration of the AMCB members in front of the consulates of their respective home countries. In a remarkable act of solidarity, there were also protests against the ban on new employment of Nepalese workers. While these make up only a comparatively small percentage of all foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, other nationalities might still see them as new competition. Since the demonstration took place a few months after the abolition of the levy and the ensuing termination of contracts by employers, many Nepalese were afraid of being unable to return to Hong Kong because of the ban. The issues addressed during the protest march which took place by bus and on foot covered a wide range of topics. These ranged from the “classic”, i.e. the two-week rule and the minimum wage to political reforms in the sending countries. The protesters made a connection between various rights issues, as in the slogan “Women’s rights – Migrants’ rights! Migrants’ rights – human rights!” Among the global issues addressed were the upcoming 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) in Manila and imperialism, militarism and racism. This underlines the various scales migrant advocacy has reached in Hong Kong. In this regard, stops were not only made in front of the sending countries’ consulates and the Hong Kong administration, but also in front of the representations of the U.S. and the EU. These were categorized by Eni Lestari as world-wide terrorist number 1 and 2” respectively – because of imperialist military inventions in the case of the former and the “fortress Europe” policies and the related “EU return directive” in the case of the latter. Germany was singled 131 out among the EU members and blamed for putting migrants in detention camps. One of the few male participants in the protest march, a member of “Friends of Thai”, revealed to me that this information had been provided by a German-Turkish member of the International Migrants’ Alliance. The way the protesters adhered to the provisions of the political opportunity structures Hong Kong provides them with stood in marked contrast to the partly militant rhetoric. Adhering to the demands of the SAR bureaucracy, each picket was treated as a separate event and Dolores T. Balladares even carried with her a folder with permissions. The AMCB members also adhered to the requirement to put down their flags and banners. The protest march ended at St. John’s Cathedral but the campaign itself did not stop there. Besides free food being served and some cultural performances, there was also an update on the GFMD and a presentation and solidarity message by a guest speaker from the Philippine National Federation of Peasant Women (AMIHAN). AMIHAN is a member of the Bayan. Thus the campaign took place in several overlapping transnational political spaces. Political issues in several countries of origin were addressed by migrants of various nationalities, who also jointly protested the Hong Kong administration; the Philippine Bayan coalition was present through a delegate and the more militant statements and the advocacy also included a further scale by protesting the EU and the GFMD. This global scale is also addressed by the founding of the International Migrants’ Alliance (IMA) in June 2008 in Hong Kong under the slogan “For a long time, others spoke on our behalf. Now we speak for ourselves”. Combined with the self-description as being “the first international formation of grassroots migrants”, this statement can be seen as a strategy by the “grassroots cluster” to reaffirm its own identity and distance itself even further from the “NGO cluster”. At the time of research, IMA united 112 organisations from 25 countries, 80 of which were considered grassroots organisations. The other members are NGOs and can provide input and advice, but they possess no voting rights in the general assembly. The fact that this alliance was founded in Hong Kong once more underlines the central position this “hot spot” or hub occupies in the organising of migrants. It also underlines the central position the “grassroots cluster” plays within the IMA – Eni Lestari was elected as the chairperson of the alliance. Further personal continuity can be found in the members of the International Coordinating Body (ICB) that were chosen by different global regions as well as elected by the general assembly. Among those elected were Connie Bragas-Regalado of Migrante-International, as well as two academics who have attacked “the Others” on the Hong Kong scale in their writings (s. above) but also on the global scale as became evident during the 4th GFMD in Mexico. As per IMA constitution, associate members comprising NGOs and

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migrant-serving institutions also select among themselves two members who will serve as ex officio members to the ICB – one of them was Ramon Bultron, director of the APMM in Hong Kong. While there was a dominance of Asian organisation, European organisations were represented as well – among them Migrante Europe and communist Alliance of Turkish Migrants in Europe (ATIK). Its German representative had also provided the AMCB with the allegations of detention camps. The IMA covers a wide range of issues with a special focus on forced migration. But the most prominent role it has played in the past years was in organising one of the two parallel events to the GFMD meetings (See chapter 7.5.) The other parallel event was organised by the “NGO cluster” – an indicator how not only advocacy but also existing cleavages were taken to the global scale.

7.3.2 “The “NGO cluster” While the members of the “grassroots cluster” use every opportunity to emphasize that they are the “true grassroots movement”, they accuse the other cluster of organisations to be dominated by “NGOism” (Hsia 2009: 134). In this context, the labels “grassroots” and “NGO” are used in the spirit of political competition and to draw a clear dividing line between the two camps. The distinction, however, is not as clear-cut as the labels suggest: NGO may be assigned a supporting role in the “grassroots cluster”, but they were, nonetheless, very instrumental in the development of the associated migrant organisations. The “NGO cluster”, on the other hand, is by no means solely composed of NGOs but includes a number of grassroots migrant organisations and domestic worker unions as well. I use the term “NGO cluster” regardless, because NGOs do play an important role in the cluster and for the sake of distinction. The NGO at the centre of this cluster in Hong Kong is the Asian Migrant Centre (AMC). Not unlike the development on the “other side”, AMC started in 1989 as a counselling centre, but in 1995 decided to shift its main focus to grassroots organising and establishing domestic worker unions. Rex Varona, AMC Executive Director at the time, explained the rationale behind this decision: “We were handling 250 cases a year involving contract violations in Hong Kong. But our strategic assessment was: This does not really change much in the policies behind these violations.” (Interview with Rex Varona, AMC 20 March 2007) Thus, the main goal of AMC became to organise the stakeholders themselves in order to become self-reliant and to become advocates for a change in policy. Besides the organising, AMC started a “pioneer program” in 1995 that focused on economic empowerment and migrant savings for alternative investments. The message behind these programs was the 133 need to not merely victimise domestic workers but to also emphasize their role as stakeholders: “The best response against victimisation is self-defence. By emphasizing the force of migrants on the economic front, we position them in a context so that they can pressure their governments to change national policies back home.” (Interview with Rex Varona, AMC 20 March 2007) This aspect adds a different angle to the strategy of political pressure and mass mobilisation favoured by the other cluster. While AMC uses these measures as well, it also aims to provide migrants with more bargaining power by emphasizing their economical contributions. Further programs include the opening of rural banks, cooperatives and technical consultations: “So, the intention is like what we did with the absentee voting: create channels where migrants can play a more institutionalised role in the Philippine policy making. I am saying this because the ’other’ Filipino groups are opposing that kind of perspective, but then that’s their own analysis….” (Interview with Rex Varona, AMC 20 March 2007)

Among the strategies favoured by AMC is advocacy by migrants from different nationalities in Hong Kong and back home on all levels: public campaigns in front of the consulate as well as targeting the POEA offices back home in the Philippines; self- representation by migrants who attend strategic meetings with the Philippine government; and pressure put on the government to hold consultations with migrant and advocates. Besides economic aspects, another area where AMC differs from the grassroots cluster is the emphasis it puts on establishing unions. While both groups cooperate with the HKCTU, AMC and its partners seem to have the closer ties. As Elizabeth Tang, Chief Executive of the HKCTU recalled, the first migrant domestic worker union was set up in Hong Kong even one year before her own organisation came into existence. When the Asian Domestic Workers Union (ADWU) was founded in 1989, it constituted an early attempt to address what Piper calls the still prevalent “missing link” between trade unions and migrants (Piper 2010: 116). At the first gatherings of the new group, Tang felt like participating in “a United Nations meeting – we had all different nationalities and even translators for the different groups” (Interview with Elizabeth Tang, HKCTU 26 October 2008). HKCTU supported the group in terms of financing and training, but the years 1995-1995 were marked by several splits: first, the Thai members left the union because they considered the Filipinos to be too dominant; then, the Filipino group split. As Varona explained, “the problem is that advocacy for each nationality is quite different – they have common interests as Hong Kong migrants, but they may have a specific national agenda.” (Interview with Rex Varona, AMC 20 March 2007) This can be seen as an indicator that organising migrant domestic workers only by sector and not along nationalities may not work in the case of unions and that umbrella 134

organisations may be more effective. This became evident, e.g. when, after long negotiations, the Federation of Asian Domestic Workers Unions (FADWU)55 was eventually founded in November 2010. Among the founding members, at least two are closely associated with the “NGO cluster”: the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union (IMWU) and the Filipino Domestic Helpers General Union (FDGHU).56 The establishment of the union was supported by the ILO. Vice versa, the members and the affiliates of the “NGO cluster” in Hong Kong (and elsewhere) had been very active in educating migrants about and campaigning for the ILO “decent work for domestic workers convention” and were present at the ILO negotiations in 2010 and the adoption in 2011 (Rother 2010a). This is a clear indicator how the global and local level can be interrelated in transnational political spaces. There is also a unique transnational tie between the AMC in Hong Kong and the Philippines in terms of labour organising: At the time of research, the Alliance of Progressive Labour (APL) had sent a full-time organiser, Gigi Torres, to Hong Kong. The APL is an alliance of various unions in the Philippines that aims for the advancement of social movement unionism. This strategy is directed at recognizing, organizing and mobilizing all types of workers and unions for engagements in different arenas of struggle. As Torres explained, Hong Kong was chosen for a pilot project to organise migrants partly because of the political opportunity structures it provided: “Establishing a union in Hong Kong is not difficult – but sustaining the union recruitment and running it is quite difficult.” (Interview with Gigi Torres, APL Hong Kong 15 March 2007) This is due to high fluctuation among the potential membership and fears by the migrants of their contract being terminated by their employers once they join a union. Trade unions are traditionally fairly weak and often organised along companies in the Philippines; still, as FDGHU member Julie Ordialez reported, having been a union member back in the Philippines made it seem more naturally to her to join a domestic worker union in Hong Kong, although she had been in the SAR for 17 years already (Interview with Julie Ordialez, FDGH 4 March 2007). The case of the APL organiser sent to Hong Kong adds another group to the wide spectrum of organisations that can be involved in forming and stabilizing transnational political space from below: besides church organisations, mass organisations connected to political parties and advocacy groups, social movement unionism can establish ties between sending and receiving country. Although the connection may not be as close as in the GABRIELA case, several members of the “NGO cluster” are linked to a political party through their connection

