Transnational Filipinos in the UAE: Actors and Strategies

Abstract

The United Arab Emirates are the second destination of Filipino emigrants in the world. Working opportunities in the Gulf along with endemic unemployment in the archipelago have attracted one million Filipinos to the UAE, mainly in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The first objective of this paper is to identify this population in order to confirm or disprove received ideas regarding the figures and structure of migration: do all Filipinos working in the UAE fit in the category of domestic workers or low-skilled workers? The second objective is to understand how the actors in these migrations (Filipino migrants, the Filipino State, UAE authorities) interact and what strategies — sometimes opposed, sometimes complementary — they use. The third objective is to identify in practice the problems arising from the interaction of these three actors, namely the issue of domestic workers who do not complete their contracts, the negative consequences of their abuse on the image of the Emirates, and setting a reference wage.