Surplused in Dubai: Filipino professionals as surplus entrepreneurs

Abstract

We focus on Filipino professionals, skilled and technical workers in Dubai as a relative surplus population. Though they seek employment in Dubai because they are surplused from the Philippine labour market, their remittances are essential to the Philippine political economy. Labour precarity in Dubai and uncertain prospects of return to the Philippines are ever present for these workers. They are employed on short (typically three-year) contracts, are of low status in a racialised labour market in Dubai, and will be required to return to the Philippines at the end of their work lives. In recent years the Philippine government has given more attention to reintegration programs for return Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), who are framed as both a problem and a resource. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic methods, we analyze entrepreneurship training for return OFWs in Dubai, which seeks to equip migrant workers with the right entrepreneurial mindset and business skills prior to their return. We document the inculcation of neoliberal values of educational uplift and self-responsibilization through this training. Middle-class OFWs are also envisioned by government representatives (and the OFWs themselves) as a kind of development strategy whereby middle-class surplus entrepreneurs, through their inventive social enterprises, take responsibility for other surplus populations (e.g., lower status OFWs such as domestic workers, disabled persons and drug addicts) in the Philippines.