Global Justice and the Plight of Filipino Domestic Migrant Workers

Introduction

This paper examines the case of Filipino domestic migrant workers (FDMWs) within the context of global justice. Such examination employs what Thomas Pogge calls institutional moral analysis or institutional moral diagnostics (Pogge, 1995). In this kind of analysis, social phenomena are seen as effects of how the social world is organized in terms of ‘laws, conventions, practices and social institutions’ (Follesdal and Pogge, 2005: 2). Pogge contrasts institutional moral analysis with what he calls interactional moral analysis or interactional moral diagnostics. In interactional moral analysis, the moral conduct and character of individuals or collective agents are assessed. The ‘actions and the effects of actions performed by individual and collective agents’ are seen as those which determine and shape social phenomena (Follesdal and Pogge, 2005: 2).

Pogge’s institutional moral analysis, however, must be distinguished from world systems analysis which is inspired by some forms of Marxism (of which there are many versions; see, for instance, Herrera, 2008) because, although both agree that conditions in the global order affect the individual units that compose that order, the former is founded on principles that support liberal egalitarianism and moral cosmopolitanism while the latter is highly critical of those same principles upon which a capitalist system is built. This study partly aims to show that Pogge’s global institutional moral analysis could be viewed as an alternative to the theory of global labor migration.

John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice sets the tone of examining social institutions morally. For Rawls, justice is ‘the first virtue of social institutions’ and its basic theme is ‘the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation’ (Rawls, 1999a: 3, 6). Through Rawls, the moral assessment of social institutions has now become an important domain of political philosophy and this has been associated with the notion of social justice (see for instance Fabre, 2007; Kymlicka, 2002; Miller, 2003).

Pogge, however, does not confine moral analysis to social institutions within a state. He extends this analysis to include global institutions. His reason is that the requirements of social justice admit no boundaries. National borders, for example, are not morally significant reasons for non-compliance of one’s moral duties to other persons. Citizenship and national boundary are as morally arbitrary as race, gender, natural endowments, social status, etc., and so should not be used as criteria in the application of moral duties as well as in the distribution of benefits and burdens in the world (Pogge, 1989: 247). Though there is no existing world sovereign state which meets the requirement of Rawls’s notion of social justice, Pogge thinks that this is not a necessary condition for the application of justice to the world as a whole. He thinks that, in today’s highly-globalized world, there is an existing economic interdependence that affects people’s lives, especially those lives in poor countries which warrant the application of justice (Pogge, 2008: 18–19, 39). There are international institutional schemes that set the terms of economic trade between countries (such as World Trade Organizations [WTO]), oversee and manage the stability of political international relations (such as North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO], United Nations [UN], Group 7 [G7]), control the markets in many countries (such as Multi-National Corporations [MNCs]) and run international finance (such as World Bank [WB] and International Monetary Fund [IMF]). These influential global institutions create policies that rearrange and even alter the economic, social, political and cultural landscape of nation-states, including the lifestyle of their citizens. Moreover, there appears to be a causal relation between the influence of these global institutions and the deplorable poverty that plagues many poor countries. This global scenario, according to Pogge, necessitates the moral assessment of the underlying rules that govern these global institutions so as to eradicate or at least to mitigate widespread poverty in the world.

Pogge maintains that the impact of social institutions is not only confined to its members. The impact also extends to non-members outside of these institutions’ jurisdiction. This explains why a sound principle of justice must be conceived for the proper design and framing of social and economic institutions which regulate and govern the way individuals treat and interact with each other. As Pogge says:

A conception of justice may affect what we ought to do in at least three ways: we ought to help reform existing social institutions so as to render them more just; we ought to mitigate and alleviate the plight of those deprived and disadvantaged by existing unjust institutions; and we ought to accept certain constraints upon our conduct and policies that anticipate the ideal of just ground rules towards which we are striving. (Pogge, 1989: 8)

Pogge’s approach to global justice emphasizes the duty not to harm the global poor. His main argument is that many citizens of affluent countries have a stringent obligation of justice towards the global poor because they have violated their negative duty not to support the imposition of an unjust global institutional structure that foreseeably and avoidably deprive many citizens of poor countries of their basic socioeconomic human rights. Pogge, who comes from a liberal egalitarian background, extends egalitarian principles to the global realm. His moral cosmopolitanism’s central thesis is that ‘the moral assessment of persons and their conduct, of social rules and state of affairs, must be based on fundamental principles that hold for all persons equally’ and that it should not discriminate arbitrarily against particular persons and groups (Pogge, 2008: 108). As a proponent of moral cosmopolitanism, he views all human beings as moral equals, regardless of their nationality, citizenship, race, gender, social status and age. Moral cosmopolitanism is based on the fundamental idea that ‘each person affected by an institutional arrangement should be given equal consideration’ (Jones, 1999: 15). Thus, on the basis of the moral equality of individuals, each person’s interests must be given equal concern and consideration.

