Caring for Indebted Migrant Workers: Financial Literacy Training, Debt, and Filipino Migrant Workers in Dubai

Abstract

This article explores the politics of care that undergird state and private initiatives that seek to assist overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Dubai. In addition to their precarious work conditions in the city, levels of debt are believed to be on the rise even among those categorized as professional, skilled, and semiskilled. These workers thus become the ideal subjects of financial literacy training programs aiming to turn them into “financially mature” individuals free from debt and capable of becoming future entrepreneurs if and when they return to the Philippines. This article highlights the ways in which financial literacy education, despite being framed as an act of care, can still work to obscure the specific political economic and structural conditions that produce and maintain debt among Filipino migrant workers in Dubai. Following Raghuram (2016), I “trouble care” to shed light on the “hidden geographies” of migrant worker debt and the challenges and complexities that need to be taken into account in caring for them. This article seeks to empirically and theoretically contribute to discussions on how debt can be viewed and used to constitute and shape future migrant solidarities.