55 http://en.domesticworkerrights.org/?q=node/149 56 Further founding members are the Hong Kong Domestic Workers General Union; the Union of Nepalese Domestic Workers in Hong Kong; the Overseas Domestic Workers' Union - HK; and the Thai Migrant Workers' Union Hong Kong. 135 back in the Philippines: APL cooperates with AKBAYAN and both organisations were supported by FES Manila. AMC staff in Hong Kong were also supportive of AKBAYAN, but they did not endorse the party as openly as the “grassroots cluster” had done in the case of GABRIELA. The AMC was also highly involved in the campaigning for the introduction of Overseas Absentee Voting, cooperating with the Manila-based Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), which for several years cooperated closely with and received funding from FES Manila. These connections are indicators of a very differentiated network; place matters in this transnational political space, since the actors are situated at various positions and can follow up issues brought up by other actors located at different positions – for example, Ellene Sana, Executive Director of CMA, can voice the concerns of her Hong Kong partners when she attends a CCOFW meeting in Manila. These processes of diffusion are cluster-specific; hence, in the CCOFW meeting Sana would opt for amendments to the new POEA guidelines rather than asking to scrap the measures altogether, as e.g. a member of the “grassroots cluster” would call for. Belonging to a cluster also influences movement or positional changes within transnational political; hence, Gigi Torres would cooperate with AMC in Hong Kong to organise social movement unionism, rather than cooperate with, say, UNIFIL or the AMCB. Since the Filipino clusters were established at an early stage, migrants from other nationalities tend to align their organisations along the cleavages between the clusters. Thus, the NGO cluster has among its members a rough equivalent of the AMCB in the transethnic- transnational organising, called the Coalition for Migrants Rights (CMR). Its ethnic member structure is similar to that of the AMCB, although the organisational form of the members is more likely to be a union. At the time of research, the CMR had seven members: the abovementioned Indonesian Migrant Workers Union (IMWU) and the Filipino Domestic Helpers General Union (FDGHU), as well as the then-existing Asian Domestic Workers Union (ADWU) plus the Thai Women Association (TWA), the Far East Nepalese Association (FEONA), the Indian Domestic Workers Association (IDWA) and The Hong Kong Coalition of Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers (KOTKIHO). The rigidity of alignment along the cleavages seems to differ depending on nationality, though: FEONA is listed as a member of AMCB and CMR. But it has to be kept in mind that this is a comparatively very small group of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. The division runs more clearly between the Indonesian organisations. The umbrella organisation KOTKIHO brings together seven Indonesian organisations and had 7,000 members in 2007 of whom 2,000 were unionised (Interview with Sumiati (Mia), Officer KOTKIHO). Officer Sumiati stated that her focus was on combating underpayment, which is a different priority than ATKI. She also described programs that were congruent with the “economic empowerment” strategy of

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AMC: Member organisations like the “Yogya Club” had started “reintegrasi” (reintegration) programs to provide job opportunities for the migrants upon their return. To achieve this, KOTKIHO was running a training centre where skills like sewing, English and computer courses were told. The IMWU, a KOTKIHO member, has also started to build up a political network back home in Indonesia. According to IMWU President Sartiwen Binti Sanbardi, their network of migrant organisations in Indonesia, including former migrant workers, had succeeded in having a law passed by the Indonesian government on the protection of Indonesian migrant workers abroad in 2003: “The law is not yet entirely to our satisfaction, but it’s a start.”57 Having worked for six years in Singapore before coming to Hong Kong, the latter was the place where she became politicised by joining the union, which underlines the difference in political opportunity structures between the two destinations as well as the influence that organising by Filipinos in Hong Kong can have on political advocacy in Indonesia. Besides advocacy and organising, a further pillar of the AMC work is on data collection, publishing, i.e. the “Asian Migrant Yearbook” series and research. The latter often included surveys among migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, but is not limited to the SAR and may also include projects on migration in the greater Mekong Sub-region etc. This information is diffused through a regional network, the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA): “MFA is quite powerful – if there is an issue in the Philippines, then we try to contact all the relevant Filipino partners at least all over Asia, to help us advocate in the Philippines for a change. And we do the same in other countries like Thailand or Indonesia.” (Interview with Rex Varona, AMC 20 March 2007) Not unlike MIGRANTE on the “other side” – though different in scope – the origins of MFA lie in the “hot spot” Hong Kong, but later on the headquarter was moved to Manila (see chapter 7.3.2)

7.3.3 Same, same, but different? Differences in advocacy between the two clusters

While the members of the two clusters in Hong Kong repeatedly point to their differences, there are actually several similarities beginning with the specific structure: Both clusters have very active NGOs as the driving forces of organising migrants, and these conduct research, networking and advocacy themselves. Both include transethnic-transnational alliances and there are umbrella organisations of organisations based on nationalities. The “grassroots cluster” and the “NGO cluster” also share the commonality of being linked to organisations back in the Philippines as well as to a specific party, although the latter to various

57 http://www.ituc-csi.org/spotlight-on-sartiwen-binti.html?lang=en 137 degrees. There is also variation in the level of unionism and the cooperation with the local HKCTU. Both clusters also make similar contributions to governance from below: counselling, legal advice, running shelters, offering education and training and negotiating with the respective consulates and the Hong Kong administration. The “grassroots clusters” adds programs aiming for economic empowerment. This poses the question whether grassroots isomorphism it at play here within and between these clusters. If this is the case, it does not fit neatly into the DiMaggio/Powell framework, although isomorphism due to normative pressures stemming from professionalization may fit in the sense that the clusters have to adapt to the political opportunity structures they are provided with in Hong Kong. It also is noteworthy that the “grassroots cluster” seems to be more willing to compromise and engage with the government in Hong Kong than back home. This can be explained by the widespread rejection of GMA in the network as well as by the “reaffirmist” tradition of many cluster members. Since the organisational structures share many similarities, one has to look at the advocacy work for differences. At first sight, the topics addressed are very similar as well: the two-week rule, the minimum wage, regulation of agencies, fighting abuses, the levy, the new POEA guidelines, underpayment and overcharging. Thus, the differences must be found in the responses. Regarding underpayment and overcharging, the order in which these issues are prioritised by the Indonesian members of the clusters cannot really be considered a major difference (although it is presented as such). A larger difference can be found in the assessment of the new POEA guidelines. The “grassroots cluster” mobilized to have those guidelines scrapped completely because it considered them a measure of extortion. While the “NGO cluster” was critical of these fees as well, it welcomed the modification of the minimum wage and the zero placement fees policy: “This was our advocacy here for years – how can you campaign then to scrap the whole policy if you are advocating on behalf of the migrants?” (Interview with Rex Varona, AMC 20 March 2007) Instead, the cluster chose a more pragmatic approach which was also reflected in the stance its members and affiliates took in the CCOWF consultations in Manila. The preferences for more pragmatic “inside-outside” approaches on the one side and more radical “scrap it all” rhetoric characterise the strategies of the two clusters up to the global level (see chapter 7.5). But the most divisive issue between the two clusters turned out to be the levy. Simply put, the “grassroots cluster” called for an abolition of the levy because this would benefit the employers which were often workers as well, and made wage rises more likely. The “NGO cluster”, on the other hand, campaigned no to, as Varona put it, “throw out the baby with the

138 bucket” and keep the levy, but redeclare it as a compensation fund that could be used to compensate migrant domestic workers in cases like underpayment violations. In 2005, CMR issued a statement in which it announced the plan of CMR and its partners to revive the campaign on labour and wage protection. This statement contained the argument that “the levy policy and minimum wage policy are currently implemented as two separate policies; hence, fighting to abolish this levy would only serve the interests of employers. A levy on employers that goes into an effective and accountable protection fund could benefit workers.” (Coalition for Migrant Rights 1 May 2005) The statement bundled several demands from the CMR agenda, underlined the economic contribution migrant domestic workers were making in Hong Kong and stressed the importance of unionising. Besides the CMR members, it was signed by the AMC, the MFA, Akbayan-Hong Kong and the APL-Hong Kong, uniting most of the cluster members at the time. This statement was met with a fierce response from UNIFIL, who issued a paper called “On the Two Opposing Views on the Wage Struggle of Foreign Domestic Workers in Hong Kong. A Critique of the Joint Position Paper of the Coalition for Migrants’ Rights and their Allied Groups entitled “Wage Protection for Foreign Domestic Workers in HK!” (United Filipinos in Hong Kong (UNIFIL-HK) 2005) The paper criticised the CMR of being unable to recognise the fact that the levy was “actually regressive taxation towards ordinary working people in Hong Kong that are made to suffer the burden of the HK economic crisis”. The argument continues that regressive taxation was a prescription of neo-liberal policies and draws the conclusion that CMR and its allies were actually subscribing to neoliberalism: “Considering that the World Trade Organization is the main vehicle for advancing neoliberal policies, doesn’t it translate to support of the WTO? And we thought that they were against WTO!” (United Filipinos in Hong Kong (UNIFIL-HK) 2005) The accusation continues with the point that the CMR and its allies misrepresent the employers as constituting one single class, while they may be workers as well. By adhering to this analysis, CMR is seen as dividing the ranks of the migrants. This, the statement argues, sabotages the struggle of the migrants by providing the Hong Kong administration with an excuse to not give in to the demands since not all migrant domestic workers were fighting for the same demands. This debate finally poisoned the atmosphere between the two clusters and made future joint efforts impossible. As Varona argued, it came down to a matter of principle: “If the division is because of principles, we should rather have the government support which is the more reasonable of the principles. We should not compromise below the principle.” (Interview with Rex Varona, AMC 20 March 2007) He also indirectly responded to the accusations of

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“NGOism”: “From organizing migrants, our experience is: yes, it’s true, there have to be NGOs as far as migrants are concerned because of the need for continuity”. Thus, the levy had deepened the cleavages between the two clusters in Hong Kong. When the levy was actually waived in summer 2008, this cleavage further intensified, since AMC saw the ensuing chaos and terminated contracts as a proof for its position, while the “grassroots cluster” ascribed this development to failures in implementation by the Hong Kong administration. With fractions running this deep, it was little surprising that during the GFMD held in Manila two months later, the cleavages between the clusters became apparent for the first time at the international level. These cleavages had also materialized on a global level in 2006 when China was asked to report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The Committee is one of the eight UN-related human rights treaty bodies, overseeing the compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Among the delegation from Hong Kong and Macao were Cynthia Tellez from MFMM and a representative of CMR. While they managed to agree on declaring the New Conditions of Stay as discriminatory, no agreement could be reached on the levy – resulting in the issuance of separate statements. As Ellene Sana from CMA, a Manila-based member of the “NGO cluster”, who also participated on the CEDAW consultation, commented: “This disagreement in front of an international body is very unfortunate, since it provides the Hong Kong government with an excuse to not react.” (Interview with Ellene Sana, CMA 16 April 2007) It has to be noted that by far not all organisations by and for migrants in Hong Kong side with one of the two camps. There is also a large group of “unaligned” organisations that may focus on providing services like counselling or support, i.e. Helpers for Domestic Helpers (HDH) or Caritas, are church-based and concentrate on pastoral care, i.e. The Catholic Diocesan Pastoral Centre for Filipinos, cooperate with the clusters on specific issues, i.e. International Coalition for the Overseas Filipinos' Voting Rights (ICOFVR) or they try to keep equidistance to both clusters and work for some kind of rapprochement, as Devi Novianti from Christian Action's Domestic Helpers program explained (Interview with Devi Novianti, Christian Action 22 May 2007). Still, the most visible, outspoken and political groups usually are part of one of the clusters and thus more instrumental in forming a transnational political space between the Philippines, Hong, Indonesia and beyond. Calls for unity of the migrants are often heard among Filipinos and even academic articles on the topic tend to brush over the differences. In the Hong Kong case, each camp accused the other of undermining this unity by sticking to its principles. In contrast, the Philippine labour attaché provided a more positive interpretation of these cleavages:

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“Yes, the NGOs are very divisive, and if you are in the host country you do not want that, you want only one, there should be unity in the issues presented. But, you know, this is also a good sign of democracy, we Filipinos are very democratic, very outspoken.” (Interview with assistant labour attaché Philippine consulate Hong Kong 23 May 2007)

7.4. The Philippine-based members of the two clusters

While the two clusters for Hong Kong can be clearly defined and separated – with the exception of FEONA and keeping in mind that there are “unaligned” organisations as well – the situation in Manila is more ambiguous. There are clear cleavages between the members that closely cooperate with Hong Kong, i.e. Migrante and Gabriela on the one and GMA, MFA and Akbayan on the other side. But the numerous other organisations in the Philippines that focus on training, the situation in different destination countries, migrant families or returning migrants may stay out of the divisions or form issue-based alliances as in the case of Hong Kong58. Some may also shift alliances or become independent and are consequently attacked by their former allies. This is due to the fact that the founding groups that addressed migrants and women issues were formed before the split as part of the national democratic mass movement and as a consequence many activists actually stem from the “same stock”: “Many years back we were all together, so we had come a long way, but because at some point for some irreconcilable – well, it is not even irreconcilable, but for some unfortunate ideological reasons we had to part ways.” (Interview with Ellene Sana, CMA 16 April 2007)

7.4.1 “The “grassroots cluster” Several Philippine-based organisations are allies of the “grassroots cluster” and participate in their meetings and mobilisations, among them organisations like the League of Filipino Students, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) or the National Federation of Peasant Women League whose representative conducted awareness-raising after the rally in Hong Kong (chapter 7.3.1). All of these are members of Bayan. But the two organisations most involved with migrant issues and therefore firmly situated within the cluster are MIGRANTE and GABRIELA/GWP.

