Overseas Filipino Workers and the Politics of Nation-Building: Migration, Governance, And the Quest for Equity and Rights
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Abstract
Overseas labor migration, institutionalized through the Labor Export Policy (LEP), has become a structural pillar of Philippine development. While remittances from Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) provide critical economic stability, this reliance masks systemic vulnerabilities in governance and rights protection. This paper employs a qualitative, narrative literature review to synthesize existing research (1998--2025) and asks: How do Overseas Filipino Workers shape the political project of nation-building in the Philippines through their economic contributions, political agency, and interactions with migration governance institutions? The analysis is framed through a tripartite conceptual framework examining economic, political, and institutional dimensions. Findings indicate that OFWs contribute to nation-building not only economically but also through "political remittances," transnational advocacy, and contestation of bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption within key agencies like the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA). The most important finding is that OFWs are central, contentious actors in nation-building, whose economic indispensability is leveraged for both state legitimacy and migrant-led demands for accountability, revealing a core tension between the state’s symbolic glorification and its structural neglect. The study concludes that substantive nation-building requires moving beyond remittance dependence to embed migrant equity, institutional accountability, and meaningful political participation within migration governance frameworks.
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