Addicted to migration?

By Felipe Salvosa II

It’s a quiet morning at the local arcade. The beauty parlor has just opened, but people are starting to fill it up. Not all of them are paying clients, though -- some have come to chat about the latest goings-on, probably on their way to the neighborhood courier/money transfer outlet or to the shop where there’s mobile phone “load.” Upstairs, the eatery selling lugaw, palabok, empanadas, budget rice meals, and a variety of viands is also starting to get busy, catering to people on their way to work.

This scene could be somewhere in Metro Manila, but it’s also in Blacktown in Western Sydney, home of the largest Filipino community in Australia. Where European settlers once took over from the aborigines, Filipinos are consolidating their own diaspora, which globally has reached some nine million.

Pinoy take-out at Blacktown City in western Sydney. Numbering 35,000, Pinoys are the biggest minority.

OFWs fuel urban-rural gap (2007)

By Felipe Salvosa II

Money from overseas workers is fueling the divide between urban and rural areas with remittances tending to benefit the country’s affluent regions, leaving poorer regions behind and worsening inequality, according to a study.

And while overseas Filipino workers’ (OFW) remittances have contributed significantly to the economy’s growth, the study by the University of Santo Tomas (UST) confirmed the worrisome phenomenon of agricultural workers leaving the farms to join industries in more developed regions and wait for the opportunity to become OFWs themselves. 

The study, "Workers’ Remittances and Economic Growth in the Philippines" authored by economist Alvin P. Ang of the UST Social Research Center, found that the more OFWs sent per region, the lower the percentage of workers in the farm sector.