58 For a comprehensive overview of Philippine migrant organisations see Alcid 2006. 141

Connie Bragas-Regalada, chairperson of MIGRANTE International at the time of the interview, clearly defined Hong Kong as the starting place of the organisation and the foundation of UNIFIL in 1985 in the SAR as a first step. But as early as 1986, there were plans to organise OFWs on a wider scale: “There were already some consultations among migrant leaders every December when we went home to the Philippines for Christmas vacation; then we had time for some consultations.” (Interview with Connie Bragas-Regalado, Migrante International 17 April 2007) As a result, MIGRANTE Asia-Pacific was formed. Further growth was triggered by the case of Flor Contemplacion, which triggered the realisation that a bigger organisation for OFWs had to be established. The Contemplacion case led to a transnational protest that brought migrant workers and national campaigns together, with GARIELA being involved in the latter. After it was formally established in 1996, MI operated as a campaign coordination centre that addressed issues that were brought to its attention by member organisations in Hong Kong or the Middle East. Besides campaigns, governance contributions like services for stranded OFWs in the Middle East became part of the portfolio. According to Bragas-Regalada, MI became increasingly aware that it had to address not only migrant concerns, but also ask about issues of the host countries, the role of the WTO and the “imperialist countries”. One of the main tactical differences between the “reaffirmist” and “rejectionist” camp had been the role of elections. The latter camp was open for the electoral process and willing to embrace it for more than mere tactical reasons, as was discussed above in the case of Walden Bello. In informal talks, members of the “rejectionist” camp were suspicious of the campaigning strategies of the “grassroots cluster”, since its members had initially been sceptical about elections and OAV but now ran a full-blown campaign. There were allegations of migrant workers being instrumentalised for the tactical purposes at the heart of this cluster. Bragas-Regalada indeed underlined that “the parliamentary struggle for migrants is only a secondary aspect of the whole struggle. Building a strong movement, where we can push forward our own interest, is issue number one.” (Interview with Connie Bragas-Regalado, Migrante International 17 April 2007) Nevertheless, Migrante Sectoral Party was established in 2002, based on the reasoning that more than eight million overseas Filipinos should have the right to participate, the laws of the government were always anti-migrant and that it was time go beyond lobbying other politicians and make the voices of the migrants heard. But the part list missed winning its third seat, which would have gone to Bragas- Regalada, by a small measure. While the election was lost, the participation had opened up widener opportunities to expand the organising work and in 2007 MI cooperated with GABRIELA for the elections. MIGRANTE has also used the Bayan network and its party lists to

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“participate in our own way in the halls of congress”: According to Bragas-Regalada, MI was instrumental in establishing the Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs (which, ironically, is now chaired by Walden Bello) by drafting a resolution which the peasant worker alliance party presented. Other “progressive” parties MI cooperated with were the Bayan members Bayan Muna, GABRIELA and Anakpawis, the electoral wing of the radical trade union movement Kilusang Mayo Uno. Thus, MI has decided to use the emerging democratic space in the Philippines for its advocacy and enlarged that space to include the destinations of OFWs. For MI, the situation of migrants in these countries is always linked to the home country; by this continuing advocacy, they strengthen the political ties through which the transnational political space is constructed. Hong Kong plays an essential role in this strategy, since mobilisation there is seen as being on the most advanced level: “the principle carried by the migrant workers is not only how to improve their conditions but to look back to our country [and realize, S.R.] that migrant workers are also part of the overall struggle of the Filipino people to have a democratic society and to have decent jobs; you know, our work abroad is only temporary.” (Interview with Connie Bragas-Regalado, Migrante International 17 April 2007) Indeed, the temporary, often circular nature of the employment in places like Hong Kong contributes to the density of the spaces, although there are also very active MI chapter in more permanent migration destinations like the UK. But intensifying the density of these spaces also results in political strategies and “friend or foe” concepts resulting in “block mentality” being diffused. Thus, MI headquarters refers to the members of the “NGO cluster” in Hong Kong as “the other NGOs pretending to be migrant advocates” that fail to address the pressing issues of migrants. When asked directly if cooperation with AKBAYAN representatives would be possible, Bragas-Regalada provided an explanation why it is not: “It is part of the game. (laughter) People have choices, but for us we belong to the national democratic progressive organisation and have our own agenda. Maybe some of the agenda of them is the same as ours, but we have this block, this progressive block that we want to be in congress and hopefully we win another five seats.” (Interview with Connie Bragas-Regalado, Migrante International 17 April 2007)

This “block” – or cluster – mentality may at least partially explain why even differences that appear resolvable to the outsider can be blown out of proportion and an issue like the levy can lead to the two clusters attacking each other. The dense transnational space between the Philippines and Hong Kong seems to intensify these divisions: When the levy debate got

143 heated in Hong Kong, it had repercussions on the relations in the Philippines, and the upcoming elections back home intensified the cleavages in Hong Kong. These divisions and “block mentality” in some cases resulted in former or potential allies being driven out of the cluster, as Mary Lou Alcid has experienced. The professor at the Diliman College of Social Work and Community Development had been director of the Kanlungan Centre Foundation, Inc. for close to two decades. According to the present director Rosemarie R. Trajano, Kanlungan was founded in 1989 to provide services to migrants in distress and GABRIELA had been a founding member of the organisation (Interview with Rosemarie R. Trajano, Kanlungan 20 April 2007). Therefore, when plans to set up MIGRANTE as a mass organisation materialised in the early 1990s, it was decided that Kanlungan was to act as secretary general organisation. But after the crisis in the national democratic movement and the split, Kanlungan decided to become independent and Alcid became executive director. This development was apparently not welcomed by MIGRANTE who soon were “at the height of accusing organisations of being co-opted by the government. They claimed at an international conference that this co-optation had also begun to include the migration field, among them Scalabrini, Kaibigan [another OFW welfare NGO, S.R.] and Kanlungan. We were accused of receiving expensive salaries and being CIA mouthpieces. I got very insulted.” (Interview with Mary Lou Alcid, Kanlungan/UP Professor 3 May 2007)

Alcid discovered that the accusations were also issued on the Bayan website (a further indicator of the close relations within the “grassroots cluster”) and threatened to sue. After this initial tension in the aftermath of the split had calmed down, Alcid described the relations as a more “peaceful coexistence”, but MIGRANTE were still staying within its own network and unwilling to cooperate with the campaigns of the other organisations: “MIGRANTE has to learn about coalition building.” One reason that MI did not seem this cooperation necessary was the head-start they had by building on the structures of the national democratic movement not only in the Philippines but also abroad: “they have their own machinery, they have political groups all over the world.” (Interview with Mary Lou Alcid, Kanlungan/UP Professor 3 May 2007) As a result, Kanlungan became one of the “mostly unaligned” organisations and occasionally joined issue-based coalitions like the Alliance for Migrant Workers and Advocates to Amend R.A. 8042 (AMEND), of which Akbayan is one of the members. It also was for some time a member of the PMRW, but decided to pull out after some differences with the mostly church-based members. It has joined the regional network of the cluster MFA, but when the

144 age limit was debated as part of the new POEA guidelines, Kanlungan supported it, thus having a different position than “NGO cluster” member AMC. This is just one example that demonstrates that the split of the Philippine left has not just led to the formation of two very active clusters but also to a fragmentation of civil society organisations. Outside the clusters, loyalties and memberships seem to be more fluid, especially when compared to the “Bayan block”. Like Ellene Sana and several other activists I spoke to, Alcid considered the split and its aftermath a painful experience: “I miss the days when there was just on big network and they [the members, S.R.] did not hurt each other.” (Interview with Mary Lou Alcid, Kanlungan/UP Professor 3 May 2007) The second major Philippine-based member of the “grassroots cluster” is GABRIELA. As Cristina Palabay, Secretary General of Gabriela Womens' Party List (GWP), pointed out, “the GABRIELA women’s coalition was one of the prime movers in establishing MIGRANTE International” (Interview with Cristina Palabay, GWP 2 May 2007). The increasing feminisation of migration and the vulnerability of migrant domestic workers had brought the issue high on the agenda of the women’s coalition. While other interviewees criticized the Bayan members of following most of the time a “junk all laws, they are useless” strategy, Palabay situated the GWP agenda to a larger degree within the parliamentary process than other cluster members. According to her, the most urgent agenda of GWP was developing mechanisms to protect OFWS, followed by bilateral agreements with host countries, a goal which can be seen as an array of the cluster into more conventional politics. The third concern was a law on violence against women and children, including migrant women, and how the Philippine consulate dealt with that problem. GWP had entered into a dialogue with the Department of Foreign Affairs, bringing to their attention issues like the case of two rape victims in Qatar. Thus, GWP acts as one of the parliamentary arms of the “grassroots cluster”, addresses issues brought to their attention by network members abroad and keeps a “tight relationship” with these members, as demonstrated by repeat visits of GWP congress member (until 2010) Liza Maza to Hong Kong. Further, to strengthen the ties for the then upcoming 2007 election and as a result of the endorsement by Migrante Sectoral Party, Cynthia Tellez from MFMW Hong Kong was elected secretary director for migrant concerns and third nominee Flora Baniaga-Belinan was elected as secretary general for external affairs. Hong Kong became the first GWP chapter outside the Philippines and was followed by Australia; there were also individual members in places like Italy or the U.S. These elections and appointments can be seen as a further strengthening of the ties with the transnational network. Relations with Akbayan remained decidedly unfriendly with Akbayan, on the other side, with Palaybay hinting that the party list received government

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support from “the cheating GMA”. Adhering to the “reaffirmist” line, she considered the split as a development that had actually made GABRIELA stronger because “we had reassessed the principles on the women’s question and how it is connected to the general struggle for social change. GABRIELA has refocused its organising on the women at the grassroots instead of NGOs. If you call our advocacy militant, that is an apt description.” (Interview with Cristina Palabay, GWP 2 May 2007) The quote emphasises the dividing line between grassroots movements – an ideological and tactical differentiation that has spread within the “grassroots cluster” and is used by its members from other countries as well as by the global alliance IMA. This section has also shown how deep the cleavages still run in the Philippines, and how these are diffused in the transnational political space encompassing Hong Kong and the home country.