The purpose of applying institutional moral analysis to the case of FDMWs is to underscore the importance and urgency of global justice in today’s world characterized by economic deprivation and human rights violations. Global justice issues have lately preoccupied the minds of many scholars in contemporary political philosophy and political theory (Beitz, 1999; Caney, 2005; Jones, 1999; Mandle, 2006; Singer, 2004; Tan, 2004).

The reason why the case of FDMWs is chosen to highlight the urgency of global justice rather than other cases or issues that affect the Philippines is that FDMWs have a visible global presence. There is a diaspora of FDMWs in all seven continents of the world. FDMWs are ‘part of the low-wage service workforce of the economic bloc of postindustrial nations’ (Parreñas, 2001a: 10). In fact, one author calls them ‘servants of globalization’ (Parreñas, 2001a). Their working conditions leave them vulnerable to certain risks and expose them to human rights violations. Their primary reason for working abroad is to augment their income in order to provide for their families. Their fate, as will be shown later in this paper, is somehow shaped by certain social conditions and processes that have direct links to globalization.

Another reason for using the case of FDMWs as a way to stress the importance of global justice is that their plight has drawn the attention of many concerned scholars, feminist groups and non-governmental organizations (see Ogaya, 2004; Parreñas, 2001b; Yeoh and Annadhurai, 2008; Yeoh et al., 2004). In applying institutional moral diagnostics to the plight of FDMWs, this paper also hopes to understand better their situation in a wider context and provide an alternative view to the theory of domestic labor migration.

This paper will first cite some relevant socio-economic facts about the Philippines before institutional moral diagnostics will be applied to the case of FDMWs. Then it will give a description of the plight and problems experienced by FDMWs. This description provides a context within which the case of FDMWs will be examined vis-à-vis global justice.

Some Philippine Socio-Economic Realities

While it is true that overseas labor migration cannot come from the poorest population of the Philippines because of the high costs it entails (e.g. passport and visa fees, travel fares, accommodation, fees for placement agencies, etc.; Santos, 2005: 50), still economic reasons such as poverty and unemployment drive many Filipinos to seek gainful employment abroad (Tigno, 2006: 274). Political instability and armed conflict, especially in the predominantly Muslim far south region of the country, are also contributory factors to labor migration (Tigno, 2006: 274). According to the Philippines’ National Statistical Coordination Board (National Statistical Coordination Board, 2011), in 2009, the magnitude of poor population was 23.1 million. This is 970,000 higher compared to the magnitude of poor population in year 2006. In spite of the Philippine government’s support of the United Nations Millenium Development Goals, one of which is to halve poverty by 2015, it seems doubtful whether this target could be achieved considering the fact that only one Filipino out of 100 was lifted out of food poverty between 2006 and 2009.

In order to meet the minimum basic food requirement, a family of five needs to have a monthly income of 4,869 pesos and 7,017 pesos to rise from poverty threshold. As of first quarter of 2011, Philippine foreign debt amounts to almost 60.1 billion dollars. This amount is 29.5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). If the Philippines’ foreign debt is almost 30% of its GDP, then this is a cause of worry for the country’s ability to pay its foreign loans. The country’s huge annual foreign debt payments could also affect the government’s effort at poverty reduction since less money goes to other social services like health and education. But these numbers, although obtained with care, are approximations. They may not truly reflect the grim reality of many poor Filipinos. The current food crisis and the exorbitant prices of crude oil add misery to the growing number of many poor Filipinos. The country, according the National Statistics Office, has an estimated population of 88.57 million as of August 2007. The projected population for 2010 was 94.01 million. In April 2011, unemployment and underemployment rates were 7.2% and 19.4%, respectively. Inflation rate as of June 2011 was 5.2%. These figures are still telling signs that many Filipinos suffer from crippling poverty.

The Philippines is one of the major suppliers of labor exports in the world. Though the ‘overseas employment program initially began as a palliative or temporary measure to address the local economy’s inability to provide jobs for workers’ (Tigno, 2006: 278), it appears that the Philippine government has increasingly depended on this kind of labor trade to boost its economy (Bach and Hof, 2008: 2). This explains why the government is aggressively promoting labor export to other countries as this significantly stabilizes its volatile economy through the remittances of its overseas foreign workers (OFWs). The Central Bank of the Philippines has reported that the remittances of OFW’s have amounted to US$18.76 billion in 2010, an increase of 8.1% from 2009’s US$17.35 billion. Because of the economic contribution of these migrant workers, the government has hailed them as modern day heroes or ‘mga bagong bayani’ (Bell and Piper, 2005: 212).

Considering the Philippines’ dire present economic situation, overseas employment is no longer viewed as a short-term goal to address issues of unemployment. As Tigno aptly describes, ‘Realizing that overseas employment is no longer a simple palliative and temporary policy measure but a permanent feature of the government’s development program, it has become necessary to further institute mechanisms and agencies to protect such rights’ (Tigno, 2006: 279–80). At present, there are two existing government agencies which are specifically established in order to promote overseas work and ensure the welfare and benefits of migrant workers. One such agency is the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA). The POEA was created through Executive Order No. 797 for two main tasks: to promote and develop overseas employment; and to protect migrant workers’ rights. The former aim has been more than emphasized and promoted rather than the latter. The other agency is known as Overseas Workers Welfare Administration whose main function is the delivery of services and benefits (e.g. insurance, health care services, education, training and family assistance programs) to overseas workers and their dependents.

