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Abstract

Despite the fact that neoliberal globalization has a detrimental impact on Third World women, mainstream discourse on globalization pays little attention to their experience. This article contributes to filling this gap. It examines the export of labor in the Philippines, as a consequence of globalization and debt crisis, through the experience of Filipino migrant domestic workers in Rome, one of the Filipino communities in economic diaspora worldwide. The feminization of export labor, where the majority of Filipino migrant women are segregated into domestic service work, offers insights into the impact of globalization on the widening gap between the richer and poorer countries, the intersection of gender/race/nationality/ethnicity in the stratification of the labor market, and the creation of a cheap, docile, mobile reproductive labor force linked to capital accumulation. Based on data gathered from fieldwork that was guided by principles of feminist research, this article brings in empirical ethnographic/qualitative analysis that informs conceptualizations about globalization.

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(also published in Social Change Online, 25 March 1996).

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Labor Export in the Context of Globalization

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