Shifting employabilities: Skilling migrants in the nation of emigration

• Main Author: ORTIGA, Yasmin Y.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: employability; immobility; nursing; Philippines; Skill; Asian Studies; Migration Studies; Nursing
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3181; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4438/viewcontent/Shifting_employabilities_2020_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper examines how Philippine state agencies sustain its labour-exporting strategies by encouraging aspiring migrants to invest in their own training and education, taking on the responsibility of turning themselves into desirable workers for employers overseas. Based on a document analysis of newspaper articles and Philippine government reports, this paper uses the case of Philippine nursing education to show how the Philippine state alters these discourses of skill when overseas opportunities decline, channelling aspiring migrants sideways to other sectors of the labour market. Discourses of employability justified these career detours to aspiring migrants by assuring them that such experiences will still contribute to their overseas employability and eventually lead to future emigration. This paper shows how the employability agenda allows the migrant-sending state to avoid accountability in a volatile global labour market, thus serving as an ideal tool in the neoliberal production of migrant labour.