7.4.2 “The “NGO cluster” In contrast to the members of the “grassroots cluster”, who more or less fully embrace their “reaffirmist” heritage, the Philippine-based members of the “NGO cluster” want to be perceived as independent rather than mere “rejectionists”. This becomes apparent in the statement of Kitt Melgar, Chief of Staff of Akbayan Representative Mayong Aguja, 59 when asked if Akbayan was as product of the split: “Some of our members were from the national democratic coalition, I came from there. So, in a way we are affected, they [the Bayan coalition, S.R.] think of us as competitors and accuse us of being counter-revolutionaries. But we are not really rejectionists, not all members are from that tradition, there are many independent individuals. But they even harass our members on the ground by putting them into battle: When barangay [the smallest administrative division in the Philippines, S.R.] officials meet, sometimes the NPA goes to their session and says: ‘Do not go to Akbayan, or else…’ But we campaign faire.” (Interview with Kitt Melgar, Akbayan 10 May 2007)

But while the two parties are far from cooperating, according to Melgar, many voters find it hard to tell the two groups apart since they are both seen as part of the left camp. Thus, Akbayan representative Etta Rosales was often thought to be a Bayan Muna member, while, on the contrary, the Bayan members were fiercely opposed to her appointment by President Aquino as the head of the Commission on Human Rights in 2010. One explanation for the fierceness of this opposition can be seen in Rosales being the founder of the Bayan-member Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), which she left in 1998 in order to join Akbayan.

59 Now Chief of Staff of Akbayan Representative Walden Bello. 146

Melgar reported that Akbayan members were often asked if they had an armed group similar to the NPA, a strategy which the party rejects. Instead, Akbayan describes itself as a progressive political party that fully believes in participatory democracy and, unlike especially the traditional parties, unites members from different sectors, among them peasants and members of the labour sector. Akbayan also aims to represents migrants and has regular consultation with the OFW sector and supports migrant issues in parliament. Unlike GABRIELA, Akbayan decided not to run a full campaign in Hong Kong in the 2007 elections. This was due to limited resources and organisational structures: “If we really want to have a chapter abroad, we have to have a full-time organiser there. We do not want to go to an area just for the time of elections.” (Interview with Kitt Melgar, Akbayan 10 May 2007) But there was an agreement with APL organiser Gigi Torres, based at the AMC in Hong Kong, that Akbayan would support her work in terms of advocacy. This relationship shows that while the “NGO cluster” may not represent a block that is as unified as the “grassroots cluster”, strong and multiple ties have been established between the various positions in the network. Thus, when AMC in Hong Kong turned to Akbayan to assist them in organising a migrant domestic worker union, they redirected them to the Alliance of Progressive Labour (APL). According to APL Secretary General Josua Mata, the APL had “always dreamed of organising an own union for migrants, who so far had been mostly represented by NGOs and migrant organisations” (Interview with Josua Mata, APL 7 May 2007). Organising migrants fits well into the agenda of APL, which considers social movement unionism that reaches beyond the formal sectors as an appropriate response to globalisation. The APL was founded in 1996 as a “national labour centre” that unites various forms of labour organisations. It started with two thirds of its members from the formal sector, among them transport and hotel workers, but aimed to widen its base, a goal to which organising domestic workers abroad seemed a suitable response. According to Mata, in 2007 APL was a mid-level sized union with 70,000 members. In comparison, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) claims to have one million members. APL shares no affiliations with the TUCP, which it considers as traditional, conservative and highly corrupt. Mata situates the APL also outside the dynamics of the split, since most of the founding members did not stem from the national democratic movement but from a more independent socialist block: “We are very critical of the national democratic [camp, S.R.], in the sense that we felt that their democratic practice needs…. Well, we felt that they do not have democratic

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practices.We are very critical of any kind of ‚socialism from above’ approach, we always espouse ‘socialism from below’.” (Interview with Josua Mata, APL 7 May 2007)

Mata expressed being wary of the dynamics between the various migrant organisations, which in the case of the new POEA guidelines had led to an extensive debate on the age limit in the CCOFW while much more pressing issues like trafficking to Japan were at stake. APL supported the higher age limit for the pragmatic reason that this regulation could protect underage migrants going abroad, since it was harder for minors to pose as 25-year olds than as 18-year olds. But this was not a unified position within the “NGO cluster” leading to complaints by the “unaligned” in the CCOFW (see chapter 6.2.). Likewise, APL also found the dynamics among the migrants in Hong Kong as an obstacle to effectively unionising migrant workers. Regarding the “NGO cluster” starting its own union, Mata remarked that for a long time UNIFIL had been opposed to unionism but was reacting now out of fear of losing its connection with HKCTU. This decision can be seen as a case of grassroots isomorphism by modelling as a response to uncertainty. The example of APL has shown how the concept of social movement unionism has spread within the “NGO cluster” between the Philippines and Hong Kong. Diffusion is also at the heart of the Manila-based Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA). Regional coordinator William Gois uses the term “cross-fertilization” for this process: At the secretariat we try to create a cross-fertilization of the knowledge within the network and of how what is happening in one place can be replicated in another or how the learnings from that can be introduced and then remodeled in another context.” (Interview with William Gois, MFA 5 August 2008)

This quote summarizes the concept of transnational political spaces in a nutshell. It refers to its multi-sited nature that enables mutual processes of diffusion between the different positionalities of the actors involved. The space the network encompasses reaches far beyond the Philippine-Hong Kong connection, with MFA being the largest migrant network in the region, bringing together more than 290 member organisations in 16 sending and receiving countries in Asia. Nevertheless, in this case Hong Kong proofed once more the “hot spot” or hub for transnational activism: “Our pioneering work of organizing migrant workers was something that we learned/got inspiration from HK - that was where it started.” (Interview with William Gois, MFA 5 August 2008) The MFA was conceived in 1990 during a meeting of migrant workers’ advocates in Hong Kong. The umbrella network was formally organized in 1994 in a forum held in Taiwan titled: “Living and Working Together with Migrants in Asia”. Until 2003, MFA was a loosely

148 structured network with the AMC in Hong Kong serving as coordinator and monitoring the progress of how the recommendations made by the network and its members were implemented. In 2003, MFA relocated to Manila where its headquarter is now based. One of the reasons for the change in place was the lower cost of living in the Philippines, but it can be also seen as a strategy to create another hub at a different position within the transnational political space the network encompasses. In fact, the location of the MFA headquarter can be seen as a hub in itself: Teacher’s Village in Diliman, Quezon City, Manila is home to a large number of migrant NGOs, working almost door to door with many of them being members of MFA. The membership of the MFA is varied, bringing grassroots organizations, church-based members, unions and more service-orientated organizations together. The Forum clearly positions its advocacy work in a transnational political space, as Gois describes; “At any place within the network lies a certain expertise and that is the richness of this network: you would have some members concentrating on a particular dimension of the migration network, maybe on direct services like counselling; and another member like AMC focuses in research and policy.” (Interview with William Gois, MFA 5 August 2008)

The function of the secretariat is to keep this network together and facilitate the learning, i.e. diffusion, within. Thus, when the members in one country were able to make advances and secured the rights of migrant workers, it was then discussed how these advances could be made in another place as well and negotiated in a different context. Gois cites as an example of how the experiences made in Hong Kong regarding migrant workers forming their own organizations and unions had “triggered of” within the network and led to advocacy for the same rights in other host countries. Thus, the network does not only provide space for diffusion for strategies, advocacy etc. but also facilitates grassroots isomorphism by organizations in one place serving as models for the setting up of similar organizations in another place. Another example cited by Gois was how work with undocumented migrant workers in South Korea had quickly led to learning within the whole network on the importance of the issue and how to address it. MFA increasingly aims to situate the advocacy for migrants within wider issues like women’s or gender issues: “So there are different dimensions of the migration issue that different members within the network would be looking at, and as they learn their expertise on that issue, this results in learning for the whole membership. So we create a space for that kind of capacity building.” (Interview with William Gois, MFA 5 August 2008) 149

This collective learning experience has enabled the MFA network to quickly position itself within various scales of advocacy. The network may take up local advocacy, when for example deportations are happening in one place or members report other forms of migrant rights violations. MFA is then able to pick this issue up on the regional level and the regional level can take the topic up to the global level if needed. Since there had been very little space for specifically discussing migrant issues on the global level until recently, MFA focused its capacity-building on different ways the migrant cause could be framed. Among those were women’s issues, human rights, the right to development, ILO conventions, the UN migrant worker convention, the Millennium Development Goals or conferences like the World Conference on Racism. By engaging in these processes, grassroots actors from the network are invited and exposed to international arenas in order to engage and follow the discourse. These experiences on the global level are brought back to the grassroots, hence there is also diffusion between the different levels or scales within the cluster; as a result there is a high awareness among the organized Asian migrant workers on issues like the ILO “decent work for domestic workers” convention or the UN migrant worker convention, while especially the latter is virtually unknown in Europe. In sum, the MFA adds an additional scale to the transnational political space between Hong Kong and the Philippines. These spaces are overlapping, but they are not always identical. For example, not every Philippine-based member of MFA has necessarily established close ties specifically with Hong Kong. But some of them do, especially the Centre for Migrant Advocacy. The CMA provides support to several destination countries, especially the Middle East. But the connection with Hong Kong is marked by long-standing ties; one major cooperation saw CMA and the Hong Kong organizations from the “NGO cluster” join forces and advocate for absentee voting. CMA was also on the forefront of bringing Hong Kong issues up in the Philippines (Interview Ellene Sana, CMA 9 March 2006, Interview with Ellene Sana, CMA 16 April 2007). It is also notable that the members most active within the transnational political space between Hong Kong and the Philippines – to some degree seem – to form a core group when it comes to global activism. This hold especially true for the GMFD discussed in the following section, where this core group appears to be among the most involved activists from the region – and the same can be observed in the advocacy of the “grassroots cluster” during these events.