Servants of Globalization

Of the more than 8.5 million Filipinos who work abroad, many of them are domestic workers. According to the POEA, domestic work ranks first in terms of the number of persons deployed for that purpose in 2006. It constitutes 29.7% (91,451 out of 308,142) of the total labor exports. In 2009, 138,222 out of 331,752 were deployed abroad under the various categories of service workers, most of which are related to domestic work. Of the total labor exports of that year under the same category, 84% are women (116,578 out 138,222). This indicates that this kind of service is in demand in the world labor market.

By definition, domestic workers are ‘employees paid by individuals or families to provide elderly care, childcare, and/or housecleaning in private homes’ (Parreñas, 2001a: 1). The nature of domestic work seems to require the employment of women rather than men which thus explains the increasing ‘feminization’ of domestic labor. Quite a number of domestic workers are married who left their families in order to find work just to be able to support them and provide education for their children. Although the majority of them come from a relatively poor economic background, there are others who are professionals and have earned college or university degrees. Some of them have jobs in their country of origin and yet they still seek employment abroad as domestic workers to seek higher income. The salaries they received from work abroad are comparatively higher than those that they receive in the Philippines. A significant number of these migrant domestic workers are found in Singapore and Hong Kong while others are hired in Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea. Some of them are also scattered in the Middle East (e.g. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Qatar, Jordan and Oman) and in some parts of Europe (e.g. Italy, Netherlands, and United Kingdom), The United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. One reason why these countries received foreign domestic workers is to meet the growing demand of its dual income families who need people to take care of their homes and watch over their children (Oishi, 2005: 2). Another reason for this increasing demand of domestic work would be the increasing elderly population of these countries. And they hire Filipinas because most of these Filipinas are educated and can speak and understand English.

Filipino domestic workers live precarious lives abroad. They have difficult working conditions and are vulnerable to violence, exploitation and other abuses by their employers. Their basic human rights are often violated. Their vulnerability and exposure to unfair treatment can be explained in terms of the nature of their work and situation. Domestic work is invisible and isolating and therefore outside of the public domain. Domestic workers work mainly in private households and far from public and government scrutiny (Bell and Piper, 2005: 198). The recently-concluded Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers (adopted 1 June 2011) of International Labor Organization (ILO) recognized the deplorable plight of domestic workers when it stated that

domestic work continues to be undervalued and invisible and is mainly carried out by women and girls, many of whom are migrants or members of disadvantaged communities and who are particularly vulnerable to discrimination in respect of conditions of employment and of work, and to other abuses of human rights. (ILO, 2011: 15A/2)

This recognition by ILO of the risks and difficult working conditions of domestic workers in a way suggests to the systemic and global nature of the issue.

Since domestic work is not considered ‘normal work’ that is regulated by labor laws, some of the problems experienced by domestic workers in some European countries are the following: absence of written contract between family employers and FDMWs; no social benefits like access to health care and education; the option to terminate employment is employer-dependent; multiple part-time jobs for those who are ‘live-out’; those who live with the employer are expected to be always available anytime; ‘no work, no pay’ applies when the employer is on holiday or when the worker is sick; cannot be excused from work when the worker has a legitimate reason such as illness or personal/family emergency; difficulty in negotiating a change in working conditions; living in cramped conditions; ‘live-out’ workers often have to face subletting, high rents and unscrupulous landlords; many of them suffer fatigue and stress (Bach and Hof, 2008: 6). These problems, however, vary in degree depending on which European country domestic workers are staying. Some of them, like the FDMWs in Rome, Italy, do not suffer from these harsh conditions but still they are excluded from full membership in their host countries in terms of citizenship, occupational mobility and civic participation (Parreñas, 2008)

The problems domestic workers encounter in Singapore, for example, are as follows: there is no minimum wage and the domestic workers’ average salary is about half of the minimum wage in Hong Kong, domestic workers have only one day off per month, their employers rarely provide them with medical insurance, they have to undergo a pregnancy test every six months since they not allowed to be pregnant while in the receiving country, and they are bound by law on death penalty (Bell and Piper, 2005: 198–9). Domestic workers in Hong Kong have better working and living conditions compared to domestic workers in Singapore in the sense that some of the problems in the latter seldom occurs in the former. The Hong Kong government has installed some measures to promote and protect the welfare of its domestic workers. In both Singapore and Hong Kong, however, domestic migrant workers are not entitled to receive citizenship rights after years of stay in these territories.

Although many employers in the receiving countries prefer FDMWs over other domestic workers from other developing nations because of the relatively good education of FDMWs and their ability to speak English, there are also employers in other countries like Taiwan who reportedly discriminate against domestic workers from the Philippines and prefer domestic workers from Indonesia and Vietnam because their domestic workers lack education and therefore are less aware of their rights and are more compliant to their employers (Bell and Piper, 2005: 209, n. 23).

