Subversive legalized trafficking: The plight of the Filipina transnational domestic worke

The Philippine government utilizes legal forms of transnational movement across territorial borders to profit from the commodified reproductive labor of its female citizens who enter into overseas contracts to work as domestic workers in foreign households creating a unique form of legalized Human Trafficking. First, I will discuss the vulnerable place migrant domestic workers find themselves within the global market as well as how reproductive labor became commodified. Second, I will explore the procedures of the Philippine government and associated recruitment agencies in transforming the Filipina into a commodity for sell on the transnational market. Domestic workers are part of a dual informal economy that supports the welfare of family members and the Philippine economic through remittances as well as a supply labor for the growing service sector of the global city. Once home the Filipina remains silent letting the cycle of abuse continue leaving the ability of the Philippine government to exploit its own citizens for profit remain unchecked. Third, the migrant Filipina domestic worker appears to lack civil and human rights in the work place because the private sector is not and cannot be monitored by foreign sovereigns. Therefore the migrant Filipina domestic worker must turn toward current international conventions and mandates of the United Nations to find the means of prevention and protection from the continued cycle of national trafficking and abuse of immoral foreign home employers.