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7.5. The clusters go global: Competing strategies and parallel events at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD)

The analysis has shown that the members of the two clusters have expanded their political space from the Philippines to Hong Kong and vice versa. It has also shown that cleavages existing in one place or strategies developed in another can be diffused within the space of these networks. Over the years, the density of the ties within the respective clusters has intensified and new actors have been introduced. Based on empirical observations, the conclusion can be drawn that when transnational political spaces become denser through the intensification of interactions between the actors and a growing number of actors involved over time, processes of diffusion become intensified as well. This observation is coherent with the concepts of cumulative causation and path dependency (chapter 3.2.) Thus, it will be harder to resolve a conflict that seems to be based more on differences in underlying ideologies and “block mentality” than on differences regarding the solutions offered, especially when these ideologies and mentalities are also at work at another position within the transnational space. In other words, it might be more difficult to settle issues on the levy in Hong Kong when at the same time the two parties allied to the respective clusters are in the midst of an election campaign in the Philippines. The cleavages will be further intensified when these campaigns spill over to Hong Kong as was the case with the GWP mobilisation in 2007. It can therefore be assumed that if both clusters are extending their advocacy to a larger scale, i.e. global politics, the cleavages between them may be intensified. This further cumulative causation could be observed in the case of the differing strategies the two clusters took towards the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD).

7.5.1 “The “NGO cluster”: The Peoples’ Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA) While the basic concept has remained unchanged since its introduction in 2007, the GFMD has undergone some remarkable changes nevertheless. The forum remains a state-led, informal, non-binding process outside the UN system (Matsas 2008, Rother 2009d). Senior government officials annually convene for two days in the last quarter of the year to discuss various issues related to migration in plenary and roundtable session, with “migration management”, “best practices” and the migration-development nexus ranging high on the agenda. Since an organisational infrastructure, i.e. a secretariat, is only slowly emerging, the

151 government of the hosting country has a significant influence on the agenda of the meetings and the way these are conducted. The one aspect that has markedly changed and evolved over the years, though, is the involvement of civil society actors. The “NGO cluster” has played a significant role in this development. Until the 4th GMD in Mexico in 2010, the Civil Society Days component of the GFMD was organised by foundations of the respective host countries, i.e. the Ayala foundation in the Philippines or the Onassis foundation in Greece. Since the 2011 meeting in Geneva, civil society organisations have been allowed more agency in the way their own meeting is conducted with the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) being selected as a potentially more permanent organiser. While the ICMC has close working relations with the “NGO cluster”, it cannot be firmly situated within the cluster. But cluster members have been highly involved in the process from the start with the MFA employing “an ‘inside-outside’ strategy where the MFA network engaged both in the intergovernmental process as well as in alternative parallel events to the GFMD, the Peoples’ Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA)” (Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) 2009: 12). Similar to the GFMD, the PGA has its roots in the UN High-Level Dialogue on Migration in New York in 2006. Since the space provided for civil society organizations was seen as too limited, MFA joined forces with its international umbrella organisation Migrants Rights International (MRI). MRI is a non-governmental association of over 500 groups and in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Jointly, the two networks organised a parallel event, called The Global Community Dialogue on Migration, Development and Human Rights (Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) 2007). During the second GFMD in Manila in 2008, the name of the event was changed to ‘‘PGA’’, referring to the existing People’s Global Action global grassroots movement. Manila also marked the beginning of large-scale civil society participation in the PGA. For nine days, numerous workshops, testimonials, press conferences and demonstrations were held before and during the GFMD. There had also been several meetings and conferences in the Philippines and abroad leading up to the meeting. Most of the “NGO cluster” members were also involved in the organisation with several allied groups participating: Among the Hong Kong based members present in Manila were the migrant unions, AMC and CMR, as well as Elizabeth Tang from HKCTU. Among the Philippine based participants were the national MFA members as well as APL and the FES which provided financial support for the proceedings. Noticeably absent were members of the “grassroots cluster” who had chosen to host their own assembly.

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The schedule of events mirrored the MFA strategy of “cross-fertilisation” and divided the PGA in three parts: the self-organized days, the global convergence days, and mobilization days. Members of the “NGO cluster” organised several of the activities, among them the “Third International Workshop on Domestic Work” and a “cross-cutting thematic workshop” on Governance and migration titled “Political stakeholding of migrant workers in home and host countries”. Thus, the mutual learning experience was brought to a global level, with migrant organisations from Africa, the Americas and Europe organising and attending the workshops as well. A report published by MFA described how this structure addressed the different scales of migrant organising: „During the self-organized days from 23 to 25 October, space was created for groups to organize their own activities and refine their positions. From 25 to 26 October there were global convergence days where international and local groups came together to begin their joint work towards developing common positions on the GFMD’s migration and development discourse as well as on the GFMD itself. Meanwhile, 27 to 30 October were days of vibrant mobilizations.“ (Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) 2009: 81) From the UN-HLD onwards, MFA and MRI have followed its declared “inside-outside” strategy: in New York, MFA was part of the global steering committee that coordinated the civil society component of the UN Dialogue as well as organising the parallel event in cooperation with MRI. This is a reflection of the more pragmatic approach taken by the “NGO cluster”. MFA and its partners have adopted a critical-constructive strategy towards the GFMD by trying to improve the process through involvement from within, while making migrants’ voices more clearly heard by providing them with a platform on the outside. (Interview with William Gois, MFA 5 August 2008) In the words of MFA, various initiatives and strategies are undertaken at the national, regional and international levels using a multi-stakeholder approach. This includes interventions both during the official process as well as during the parallel events. (Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) 2009: 12) This approach is not without risks, because MFA takes the chance of being criticised by the “grassroots cluster” for providing legitimacy to a process that is not in the interest of migrants, on the one hand, and being let down by its government partners on the other. The latter was the case in Manila, where, according to several observers and participants, the Philippine state attempted to prevent the expression of dissenting voices during the official GFMD proceedings. This included active efforts by the Philippine government to exclude two Filipino civil society representatives that had been selected to be part of the 17 delegates, because they had been identified as organizers in the PGA mobilizations. Ellene Sana from CMA confirmed the observation in an email communication (April 28, 2009): “Yes, there were

153 attempts, silent and informal at that, to exclude me from the CSO days and also from attending the NGO delegation that submitted the NGO report to the government delegation.“ But these attempts were not successful as Sana was able to give a one minute speech on behalf of the Asian region. It seemed, then, that MFA and other organisers of the PGA were walking a thin line, but their continued adherence to the “inside-outside” strategy opened up more space for them in the GFMD process. Starting with the GFMD in Mexico in November 2010, the PGA was recognized as a parallel event, several of the organizers were also delegates in the “official” Civil Society Days and could even be found among the members of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the CSDs that is involved in the selection of the delegates. This involvement was taken one step further when, in 2011, William Gois from MFA became Chair of the Civil Society Days. Ellene Sana considered these developments as an indicator that the “NGO cluster” strategy was ‘‘the best way to mainstream our agenda’’. Indeed, over the years, issues like undocumented migrants, gender implications of migration and rights-based approaches had been introduced to or gained more prominence on the “official” GFMD agenda. After my participation in four GFMDs and two sessions of the International Labour Conference (ILC) in Geneva ILO on “decent work for domestic workers”, a common pattern was discernible: No matter where these events take place, a core group of the “NGO cluster” with bases in Hong Kong and Manila (and to a lesser degree in Indonesia) is continuously among those pulling the strings in civil society organising as well as in interactions with the governments. To some degree, this is certainly due to the charismatic personalities of the actors involved. But it can also be seen as a result of the high level of experience the actors have gathered in the transnational politic space between the Philippines and Hong Kong (and its extension to Indonesia). The dense ties that have been created within the “NGO cluster” are also beneficial when cooperating as part of a larger unit on the global level. And information as well as the social capital gathered is flowing in a bidirectional manner between the different scales: there are preparatory meetings on the ground in the months leading up to the global events and feedback mechanisms reporting back to the constituency and bringing new impulses for organising. This flow as well as the high level of participation in global processes can be illustrated by a “Joint Victory Statement” issued by the Hong Kong members of the “NGO cluster”, CMR, AMC and APL‐HK after returning from the 100th ILC in 2001 under the heading “ILO convention 189: We shaped, we won, we will claim through continued organising, solidarity and struggle”: “In the first week of June 2011, three of the CMR member‐organisations in Hong Kong – the Thai Women Association (TWA), Overseas Domestic Workers Union (ODWU), and

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Indonesian Migrant Workers Union (IMWU) – joined the workers’ and civil society delegation to the 100th ILO Conference in Geneva. The CMR members were part of our Asian regional team led by the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) and Asian Migrant Domestic Workers Alliance (ADWA). TWA officially represented CMR at the ILC, while ODWU and IMWU officially represented the domestic workers’ unions led by the Federation of Asian Domestic Workers Unions (FADWU), HK Confederation of Trade Unions, and APL‐HK. On 16 June, the migrant DW delegates returned victorious to Hong Kong, and joined the Asian and global celebration on the formal adoption of ILO Convention 189.”60

But besides victories and knowledge, cleavages are diffused and deepened through the added global dimension of activism as well. The organisation of a separate parallel event during the Manila GFMD by the “grassroots cluster” has increased the tension between the two groups. The few researchers attending both events were for the most part previously unaware of und surprised by the divisions. This rarely happens, though; the PGA receives broader attention from the academia since it has more resources and exposure because of its “inside-outside” involvement, while the “grassroots cluster” side events are less visible, as Rodriguez points out (Rodriguez 2010). Here, attendance is usually limited to the “epistemic affiliates” of the cluster (of which Rodriguez is a part of). The even rarer case in which a migrant organisation wants to participate in both events is frowned upon on both sides, since, as a PGA organiser explained: “How can we submit a statement to the GFMD calling for reform when one of the signatories has also condemned the process in the statement of the other meeting?’’

7.5.2 “The “grassroots cluster”: International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR)

Only a few months after the “grassroots cluster” had founded its global network, the International Migrants’ Alliance (IMA) organised the International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) as a counter-event to the GFMD in Manila. In contrast to the “inside-outside” strategy of the competing cluster and because of the repeatedly used “scrap it all”-rhetoric, I refer to this parallel event as “outsiders by choice”.61 It is debatable, though, if the IAMR is an

60 http://www.asian-migrants.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=144&Itemid=27 61 In her research on “Domestic Politics and Environmental Issues in New Zealand’s Free Trade Agreement Negotiations”, Astrid Fritz-Carrapatoso refers to a group of NGOs that “often prefer their outsider status in order 155

outsider purely by choice. Considering the statement of a POEA representative quoted above – “we know which NGOs are the not so good ones” –, one might question if the cluster would have actually gained access to the official proceedings. In addition, the “NGO cluster” was heavily involved in the selection process of the delegates; although they declared that they would have treated all applications equally, it might have been against the principles – if not pride – of the “grassroots cluster” to be at the will of those “speaking only behalf of migrants”. Besides, with its huge network in place in Manila and a long-term experience with mass mobilisation, the IAMR was likely to make a much larger impact by radically condemning the GFMD process and holding rallies. Back in Hong Kong, the AMCB and its allies had repeatedly out-staged the more moderate competing cluster. Now almost all of the leading activists from Hong Kong were present in Manila, with Eni Lestari receiving the most attention and becoming the often-cited and photographed voice and face of the more radical GFMD opposition. There had also been preparations beforehand: In an internationally coordinated protest week titled „Ten-day Countdown to the GFMD“, several activities were launched, among them the above described demonstration by AMCB members in front of a number of consulates in Hong Kong. Another major campaign against the GFMD had already started in August 2008, focusing on the violation of migrants’ rights and denouncing the crackdown and criminalization of undocumented migrants. Accordingly, in Manila the IMA aimed „to expose the sham that is the GFMD“ and declared „that specific sending and receiving governments/states that are now pursuing the neoliberal agenda on migration as espoused by the OECD sponsored GFMD are the principal violators of migrants’ rights.“ (Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants 2008: 1–2) But militant rhetoric – a T-Shirt sold during the IAMR denounced the GFMD as „Global Forum on Modern Slavery“ – was not all the organising IMA had to offer. It also demonstrated a high degree of what the MFA had called “cross-fertilization” by covering a wide range of issues in its workshops, speak-outs and testimonials. A session organised by GABRIELA and the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), which several Bayan groups are a member of, addressed the topic „Women Migration: The Empowerment Myth“. Among the presentations were a primer on the situation of Mongolian Women Workers, the plights of victims of trafficking and the experiences of foreign brides, with one speaker actually being a Vietnamese immigrant bride in Taiwan. For the opening, Sison sent in an opening address from ILPS and Jorge Bustamente, the UN Special Rapporteur On Human Rights of Migrants gave an “inspirational message”. Thus, the IAMR in Manila demonstrated that it was capable of “coalition building”.