The abuses suffered by domestic workers in Saudi Arabia is documented by Human Rights Watch (2008), an international non-government organization. According to its report, some of the complaints expressed by domestic workers in this Middle East nation involve nonpayment or underpayment of wages, physical and psychological abuses such as beatings, food deprivation, insults, humiliation, sexual harassment and rape, etc. Recently, the Philippine Daily Inquirer (2011) newspaper reported that Saudi Arabia has suspended the deployment of domestic workers from the Philippines and Indonesia as a result of the two sending governments’ efforts, through bilateral labor agreements, to improve the working conditions of their domestic workers who suffer from maltreatment, abuses and low wages from their employers. This shows Saudi Arabia’s hesitation as a host nation to commit itself to promote the welfare of its domestic workers.

The plight of domestic workers in general and of FDMWs in particular described earlier is a manifestation of a lack of global mechanism and standard which compels rich recipient countries to promote the welfare of domestic workers through improved working conditions and benefits. Although there are international conventions which specifically protect the rights of domestic workers such as the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (UN, 1990) and ILO’s Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers (ILO, 2011), the bright prospects and success of these conventions to mitigate exploitation and maltreatment of domestic workers by host countries and their employers remain to be seen.

Global Justice and Poverty in the Philippines

Many Filipinos work abroad because of the poor economic condition in their country. The Philippine government does not afford its citizens sufficient employment opportunities within its territory. Apart from poverty and unemployment problems, the country is saddled by other pressing predicaments such as political instability, graft and corruption, bribery, armed conflict, high population rate, cheating and rampant vote-buying during elections, environmental concerns, etc. The Economist Intelligence Unit has even characterized the Philippines as having a flawed democracy (Kekic, 2007: 4). In the unit’s democracy index 2006, the Philippines is ranked at number 63 out of 167 countries.

The Economic Intelligence Unit measures democracy in a country according to the following criteria: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties. If one examines how the unit evaluated the Philippines according to the above criteria, it is in political culture where the country scored the lowest. Hence the reason why the Philippines is poor could be attributed to its political culture. Philippine politics is an oligarchy. It is dominated by an elite minority whose entrenchment into power is mainly due to the country’s being a colony of two foreign countries: Spain and the United States. During the Spanish colonization, rich families were tapped by the colonial power to help administer and rule the Philippine archipelago. This gave rich families opportunity to wield power locally and exercise influence over their subjects. When the Americans came, these local elites had to support American colonial rule in order to keep their wealth and power. The elite class continued to dominate Philippine politics even after the Americans entrusted state-rule in the hands of the Filipinos themselves. But this time, Philippine politics became an arena of struggle within the members of the oligarchy who want to take control of the state for mainly economic reasons. As a consequence, the Philippine state is weakened by these struggles thereby compromising the welfare of the majority of the Filipinos (Quilop, 2006: 9).

Arguably, the country’s increasing population and its citizens’ industriousness and moral probity could also be factors explaining Philippine poverty. Hence, from the many tribulations that the Philippines is facing, it can be inferred that the cause of all these predicaments is purely internal and domestic. That poverty is mainly caused by domestic factors appears to be the claim of the well-known American political philosopher John Rawls in his Law of Peoples (see Rawls, 1999b: 108). But if the present global context and dynamism are to be taken into consideration, the poor economic condition of a country like the Philippines cannot purely be seen as caused by domestic issues. The economic and political woes that have paralyzed the Philippines are reflective of what is happening in many different poor countries in this era of globalization.

Rawls believes that each country is self sufficient and can provide the basic needs of its people. He thinks that each society has the potential to become well-ordered and this does not depend on its wealth or natural resources. As he says, ‘a well-ordered society need not be a wealthy society,’ because a society ‘with few natural resources and little wealth can be well-ordered if its political traditions, law, and property and class structure with their underlying religious and moral beliefs and culture are such as to sustain a liberal or decent society’ (Rawls, 1999b: 106). Moreover, he maintains that ‘every society has in its population a sufficient array of human capabilities, each in sufficient number so that the society has enough potential human resources to realize just institutions’ (Rawls, 1999b: 119). Rawls’ reasoning for this is premised on his belief that the ‘political culture, the political virtues and civic society of the country, its member’s probity and industriousness, their capacity for innovation, and much else’ are significant criteria that measure a people’s political and economic progress (Rawls, 1999b: 108). A country’s population policy is also another important gauge because, according to Rawls, a country ‘must take care that it does not overburden its lands and economy with a larger population than it can sustain’ (Rawls, 1999b: 108). So, based on Rawls’s analysis above, if the Philippines is to improve politically and economically and promote the welfare of its citizens, it must be able to address graft and corruption in the government, hold clean and honest elections, curb its population growth, fully implement agrarian reform, protect and conserve its natural resources, promote education, etc. The Philippines has only itself to blame if it is unsuccessful in its bid to attain political stability and economic prosperity.

But it remains to be established whether a developing country like the Philippines can be completely faulted for its difficult economic and political situation. In the light of the pressing issues that confront the country, can it be fully held accountable, for example, for promoting labor migration so that it can help provide better living conditions for its citizens? Can it also be made to answer for using its migrant domestic workers as a means to sustain its economic growth, even if by law this is explicitly prohibited? Section 2c of the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 (RA No. 8042) clearly stipulates against this. This section reads:

While recognizing the significant contribution of Filipino migrant workers to the national economy through their foreign exchange remittances, the State does not promote overseas employment as a means to sustain economic growth and achieve national development. The existence of the overseas employment program rests solely on the assurance that the dignity and fundamental human rights and freedoms of the Filipino citizens shall not, at any time, be compromised or violated. The State, therefore, shall continuously create local employment opportunities and promote the equitable distribution of wealth and the benefits of development.

Pogge’s notion of institutional moral analysis as applied globally would shed light in answering the aforementioned questions. Using this kind of analysis, it can be inferred that the current global order is also a determining cause of why there is poverty in developing countries like the Philippines.

Recent discussions on social justice give emphasis on the moral assessment of social institutions. These institutions are deemed just if they promote individual rights and the moral equality of persons. Rawls’s A Theory of Justice exemplifies this institutional conception of social justice. As Pogge succinctly describes it:

Its currently most prominent use is in the moral assessment of social institutions, understood not as organized collective agents such as the US government or the World Bank, but rather as a social system’s practice or ‘rules of the game,’ which govern interactions among individuals and collective agents as well as their access to material resources. Such institutions define and regulate property, the division of labor, sexual and kinship relations, as well as political and economic competition, for example, and also govern how collective projects are adopted and executed, how conflicts are settled, and how social institutions themselves are created, revised, interpreted, and enforced. The totality of the more fundamental and pervasive institutions of a social system has been called its institutional order or basic structure (Rawls). Prominent within our political discourse is, then, the goal of formulating and justifying a criterion of justice, which assesses the degree to which the institutions of a social system are treating the persons and groups they affect in a morally appropriate and, in a particular, even-handed way. (Pogge, 2008: 37)

Social institutions do not only affect the lives and relations of the people that they circumscribe. They also affect the lives of non-participants; that is, those who live outside of their margins. In this era of globalization, the living conditions of persons worldwide are shaped and affected by the intermingling and intertwining of social institutions across the globe (see, for instance, Beitz, 1999; Mandle, 2006; Singer, 2002). Considering the reality of massive global poverty, the issue of the moral impact as well as how these global institutions are to be designed and reformed according to principles of global justice is therefore of utmost and urgent moral concern. As an example, Pogge mentions how the ‘political and economic institutions of the US . . . through their impact on foreign investment trade flows, world market prices, interest rates, and the distribution of military power greatly affect the lives of many persons who are neither citizens nor residents of this country’ (Pogge, 2008: 38). Social institutions ‘also affect the flourishing of past and future persons through their impact on pollution, resource depletion, and the development of religions, ways of life, and the arts, for example’ (Pogge, 2008: 38).

According to Pogge, rules in international economic transactions ‘are the most important causal determinants of the incidence and depth of poverty’ (Pogge, 2007: 26). He gives three reasons why this is so. First, there is the great impact that these rules have on the economic distribution worldwide. Pogge claims that ‘even small changes in rules governing international trade, lending investment, resource use, or intellectual property can have huge impact on the global incidence of life-threatening poverty’ (Pogge, 2007: 26). Second, these international rules have greater visibility and its unintended and unforeseeable effects are easier to diagnose and correct. The consequences, however, of the actions of individual and collective agents (like corporations for example) to other people in the world, unlike the international rules in economic transactions, are unknowable and difficult to trace and estimate because they get lost in the vast traffic of consequences of the actions of the billions of other individual and collective agents all over the world (Pogge, 2007: 17). This explains why Pogge emphasizes the moral assessment of institutions (institutional approach) rather than those of individuals and collective agents (interactional approach). Lastly, the reason why rules that regulate international transactions are determining factors for the existence of global poverty ‘is because morally successful rules are so much easier to sustain than morally successful conduct’ (Pogge, 2007: 26). These rules serve as ‘counter-moral pressures’ to the conduct of individual and collective agents ‘not merely from their ordinary self-interested concerns, but also from their competitive situation as well as from considerations of fairness’ (Pogge, 2007: 26). To illustrate, international corporations, for example, will not be encouraged to practice morally unacceptable conduct that is prejudicial to the welfare of their employees and customers because such a practice would put them in ‘an unfair competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis [their] less scrupulous competitors’ (Pogge, 2007: 26–7).