to remain confrontational and provocative and to aggressively raise public awareness”. (Fritz Carrapatoso 2007: 231) 156

Athens, where the GFMD took place the following year, provided a slightly different picture (Rother 2010f). On the one hand, the IAMR intensified its networking activities, organized a meeting with trade unions, took part in a “Migrant and Faith Communities Dialogue” and presented output from the newly formed IMA Research Foundation in Bangladesh. The cluster even made an attempt at “inside-outside” strategizing and sent APMM director Ramon Bultron as a delegate to the “official“ Civil Society Days, although he refrained from major statements during the discussion. But cracks within the IMA began to show when in the middle of the opening session, local Greece partner organisations and the representative of the Alliance of Turkish Migrants in Europe criticised the decision-making structures within the network and withdrew from the organisational committee. Apparently, the Hong Kong-based members of the IMA were considered as being too dominant and uncompromising within the organisation. In Mexico in 2010, the IAMR managed to again become part of a larger network with many Latin and North American organisations joining in in its advocacy. The event that received the most attention was The International Tribunal of Conscience (ITC). This tribunal had been started at the fourth World Social Forum on Migration, which took place in October 2010 in Quito, Ecuador. Its aim was to document and denounce violations of migrants’ rights all over the world. A long list of testimonials on the abuse of the rights of migrants and indigenous peoples was presented in Mexico City. The testimonials covered a wide variety of countries and regions, among them South Africa, as well as the Sahara, Chiapas and the Philippines. The verdict presented at the IAMR, which was of course non-binding, also denied the Mexican state the right to hold a global forum on migration because of its poor track record on protecting (transit) migrants. Besides workshops and demonstrations in Mexico City, the IAMR also sent out a caravan of around, according to the organizers, 500 participants to head via Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta and arrive in time for the first day of the GFMD Government Meeting. But when the protesters reached Puerto Vallarta, they were stopped by the Mexican police long before they could get even close to the convention centre – thus literally remaining “outsiders” to the process. Mexico also marked a further deepening of the cleavages running between the two camps. While both sides were disapproving of CARAM Asia (Coordination of Action Research on AIDS & Mobility) attending both parallel events, the IAMR program also featured an editorial by Robyn M. Rodriguez, an academic and member of the IMA International Coordinating Body. In her paper, she criticised the “inside-outside” strategy of the PGA in

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Manila which only led to those NGOS adhering to it being incorporated into the process and merely serving states’ interests. She further stated: “Indeed, the critical difference between many NGOs and grassroots migrant organizations has to do with leadership, membership, and methods for engaging in social change. […] Often funder can play a role in limiting the sorts of activities NGOs can engage in. Grassroots migrant organizations however, are often led by the constituencies the also serve and are membership-based organizations.” (Rodriguez November 2010: 5)

Thus, even at the global level the specific attributes of the two clusters and the way that these labels are used remain firmly in place.

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Part III: Conclusion, Annex, References

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8. Conclusion

The analysis conducted in this study has focused on the roles of governments, the migration industry, individual migrants and migrant organisations as well as on the interaction within and between these actors. The analysis has demonstrated that the concept of transnational political spaces and processes of diffusion and grassroots isomorphism taking place within these spaces are not mere abstract constructions, but useful analytical tools that also correspond with the experience of the actors involved. While the interview partners did not use the exact phrasing, they repeatedly referred to these phenomena when describing their work: By speaking of “cross-fertilization” within a network, by discussing how strategies and organisational forms at one position in a network have “triggered off” similar developments at another position, and also by pointing out how developments in Manila had started in Hong Kong and vice versa. The results of the research also show how transnational scholarship, multi-sited research and the willingness to “follow the people” not only within their initial networks but also on a larger scale (i.e. global activism) can enrich the analysis. When only studying migrant organisations located in Hong Kong, for example, one might not comprehend the underlying reasons for the divisions between the two main clusters identified in this thesis. By applying a transnational perspective that includes processes of diffusion, on the other hand, one may find that a fierce debate about the levy in Hong Kong is not just about the issue at hand but a result of cumulative political differences that reach back to the homeland. The concepts applied in this research were mostly developed from a bottom up perspective: The existence of the two clusters and the reasons for the cleavages between them only emerged in the course of the fieldwork. If needed, interviews were repeated at different times and in different locations, to address new concepts developed during the analysis. Thus, when formally or informally talking with respondents for a second time, I asked them about their relations with “the Others” I had learned about in the meantime and mentioned the split of the Philippine left. As a result of this network analysis, two clusters with fairly stable memberships could be identified. The “grassroots cluster” was the first one to form. Its representatives claim to represent “the true voice of the migrants” and the ideological tradition of the cluster firmly situated in the “reaffirmist” tradition of the Philippine Left. The “NGO cluster” was established more recently, but already forms a dense network. While NHOs may play a more prominent role in the cluster, several grassroots organisations can be found among the members as well.

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This cluster has a more varied tradition, bringing together “rejectionists”, socialists and independent members. Since the interactions analysed in this thesis are political in nature and carried out across several state borders as well as up to the global level, they involve several aspects that fall in the arena of IR research. Unfortunately, most of the existing migration research in IR lacks a truly transnational as well as a spatial component. States still play a crucial role in transnational political spaces, but it has also been shown that through migration a new set of actors has emerged that are hard to analyse when considering the nation-state to be the sole unit of analysis. In the chapter on “transnational political spaces” I have posed several guiding questions which I will address now based on the analysis conducted above: Structure of transnational political spaces How are transnational political spaces constructed and maintained? What is the structure-agent relationship, are they mutually constituent?

The analysis has shown that the political-legal framework plays a major role in the initial stage of the formation of transnational political spaces. States set the entry- and exit rules for their territories and they might channel migration into specific directions by acting as in the case of the Philippine state as “labour brokers” that proactively try to “manage” migration. States and the migration industry may also aggravate the transnational dimension by instigating temporary contract labour programs as in the case of Hong Kong. Migrants find themselves in a transnational space not just by choice but because of the rules established in the political-legal framework. If this framework excludes any opportunity for more permanent settlement, migrants may be drawn into a cycle of semi-permanent temporary migration. In a process of cumulative causation, the density of the ties increases because of the repeated migration experience. This holds even more true in the case of the political migrant activists interviewed: most of them had been migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong for an extended period of time, sometimes for twelve years or longer. The observations made so far could be applied to any transnational space. What, then, is the specific political aspect that led to the formation and maintenance of these spaces? The answer to this question is to look beyond the mere political-legal framework and take bottom up processes into consideration. In the case of the transnational political space between the Philippines and Hong Kong, it was the migrants that mattered. The Filipinas may have come to Hong Kong to be employed as domestic workers, but they brought with them a significant amount of social capital: Many of them carried a university degree, and the activists had

161 started their career back home as student organisers or in the mass movements gaining strengths in the late 1970s, early 1980s. Thus, a highly politicised group of actors started to gather in Hong Kong. They had a transnational outlook because of the legal-political framework that denied them the right to abode, but also because they still cared about the political situation in their home country. Organising this protest was supported by conditions inside and outside the group of actors. Inside, the Filipinas brought with them an intrinsic tendency to self-organise into social groups, as was demonstrated by the rapid increase of regional-based associations among the migrant domestic workers. This made it comparatively easy for outside actors like the Philippine Mission for Migrant Workers to turn some of these existing organisations into political entities. With these preconditions favourable to political organising, all it needed was a trigger to start a larger movement. The “forced remittances act” that Marcos tried to introduce in the early 1980s served as such a trigger. It provided the Filipinos abroad with the realisation that they had common interests as migrants, and gave them an identity as a political group, regional loyalties notwithstanding. This identity was reinforced by the almost instant success of the UNFARE coalition which triggered further efforts to organise more formally. The political climate in the Philippines was influential in the formation of the alliance. While the national democratic movement did not constitute a homogenous group, its members were united in the fight against Marcos. When that fight was won and the groups in the movement began to drift apart, this development had repercussions on the situation in Hong Kong as well. In sum, transnational political spaces are constructed and maintained at the macro- level (state policies, migration industry), the meso level (transnational organising) and the often circular movements and transnational ties of the individual migrant at the micro level. While the macro level may play the major role in the initial stage of the formation of transnational political spaces, over time the meso and micro level gain more importance. Within these political spaces, structure (as initiated by the political-legal framework, political opportunity structures and emerging organisations) and agents (migrants and NGO/mass movements/ political parties acting as organisers) are mutually constitutive. Over time, the political opportunity structures provided within these spaces may attract or motivate or migrants to become political active. By gaining strength in numbers and experience in organising, migrants may open up further space for activism, thus adding to the political opportunity structures that are present in the space.

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How does the process take place, what is the role of sites of activism and political opportunity structures? The circular aspect of migration between the Philippines and Hong Kong added to the maintenance of the transnational political space in two aspects: firstly, by providing a sense of continuity to the organisations with many migrants and organisers returning for repeated stays; secondly, by continuously adding new migrants to the space who often brought with them affiliations to organisations and movements back home. This led to the formation of transnational alliances with Philippine based actors such as GABRIELA taking an interest in migrant issues abroad and supporting new organisation like MIGRANTE International. Thus, the more formalised the structures in the political spaces become (networks of networks, migrant-government councils etc.), the more they attract political involvement and vice versa. Political opportunity structures certainly played a major role in the establishment of Hong Kong as a “hot spot for migrant organising”. Political space is provided in several regards: through the political rights relevant to migrant organising (freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, access to the judicial system) and by giving access, although unwillingly, to a central organising space and site of activism (Statue Square) in a densely populated City with a very sophisticated infrastructure. The combination of a certain amount of freedoms promised in “Asia’s World City” and the existence of a well-established social structure which can provide support and advocacy may attract migrants who place a higher value in these aspects which cannot be found in destinations like Saudi Arabia. The various sites of activism within the transnational political space i.e. Filipinos meeting at Statue Square, Indonesian in Victoria Park, while mass rallies and campaign activities may be held in Manila, show that place matters. This activism does not take place in de-territorialised spaces of flow but at very specific place providing very specific conditions. That is why, although there is some organising by modern forms of communication, transnational activism was never able to play even remotely the same role in Saudi Arabia as it has in Hong Kong. Impact of transnational political spaces What are the governance contributions of the central actors in transnational political space? The analysis has shown a wide array of services provided by the migrant organisations and their affiliates. These range from counselling and information campaigns to legal advice and the provisions of shelters. Migrant organisations take functions that the sending and receiving state are unwilling or unable to provide. The Philippine consulate refers to its shortage of staff when being criticised for not providing enough services to its citizens abroad.