If global rules of economic transactions are those which wield strong influence in the incidence of global poverty, then reform of these rules is morally necessary. Pogge thinks that ‘the path of global institutional reform is far more realistic and sustainable’ (Pogge, 2007: 29). He has three reasons for maintaining this view. First, the costs and the sacrifices to be borne by affluent citizens in supporting institutional reform ‘is extremely small relative to the contribution this reform makes to avoiding severe poverty’ (Pogge, 2007: 29). Second, this kind of reform guarantees affluent citizens that the costs and sacrifices they made are fairly shared and distributed among themselves. And lastly, ‘structural reform, once in place, need not be repeated, year after year, through painful personal decisions’ (Pogge, 2007: 29). What Pogge means by this is that if continual poverty-eradication is left to the personal decisions and efforts of affluent citizens rather than through institutional reform, they might eventually experience ‘fatigue, aversion, even contempt of it’ (Pogge, 2007: 29). As he further explains,

It requires affluent citizens to rally to the cause again and again while knowing full well that most others similarly situated contribute nothing or very little, that their own contributions are legally optional and that, no matter how much they give, they could for just a little more always save yet further children from sickness or starvation. Today, such fatigue, aversion and contempt are widespread attitudes among citizens and officials of affluent countries toward the ‘aid’ they dispense and its recipients. (Pogge, 2007: 29)

Pogge dismisses explanatory nationalism or purely domestic poverty thesis (PDPT) as an inadequate account to explain poverty in a certain country. Explanatory nationalism is the view ‘which trace flaws in a country’s political and economic institutions and the corruption and incompetence of its ruling elite back to the country’s history, culture, or natural environment’ (Pogge, 2008: 118). However, Allison Jaggar writes that

although Pogge acknowledges that such factors play a role, he argues that their effects are vastly aggravated by the operation of international institutions and policies which interact with national institutions and policies to create a global order that systematically disadvantages poor countries and predictably deprives their citizens of secure access to the objects of their human rights. (Jaggar, 2010: 2)

When explanatory nationalism is used to elucidate why many Filipinos, for example, are encouraged to work abroad, the reason is clear: there is massive unemployment in the country. But incidence of poverty and unemployment, according to Pogge, cannot merely be explained in terms of explanatory nationalism because they are symptoms of a cause which is global in nature. For Pogge, the cause is the existence of unjust global institutions imposed and supported by some very powerful and rich nations.

The following, according to Pogge, are some of the reasons for the popularity of explanatory nationalism thesis: first, some countries which were once considered poor have now attained a level of economic development and political maturity comparable to developed countries. This leads many to think that poverty is domestically caused. Pogge, however, rejects this reasoning because it commits the ‘some–all’ fallacy. The fact that some poor countries have become economically and politically developed does not imply that all poor countries will also become economically and politically developed. Pogge illustrates his point by alluding to the case of the Asian tigers (i.e. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea). He says that these once poor countries have achieved ‘impressive economic growths’ because their states sponsored industries ‘that mass produce low-tech consumer products,’ used cheap labor ‘to beat competitors in the developed countries’ and trained their workforce to have advantage over their competitors in the developing countries. Now, if all developing poor countries ‘adopted this same developmental strategy, competition among them would have rendered it much less profitable.’ Pogge then rejects the conclusion ‘that the existing global economic order, though less favorable to the poor countries than it might be, is still favorable enough for all them to do as well as the Asian tigers have done in fact’ (Pogge, 2004: 266–7).

Second, there is a popular study conducted by some prominent social scientists who emphasize ‘the differences among national and regional developmental trajectories than to the overall evolution of poverty and inequality worldwide.’ These social scientists emphasize in their studies the causal roles of such factors as ‘local climate, natural environment, resources, food habits, diseases, history, culture, social institutions, economic policies, leadership personalities, and much else’ to national and regional developmental trajectories and to ‘the design of national economic institutions and policies.’ Pogge cites as examples the researches and recommendations of libertarian economists who argue for economic growth and ‘free enterprise with a minimum in taxes, regulations, and red tape’ in order to prevent poverty and human misery. Another example he cites is the developmental economist Amartya Sen whose view is ‘that poverty persists because poor countries have too little government: public schools, hospitals and infrastructure’ (Pogge, 2004: 267, 2008: 17–18).

Third, there is the obvious fact that there are many governments in poor countries which are ruled by corrupt and incompetent leaders. This leads many to say that ‘reforms that would make the global order fairer to the poor countries’ should be deferred ‘until they will have put their house in order by making their national political and economic order fairer to the domestic poor’ (Pogge, 2004: 268).

Pogge, however, thinks that the present global order is itself a causal explanation for ‘the prevalence of existence of corruption and oppression in the poor countries.’ He gives as reasons the existing international resource and borrowing privileges which grant corrupt leaders in poor countries the legitimate power as representatives of their governments to dispose of their country’s natural resources or to borrow money from international financial institutions such as WB and IMF. These privileges, Pogge contends, will just allow these corrupt leaders to perpetuate themselves in power by buying arms and bribing the military. And wealthy countries in turn tend to support these corrupt and tyrannical regimes because they benefit from this unjust global institutional set-up (see Pogge, 2004: 268–72).

One important weakness of explanatory nationalism, according to Pogge, is its failure to consider historical process ‘pervaded by enslavement, colonialism, even genocide’ that ‘have left a legacy of great inequalities which would be unacceptable even if peoples were now masters of their own development’ (Pogge, 2004: 262; 2007: 31; 2008: 209). Goran Collste also presents a similar argument (Collste, 2005: 62–3). World poverty, according to him, is not merely caused by the bad choices and political culture of poor countries. The history of colonialism and imperialism which left poor countries economically and politically dependent on wealthy and powerful countries could be pointed out as one probable cause. Another is that poverty should not be explained in terms of the collective choices of citizens because, most of the time, the bad decisions are made only by a few elites and corrupt leaders. Finally, poverty can also be explained by a lack of natural resources or the political culture which the citizens have inherited rather than chosen. It is difficult for poor countries like the Philippines to recover from their economic and political woes because of the traumatic effects of their violent histories (Pogge, 2005: 38). It is also difficult for them to compete fairly and deal with rich countries in economic and political terms because they do not have the same social starting positions as their rich counterparts. As Pogge explains, ‘The social starting positions of the worse-off and the better-off have emerged from a single historical process that was pervaded by massive, grievous wrongs’ (Pogge, 2008: 209).

Pogge does not discount the contribution of local causal factors to global poverty but he maintains that the present global institutional scheme still plays a central and dominant role. As he explains,

There is considerable international economic interaction regulated by an elaborate system of treaties and conventions about trade, investments, loans, patents, copyrights, trademarks, double taxation, labor standards, environmental protection, use of seabed resources and much else. In many ways, such rules can be shaped to be more or less favorable to various affected parties such as, for instance, the poor or rich societies. Had these been shaped to be more favorable to the poor societies, much of the great poverty in them today would have been avoided. (Pogge, 2004: 263–4, 2008: 18)

Pogge, for instance, mentions how World Trade Organization (WTO) has helped engender global poverty. Many poor countries like the Philippines are barred from exporting their products to developed countries because of the imposition of high duties and tariffs on their export products, anti-dumping laws and agricultural subsidies, etc. Moreover, patents for generic versions of advanced medicines vital to the health of many poor people have also been restricted in poor countries.

A good example illustrating the way global institutions may cause the incidence of poverty in developing countries like the Philippines would be the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank (IMF/WB). The failure of these structural adjustment programs which, to a considerable extent, has caused poverty in developing countries, is also considered as a contributory factor to the increasing number of domestic labor migration (Bach and Hoff, 2008: 5). The Philippines, just like other poor countries, has been subjected to SAPs imposed by the IMF/WB. In order for it to receive loans from these financial institutions, it has to institute economic liberalization programs like privatization, deregulation and the reduction of trade barriers (Bello et al., 2004: 12; see also Abinales and Amoroso, 2005: 244–8). Moreover, it must also adopt stringent policies like increasing taxes and balancing its national budget to avoid deficits. Such reforms and policies adversely affect the delivery of basic social welfare services to the people such as decent shelter, proper nutrition, health care and education. All these stringent measures are meant to increase the government’s revenue so that it can service its ever-increasing foreign debts. As already noted, the Philippines currently has about $US60.1 billion in foreign debts. Most of it comes as a result of the country’s consistent annual national budget deficits which can mostly be explained by the government’s inability to curtail widespread corruption. If there is one reform that needed priority by the Philippine government and which should be imposed as a condition by international financial institutions before giving loans to their borrowers, it should be the fight against this widespread corruption.

IMF/WB wants third-world countries to adopt SAPs because it will benefit them eventually. These ‘reforms, which in the short run might imply a lower standard of living (due, for example, to fees for education and health care), will in the long run bring about economic development’ (Collste, 2007: 112). But what does sacrificing and lowering the standard ‘in the short run’ and economic development ‘in the long run’ mean? What does the term ‘development’ denote and connote? Goran Collste thinks that the reasoning behind SAPs ‘has [moral] implications both for the welfare of individuals and for how welfare is distributed’ (Collste, 2007: 113). Lowering a standard could mean, for example, sacrificing the lives of some and of the present generation in order to benefit many and the future generation. If this is so, then it is using the lives of some as a means to benefit others. But will this not violate Kant’s categorical imperative which states that a human being should not be simply treated as a means to another human being’s end (Kant, 1949: 46)?

The meaning of ‘short/long run’ also implies many things. Collste disputes and challenges their meanings. He asks: ‘For how long will the lowering of the living standard last? When will the economic development begin in five years, 10 years or 50 years?’ (Collste, 2007: 12). As to the meaning of ‘development’ it is not clear whether it means ‘a higher standard for everyone’ or ‘only for those who already have a relatively high standard’ (Collste, 2007: 113). It is also unclear whether this also means ‘a higher standard particularly for those who were hit by the previous lowering’ (Collste, 2007: 117).

Moreover, Collste thinks that SAPs can be viewed ‘as a kind of social experiment: one acts under conditions of certainty, the outcome is difficult to predict, and the program will yield new information about the effects of the economic reforms’ (Collste, 2007: 114). He thinks that the WB/IMF, in introducing SAPs to countries plagued by economic crisis, imposed threat-like conditions conveying that, unless the program is adopted, no loan will be granted. He further maintains that the WB/IMF has somehow not secured the consent of poor nations which are mostly ruled by elites who care less about the well-being of their subjects (Collste, 2007: 114).