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But there were also repeated reports of the consulate opting for the “easy way out” and recommending settlements in the case of disputes between migrant domestic workers and their employers. This policy still shines bright compared to the Indonesian approach. Here, migrant organisations and their supporters have to fight for some of their basic rights and expose illegal practices tolerated by the consulate. The Hong Kong administration benefits from the contributions by the migrant organisations, i.e. by their provision of supporting services and contact points (although the SAR is unwilling to enter into political negotiations). The Philippine consulate may also benefit from migrant advocacy which addresses issues the diplomats cannot raise for political reasons. Filipino migrants in Hong Kong were also instrumental in establishing overseas absentee voting and appear to be more involved in mobilising migrants eligible for voting to register than the consulate. It has been discussed that the sending state can become a transnational actor itself as was shown by the example of the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, but this strategy could not be observed in Hong Kong.

What are the scales of transnational political spaces and how do the different levels influence each other? Is, for example, a grassroots organization more “empowered” in its fight for rights when it is also part of a global alliance? Are there multiple overlapping spaces evolving? Transnational political spaces have provided the actors involved with opportunities to expand the space they are operating in. After “People Power”, political actors in the Philippines decided to take advantage of the political dispensation to expand the “democratic space” in the nation. Soon they realized that this space could be expanded even further and beyond the borders of the nation states. Over time, highly differentiated networks have evolved. These networks also operate on various scales; in the example of the MFA it has been shown how information and advocacy can flow from the local to the regional and up to the global level and vice versa. These dense ties that have been created within the “NGO cluster” are beneficial when cooperating as part of a larger unit on the global level. Information as well as the social capital gathered is flowing in a bidirectional manner between the different scales: there are preparatory meetings on the ground in the months leading up to the global events and feedback mechanisms reporting back to the constituency and bringing new impulses for organising. This was shown in the case of the ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers and the Global Forum on Migration and Development.

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There are also multiple overlapping spaces evolving, as was shown in the Philippine- Hong Kong-Manila triangle. Transethnic-transnational networks as the AMCB may bring Indonesian migrant domestic workers into contact with Philippine experiences and concepts of organising and social movement unionism. For both clusters it has been shown how return migrants to Indonesia have used this newly acquired social capital to set up transnational migrant organisations in their home country.

Diffusion in transnational political spaces What happens inside transnational political spaces? Can processes of diffusion be observed and if so, which norms, ideas, values, gender conceptions and political cleavages are diffused and how? What are the consequences for spatial positions of actors - for example alliance formation?

Several processes of diffusion have been observed as taking place in transnational political space. Political attitudes, advocacy, organising strategies, framing of political issues and political cleavages can be diffused. Again, this process may be aggravated by the circular nature of the migration. Grassroots isomorphism has been observed within the two clusters. Filipino organisations may be modelled after existing organisations in Hong Kong or back home, but the more obvious case of isomorphism took place after the arrival of the Indonesian migrant domestic workers in the mid-1990s. By training, campaigns and support from NGOs and migrant organisations, they set up organisations that closely resembled existing Filipino ones. In addition, one may argue that isomorphism to a certain degree also takes place between the two clusters. For one, AMCB and CMR share some similarities. Further, one respondent claimed that the introduction of unionism into the “grassroots cluster”, which had been reluctant up to that point to include this form of organising, was motivated by fear of losing access to the HKCTU. This can be categorised as isomorphism due to uncertainty. Here, employing grassroots isomorphism may be a strategy to prevent being cut off from a political opportunity structure. Based on the empirical observations, the conclusion can be drawn that when transnational political spaces become denser through the intensification of interactions between the actors and a growing number of actors involved over time, processes of diffusion become intensified as well. This observation is coherent with the concepts of cumulative causation and path dependency. Both clusters can be considered to constitute highly differentiated networks; actor’s positions and their relational qualities matters in the transnational political space they are

165 operating in, since it enables them to follow up on issues brought up by other actors located at other positions. Hence, when an issue arises in one place, domestic workers in Hong Kong can mobilise their allies in the Philippines for actions that range from mass demonstration in the streets to a new round of consultations in the CCOFW. While this diffusion can lead to more effective organising on various scales, “ideological baggage” may be diffused as well. One of the main arguments presented was that the split of the Philippine left has played a significant role in the formation of the two clusters and the cleavages between them. These cleavages are deepened in transnational political space, since i.e. a election campaign running in the Philippines may make it harder for migrants in Hong Kong to cooperate, and differing positions on the new POEA guidelines in Hong Kong can influence negotiations on the Philippines. This argument can be taken up to the global level: The question arises whether or not two parallel events would be organised during the GFMD, if there were no pre-existing divisions between the main organisers being situated in the two clusters. These divisions can be seen at least partially as a result of the split of the Philippine left. And in this regard a further question arises, namely would Indonesian domestic workers have been divided in Hong Kong had the split of the Philippine left not occurred? In sum, transnational political spaces can be spaces of cooperation as well as conflict. This aspect is regretted by many Filipinos who call for the “unity of migrants”. But this may be an illusion, considering how fragmented the political landscape presents itself back home. A more realistic assessment could be found in the assessment of the representative of Migrante International: “It is part of the game.” Or, to use the more positive viewpoint of the Philippine consulate representative in Hong Kong: “You know, this is also a good sign of democracy, we Filipinos are very democratic, very outspoken.” It has to be noted that these democratic practices may not only be diffused among migrants but can also have an effect on the host society. Positive aspects migration may bring to host countries is almost completely neglected in policy discourses and rarely addressed in research as well. Here, negative connotations like security issues, diasporas carrying their conflicts with them into the host countries or failed multiculturalism and the establishment of “parallel societies” prevail. But the migration of domestic to Hong Kong is testament to positive contributions on several levels. Besides the obvious economic contributions the migrants make, they have also politicised migrants from their own country as well as from other nationalities. There are many instances of support, education campaigns and transnational solidarity. That these actions also lead to transnational cleavages may be considered as “part of the game.”

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Further, migrants have brought several global issues to Hong Kong and address processes like the GFMD, the ILO and the WTO. The protests against the ministerial meeting of the latter were regarded as a cornerstone of civil engagement among migrants that also spilled over to the local populations. Another example is the organising of migrant trade unions even before the progressive HKCTU had been established. These interactions may be an indicator that besides the governments and migrants involved, the local population can be brought into transnational political space as well. Mary Lou Alcid refers to this opportunity when stating: “We like to say, it was the Filipino domestic workers who told the Hong Kong people how to hold rallies, how to start the democratization movement.” (Interview with Mary Lou Alcid, Kanlungan/UP Professor 3 May 2007)

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9. Annex: Deutsche Zusammenfassung

Die vorliegende Arbeit hat sich der Fragestellung gewidmet, ob sich im Zuge der seit mehr als drei Jahrzenten etablierten Migration von philippinischen Hausangestellten nach Hong Kong neue politische Räume herausgebildet haben, die die Grenzen des Nationalstaates und herkömmliche Vorstellungen von internationaler Politik überschreiten. Während klassische Ansätze die Nationalstaaten im internationalen System als Billardkugeln sehen, die sich nur an ihren Außenflächen berühren, berücksichtigen transnationale Ansätze auch Prozesses zwischen den Innenräumen dieser Kugeln. Ebenso hinterfragen sie das „Containermodell“ des Nationalstaates mit seiner angenommenen Einheit von Staat, Territorium und Bevölkerung. Spätestens durch die wachsende Zahl von temporäreren oder zirkulären Migranten im „Zeitalter der Migration“ wird dieses Containermodell in Frage gestellt. Die Migrationsforschung der vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnte wurde von einem „transnational turn“ geprägt, der das Phänomen nicht mehr exklusiv aus der Perspektive des Herkunfts- oder Empfängerlandes betrachtet. Vielmehr werden nun verstärkt „transnationale soziale Felder“ oder „transnationale soziale Räume“ analysiert, die die vielfältigen Beziehungen, die Migranten zu ihren Herkunftsländern unterhalten, umfassen. Transnationale politische Prozesse werden in diesen Ansätzen zwar oft mitgedacht, aber eher selten explizit erforscht. Das Forschungsfeld der Internationalen Beziehungen (IB) hat der Migration über lange Zeiträume nur wenig Beachtung geschenkt und diese primär aus der Perspektive der Empfängerstaaten als potentielle Sicherheitsbedrohung angesehen. Andere Ansätze befassen sich mit der Steuerung und Kontrolle von Migrationsströmen. Migranten als eigenständige Akteure spielen in der IB-Forschung dagegen kaum eine Rolle. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die politischen Prozesse, die sich in transnationalen Räumen entfalten, zu analysieren. Die Analyse schließt dabei drei Ebenen: Auf der Makro-Ebene etablieren Nationalstaaten den politisch-rechtlichen Rahmen, in dem solche Räume entstehen können. Dazu zählen – eher seltene – binationale Abkommen, Einreise- und Ausreisebestimmungen sowie der weitere rechtliche Rahmen der Migration, der etwa vorschreiben kann, dass diese in bestimmte Länder nur durch Vermittlung einer Agentur erfolgen kann. Auf der Mikro-Ebene findet sich der individuelle Migrant, der neben den vieldiskutierten finanziellen Rücküberweisungen auch soziales Kapital in das Aufnahmeland mitbringen oder dort erwerben kann. Im Zentrum dieser Arbeit steht schließlich die Meso- 168