Collste’s opinion regarding the implied threat of the conditions for granting loans is similar to Pogge’s view. According to Pogge, the threat that loans will not be granted to a poor country if it does not comply with SAPs minimizes the justificatory force of the argument that citizens of a poor country have given their consent to such a policy from the WB/IMF (Pogge, 2007: 41–4; see also Follesdal and Pogge, 2005: 8–9). This is so because, even if they consented to SAPs, the reason for such consent is not perfect voluntary because rejecting SAPs threatens their country’s survival.

One can then maintain the view that a country’s chances, to attain economic and political progress ‘can be significantly shaped by a dramatic period of conquest and colonization, with severe oppression, enslavement, even genocide, through which the native institutions and cultures . . . were destroyed or severely traumatized’ (Pogge, 2008: 209). If this view is accurate, then the Philippine’s economic and social problems can partly be explained also by its colonial past. Philippine colonial history, which spanned more than three centuries and was characterized by oppression, abuse, forced labor and resource exploitation, can also be pointed out as a contributory factor that affects the country’s effort to overcome its economic and social troubles.

Walden Bello et al. think that internal or domestic factors, particularly political patronage and cronyism which they collectively call the ‘discourse of corruption,’ are not sufficient to explain why the Philippines is poor. The discourse of corruption thrives in Post-1986 EDSA Revolution Philippines because it is a legitimate way for the ruling elite factions to seize control of the State. Elite political factions overthrow each other in power by accusing the ruling faction with corrupt political practices. ‘Corruption discourse’ Bello et al. write, ‘becomes very handy for elite factions wishing to discredit the ruling faction and to present themselves as the alternative’ (Bello et al., 2004: 296). The neoliberal economic policies supported by a ‘weak’ or liberal democratic state are tagged as the main culprit. For Bello et al. this neoliberal agenda is what proliferates this corruption discourse. Hence, for them

the more convincing explanation for the country’s poverty and underdevelopment lies more with the ruling elite factions’ control over people, production, markets, and resources and the successful subordination of the state to their interests . . . Further sapping the state’s potential to act according to democratic and developmental lines have been external interests constraining its range of allowable actions in the larger context of the North’s persistent and often successful efforts to subordinate the South. (Bello et al., 2004: 304)

The above analysis by Bello et al. is from a social democracy perspective and this certainly differs from Pogge’s institutional moral analysis which is based on liberal cosmopolitan principles. But the point is to show that, when the Philippine state is weak, partly as a consequence of its political instability engendered by competing elite political factions, it becomes more vulnerable to the adverse impact of an unjust global structure which thereby contributes to the persistence of poverty within its national territory.

Conclusion

The plight of FDMWs is arguably one example of the effect the present unjust global order has engendered. As Daniel Bell and Nicola Piper note: ‘The trade in migrant workers is founded on global injustice – the global economy is thoroughly unjust, it is unfairly skewed towards the interests of rich countries, and it perpetuates poverty in the third world’ (Bell and Piper, 2005: 214). Ideally, there would have been less violations of the rights of FDMWs had it not been for the current unjust global order. This is so because the Philippines would have attained economic prosperity and therefore it will be able to provide decent jobs, good housing, basic education and adequate health care to its citizens. This ideal, however, will not be realized unless a just global order is established. Obviously, the establishment of a just global order does not necessarily translate into economic prosperity and political stability in the Philippines unless Filipinos collectively act in setting up what Rawls called a ‘well-ordered society.’ Here their political culture, moral probity and industriousness are significant factors in the attainment of such a goal. Meanwhile, while the above ideal is remote considering the fact that labor migration is inevitable because of the way globalization has taken place, what the Philippine government can do to cushion the negative impact of globalization on FDMWs is to strengthen its social institutions by adopting sound economic and political policies. It must also actively promote their welfare within and outside the country.

Host nations also have the important obligation to respect the rights of FDMWs. Specifically, they must commit to the observance of the precepts provided for by the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (UN, 1990) and ILO’s Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers (ILO, 2011). Likewise, citizens of host nations, whether they are employers of FDMWs or not, have a duty to respect FDMWs’ rights. They also have the negative duty not to sustain and participate in the unjust global order by not supporting, for example, hostile immigration policies, unfair labor practices, and the exploitative conduct of multinational companies. But the ultimate goal is to correct global inequalities through reforms in the underlying rules of global order so that injustices, such as the case of many FDMWs, will be eradicated or at least minimized. And this is the primary moral obligation of rich and powerful states and influential leaders who can easily change the underlying rules of the present global order.

The study hopes that, through the application of Pogge’s global institutional moral analysis to the plight of FDMWs, this will help reshape the way host countries think about concepts of territoriality, sovereignty, citizenship, human rights and labor laws in relation to global justice and labor migration.