Ebene, auf der sich vielfältige Zusammenschlüsse und Organisationsformen von Migranten finden, die auch eine explizit politische Ausrichtung haben können. Als Fallstudie für die Untersuchung dieser drei Ebenen werden die Philippinen herangezogen, die als Prototyp eines Staates gelten, der eine aktive Entsendepolitik von Migranten betreibt. Durch die langjährige Erfahrung mit dem Export von Arbeitskräften wird das Land nicht nur in der Region als Musterbeispiel für ein Entsendeland gesehen, zumal die Arbeitsmigration hier vergleichsweise reguliert und gesteuert erscheint. Allerdings versucht sich der philippinische Staat nicht nur an der Steuerung von Migration, sondern wird auch als Ursache des Problems bezeichnet: Als „broker“ forciert er offensiv die Arbeitsmigration, die gleichzeitig der Machtsicherung der jeweiligen Regierung dienen soll, da hierdurch die prekäre ökonomische Lage des Landes abgefedert wird. Kritiker sehen diese als Folge von „Bad Governance“. Umgekehrt nehmen transnationale Nichtregierungsorganisationen zunehmend selbstbewusst Einfluss auf den hier nicht immer kooperativen Staat und übernehmen in einer Form von „Governance von unten“ Funktionen, die der Staat mangels Willen oder Möglichkeiten seinen Bürgern nicht gewährleisten kann. Neben den Golfstaaten entwickelte sich Hongkong in den 1970er Jahren schnell zu einem der Zielorte mit der höchsten Zahl philippinischer Arbeitsmigranten. Migration nach Hongkong ist fast ausschließlich weiblich, die Migrantinnen arbeiten als Hausangestellte, die über stets auf zwei Jahre befristete Verträge angestellt werden. In den frühen 1980er Jahren begann Hong Kong, sich zur „Wiege der philippinischen Migrantenbewegung“ zu entwickeln. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt verkündete der philippinische Präsident Marcos Pläne, die philippinischen Migranten dazu zu verpflichten, mindestens die Hälfte ihrer Einnahmen als Rücküberweisungen über philippinische Banken in die Heimat zu senden. Darauf regte sich vor allem in Hongkong massiver Widerstand und im Jahr 1984 bildeten ca. zehn Organisationen von Hausangestellten eine lose Allianz, United Filipinos Against Forced Remittance (UNFARE), und starteten sonntägliche Demonstrationen auf dem Statue Square und vor dem philippinischen Konsulat. Weitere Aktivitäten wie Unterschriftensammlungen, Informationsveranstaltungen und kulturelle Darbietungen hatten tatsächlich zur Folge, dass im Jahre 1985 das Vorhaben aufgegeben wurde. Die philippinische Migrantenbewegung konnte somit ihren ersten signifikanten Erfolg erzielen, aus UNFAIR entstand das bis heute aktive Netzwerk United Filipinos in Hong Kong (UNIFIL-HK). Seitdem zählen Demonstrationen, Kundgebungen und politische Versammlungen zum festen Bestandteil des sonntäglichen Programms. Das Engagement der Migrantinnen ist in mehrerer Hinsicht bemerkenswert. Zum einen beziehen sich die politischen Aktionen und Demonstrationen in Hong Kong in der Regel

169 nicht nur auf den Aufenthaltsort, sondern auch auf die politische Situation im Heimatland. Migranten werden somit zu transnationalen politischen Akteuren. Philippinische Parteien und Massenorganisationen haben dieses Potential für sich entdeckt und betreiben in Hongkong Wahlkampf oder kooperieren mit Bündnispartnern. Hier sind Prozesse der Diffusion und von Graswurzel-Isomorphismus zu verzeichnen. Diffusion bezieht sich auf Strategien, politische Ideen aber auch Ideologien, die sich innerhalb eines Netzwerkes oder Raumes verbreiten. Graswurzel-Isomorphismus beschreibt das Phänomen, dass sich auch die Organisationsformen der MigrantInnen zunehmend anzugleichen beginnen. Dies ist besonders auffällig, da seit der Mitte der 1990er Jahre eine verstärkte Migration von indonesischen Hausangestellten zu verzeichnen ist. Diese orientieren sich oft an den Organisationsformen und Kampagnen der bereits länger etablierten Gruppe der Filipinas. Die in einem solchen transnationalen Raum diffundierten politischen Ideologien haben aber auch dazu geführt, dass sich in Hong Kong zwei Gruppen von Migrantenorganisationen weitgehend unversöhnlich gegenüberstehen. Es gibt keine Kooperation selbst bei vergleichbaren politischen Anliegen. Eine Erklärung hierfür bietet der Raumansatz, der auch die verschiedenen Positionen/Standorte der Netzwerkakteure berücksichtigt. So ergibt die Analyse, dass die beiden Migrantengruppen oder „cluster“ enge Verbindungen zu linken Parteien in den Philippinen unterhalten. Die Gruppierungen stehen sich unversöhnlich gegenüber, seit es zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre eine Spaltung der philippinischen Linken gegeben hat. Diese Abgrenzungstendenzen werden nun im transnationalen Raum bis nach Hong Kong und durch die Kooperation vor Ort selbst zu den von der Spaltung ursprünglich gar nicht betroffenen Indonesierinnen diffundiert. Die Analyse der Arbeit hat zudem ergeben, dass sich diese Blockbildung auch auf die regionale und globale Ebene auswirkt. So ist während des jährlich veranstalteten Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) zu beobachten, dass jeweils zwei getrennte Parallelveranstaltungen der Zivilgesellschaft stattfinden. Diese Veranstaltungen werden stark von den Mitgliedern der beiden „cluster“ geprägt. Eine dieser Gruppen sieht sich als „wahre Graswurzelbewegung“ und wirft der konkurrierenden Gruppe vor, Migranten keine eigene Stimme zu bieten. Während diese Spaltung der Bewegung dazu führen kann, dass Migrantenorganisationen es schwerer haben, ihre politische Agenda gegenüber Nationalstaaten durchzusetzen, kann sie andererseits als Ausdruck eines normalen politischen Prozesses angesehen werden. Es wäre illusorisch zu vermuten, dass sich die Bürger eines

170 politisch stark fragmentierten Staates wie der Philippinen allein aufgrund der Migrationserfahrung zu einer einheitlichen Gruppe zusammenschließen. Für den Nationalstaat bietet das transnationale Phänomen der Migration mehrere Herausforderungen. Zum einen muss er sich im stärkeren Maße auch für seine außerhalb des Territoriums befindlichen Bürger einsetzen und kann versuchen, diese durch Möglichkeiten, ihr Wahlrecht auszuüben, zu erreichen. Auf der anderen Seite sehen sich Regierungen nun aber an mehrere Fronten einer kritischen Bevölkerung gegenüber, die sich für ihre Belange in differenzierten Systemen organisieren. Somit können die Migranten auf verschiedenen Ebenen politisch tätig werden und beispielsweise Migrationspolitiken von Empfänger- und Entsendestaaten vor internationalen Gremien anprangern.

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10. List of References and Interviews

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List of Interviews

(only formally conducted interviews that were recorded and transcribed are listed)

Aguilar, Jun S.; President and CEO, Filipino Migrant Worker Group/ PPP, Manila; 14.08.2008.

Alcid, Mary Lou; former Director Kanlungan Center Foundation, Inc./ Professor at Diliman College of Social Work and Community Development, University of the Philippines, Manila; 03.05.2007.

Balladares, Dolores T.; Chairperson, UNIFIL-MIGRANTE-HK, Hong Kong; 20.03.2007.

Balladares, Dolores T.; Chairperson, UNIFIL-MIGRANTE-HK, Hong Kong; 03.09.2008.

Barrios, Victor S.; Global Filipino Nation GFN, Manila; 11.08.2008.

Battistela, Graziano; Director, Scalabrini Migration Center (SMC), Manila; 08.03.2006.

Bragas-Regalado, Connie; Chairperson Migrante International, Manila; 17.04.2007.

Casambre, Sister Mary Aida C.; Diocesan Pastoral Center for Filipinos, Hong Kong; 08.03.2007.

Celi, Che; International Organziation for Migration (IOM), Manila; 10.05.2007.

Ceniza-Kuok, Daphne; : International Coalition for the Overseas Filipinos' Voting Rights (ICOFVR); 22.05.2007.

Ceradoy, Aaron H.; Coordinator Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM), Hong Kong; 14.03.2007.

Chan, Shirley; Race Relations Unit, Hong Kong; email correspondence, 27.08.2008.

Corros, Fr. Edwin D.; Executive Secretary, Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (ECMI), Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Manila; 08.05.2007].

David, Marivi D.; Administrative Officer, Unlad Kabayan, Manila; 14.03.2006.

Dimzon, Carmelita; Senior Representative Philippine Overseas Employment Administration , POEA; 21.08.2008.

Gois, William; Regional Coordinator Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA), Manila; 05.08.2008.

Hernandez, Victor E.R.; President, Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc. (PASEI), Manila; 17.03.2006.

Ibanez Ubamos, Tess; Bayanihan Trust, Hong Kong; 16.03.2007.

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Lai, S.M.; Policy Support and Strategic Planning Division, Labour Department, Labour and Welfare Bureau, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong; email correspondence, 17.09.2008.

Lai Wing Hoi, Frederick; Caritas, Hong Kong; 20.03.2007.

Lestari, Eni; Chairperson ATKI/AMCB/IMA, Hong Kong; 03.09.2008.

Mata, Josua; Secretary General Alliance of Progressive Labour (APL), Manila; 07.05.2007.

Melgar, Kit; Chief of Staff for Akbayan Representative Mayong Aguja, Manila; 10.05.2007.

Nicodemus, Fe P.; Chairperson, KAKAMMPI, Manila; 19.04.2007.

Novianti, Devi; Christian Action's Domestic Helpers program, Hong Kong; 21.05.2007.

Nuqui, Carmelita G.; Executive Director; DAWN PMRW; 15.03.2006.

Opiniano, Jeremaiah M.; President and Reporter, OFW Journalism Consortium, Manila; 19.08.2008.

Ordialez, Julie; Foreign Domestic Helpers (FDGH)/ Coalition for Migrant Rights (CMR), Hong Kong; 04.03.2007.

Paez, Rino David; The Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO), Manila; 13.08.2008.

Palabay, Cristina; Secretary General, Gabriela Women's Party List (GWP), Manila; 02.05.2007.

Pasalo, Virginia J; National Chairperson, Women in Development (WID), Manila; 10.03.2006.

Yamzon, Mildred; Member of the Board of Trustees, Women in Development (WID), Manila; 10.03.2006.

Sana, Ellene; Executive Director Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), Manila; 16.04.2007.

Sana, Ellene; Executive Director Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), Manila; 09.03.2006.

Schaefer-Preuss, Ursula; Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila; 15.08.2008.

Sese, Marilou; International Organziation for Migration (IOM) Manila; 10.05.2007.

Sumiati, Mia; Officer, KOTKIHO, Hong Kong; 08.03.2007.

Sy, Alma C.; International Organziation for Migration (IOM) Manila; 10.05.2007.

Tang, Elizabeth; Chief Executive HKCTU, Hong Kong; 26.10.2008.

Tellez, Cynthia; Director, Mission for Migrant Workers (MFMW), Hong Kong; 13.03.2007.

Torres, Gigi; Alliance of Progressive Labour (APL), Hong Kong; 15.03.2007.

Trajano, Rosemarie R.; Executive Director; Kanlungan Centre Foundation, Inc, Manila; 20.04.2007.

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Varona, Rex; Executive Director Asian Migrant Centre (AMC), Hong Kong; 20.03.2007.

Verona, Rex; Executive Director Asian Migrant Centre (AMC), Hong Kong; 02.09.2008.

Villa, Elsa U.; Vice-President, Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc. (PASEI), Manila; 17.03.2006.

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Respondents who preferred to remain anonymous:

Assistant Labour Attaché, Philippine consulate in Hong Kong consulate; 23.05.2007.

Dorothy (name changed); Domestic Workers respondent, Hong Kong; 18.03.2007.

Representative Helpers for Domestic Helpers (HDH), Hong Kong; 15.03.2007.

Representative International Social Service (ISS), Hong Kong; 05.09.2008.

Staff worker Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA), Manila; 14.03.2006.

Staff and Occupants of a shelter for distressed migrant domestic workers, Hong Kong; Visit and Interview, 23.05.2007.

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