One of Overseas’ opening scenes is a shot of water, specifically a house with a flooded driveway, the water both extending into and coming from the street. It’s monsoon season. It has stopped raining but the day is gloomy. The neighborhood made up of a few houses, a lot of trees, no pedestrians. It’s most probably a gated suburban community, and in the case of the Philippines, likely located in former farmlands converted into real estate. The dominant voice of a woman instructor is heard giving instructions. Behind her is a group of young women, none probably no older than 40. They are wearing aprons and hairnets, semblance of a uniform. This is a training center preparing Filipina women to become domestic helpers abroad.
They speak Hiligaynon, my mother tongue–a language not even named in the film’s IMDb page. Though this language is spoken in several provinces, my hunch told me the place is in Iloilo, and was later confirmed. This is an important detail, because viewers from venues like that of the Locarno Film Festival where this was first shown, might assume this abstract place is simply the ‘Philippines’. However, Iloilo specifically is a largely rural province in the central part of the country, with a medium sized capital, Iloilo City. This is a documentary about the institutionalization of labor export and it must be clarified that is phenomenon is a two way process. Yes, low income women with very limited job opportunities at home join this global care economy willingly, but private interests like training centers and employment agencies also deliberately go and reach out to these potential domestic helpers as well.
This dimension can’t be sensed immediately based on Sung-a Yoon’s documentary approach; which is stylized slice of life if not found footage, seemingly unintrusive recordings, subject musings instead of interviews, and varied fragmentary episodes that constitutes a narrative. This frame also carries anonymity as a main thrust; places, institutions, and people are not named. You might catch a first name here and there, but these are not character studies. What is presented is an anonymous collective experience. I believe this is both a strength as well as a weakness.
The lack of a clear narrative and poetic framing requires you to pay attention to the episodes, all are tied together equally. Some more emotionally wrenching than others, like the role play sessions or workshops. Some more revealing of the underlying socioeconomic and cultural conditions, like when women gather in a circle to share experiences. I will discuss some of these fragments, in the hopes of creating a more nuanced and intimate portrait of labor export, a policy not unique to the Philippines but where its bureaucratization is most advanced.
The house is probably the biggest subject of the film. Its sterile interiors speaking as much as the students about the global care economy. It is large and Western in design. It’s size of course is also to cater the trainees, and blends well in the affluent neighborhood. It is a pre-departure simulation itself, far removed to the living arraignments the students probably grew up in. To further delineate its alien nature, most parts are labeled; ‘garage’, ‘ironing area’, ‘wash area’, and more pedagogical terms like ‘kitchen laboratory’ and ‘practice area’. The trainees also where a tag, often with their names, but also ‘helper’, to keep things professional and prevent comfortable attachment to the space. The house has a double function, in the end a structure like this for their own respective families is the ultimate marker of success from working overseas.
There are more formal classrooms, with tables and white boards, but there are likewise a casual discussions in the house’s terrace. The instructor ask the women around her who had former experience. It seems like an orientation session. Almost a third said they are trying to leave again, with a DH certification this time. They were deployed before, via another agency. They mention countries from the Middle East; Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE specifically Dubai, and more nearby places, dubbed as tiger economies; Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. They went home because their contracts ended, two years is a standard length. After that, either employers don’t like them so they won’t renew, or the employers are horrible, if not abusive, so the DHs will opt to go home instead.
All affluent countries, with more economic opportunities for local women populations hence the need to import domestic help. None provide, or has a very tedious system of, paths to residency. They just need their houses cleaned, not new citizens with equal rights. The instructor reveals her know how of diplomatic relations, in a teasing manner, along the lines of “How are you in Dubai that year when there was a travel ban then? Don’t tell me you went in with a tourist visa?” Jokes are to lighten the mood.
The most candid episodes are when the training dimension is in the background. Women huddled together will share stories of their experiences or aspirations, while classmates, and occasionally the instructor intimately listening. One talked about arriving to her employer’s home not finding her own maid quarters. She slept in the kitchen. Working hours don’t have a clear start or end, she would sleep at 2 am and get up at 5 am. She was barraged with orders even when having her meals. You are in their country because of them, she adds, they really treat you as a slave. She wipes her tears, wishes she gets lucky this time. She hopes everyone gets lucky with their employers. The instructor concurs in this wishful thinking.
Another testimony deals about harassment. The work is relatively fine, but it is a household of creeps. Men of the house would casually grab her behind, breasts, or crotch. You suck it up, she said, and just make sure it doesn’t lead to rape. She consoles herself, I was able to survive that time because of the routine calls I made during payday. My kids back home are eating well, could buy the things they need or want. Their excited voices kept me going.
One testimony was used in class for its precautionary function. The job was fine, but when the contract ended and the DH went home, she didn’t find the investments she thought she was making. Her home still looks the same, no new household items. She was scammed by her relatives, who received the remittances for her kids. The money was gone, along with the years she spent overseas. The instructor said to ‘be aware’ that these situations do happen. Just be careful who you trust. These sharing episodes are eerie since it shows that these women have considerable agency in making do and adjusting to the permutations of bad situations they find themselves abroad, but the instructor, I presume former DHs themselves, will just confirm the precariousness of the set up they are entering or reentering. Beyond cleaning and cooking, this is what the house is training them for.
The fatalism and absurdity of these classes reach their peak at the several role play sessions. The most animated scenes, these are spread out in the film to keep lull moments at bay. The students have roles and lines, corresponding costumes and make up. The scenes are acted out in specific rooms in the house, and is concluded with a synthesis by the instructor who may or may not be playing the role of the antagonistic employer. Some scenarios are how to ask for a vacation leave (and being refused), when your madame is not satisfied with your cleaning, and what to do in instances of miscommunication (employers may not necessarily be fluent in English).
The women are fully conscious of dramatic quality of the exercise, but highly violent and traumatic scenarios will still drive them to tears. The existence or development of a working script is evidence that these encounters are routinely unfolding and even documented. Most lines are in English, spoken with a heavy local accent, occasional Arabic or Chinese is thrown in for authenticity, and fully Hiligaynon sentences are there to drive home a point. Students with former experiences will also reinforce that these do, and will happen. The take away remains the same; be strong, take the high road, think of your family – the reason why you are there. The nation or race card is final word, Filipinos are not weak. If things do get out of hand, when emotional abuse crosses over to physical abuse, go to proper authorities. And even this last resort is problematic, exemplified in the workshop on how to deal with rape attempts.
The rape workshop starts with an actual enactment, both roles of victim and aggressor played by the women students. The aggressor goes on top of her classmate in the bed and tries to subdue her, while the victim resists verbally. Eventually the victim would grab a perfume bottle and use it as if a tear gas spray. The treat has been neutralized. On to the white board, the instructor asks, what are other ways to get out of this scenario. She calls them ‘ways to counter act’. Sounds like a standard self defense workshop; push back, twist the feet, hit the balls. There was laughter when ‘balls’ was mentioned. One student said it should be the first thing to do. The instructor told them to settle down, be serious. The last option is ‘play along’ and then figure a way out. If the women weren’t able to do any of the measures, when rape did happen, they should go to proper authorities.
The following exchange brings to light the lopsided chain of accountability in migrant workers rights. One student said call the police, instructor said no, go to your agency first. The agency will do its best to resolve the matter. If that doesn’t work, go to the immigration authorities, presumably of the host country. Not even the Philippine embassy was mentioned. Final reminder is not to fight back violently, don’t grab a knife and kill the rapist. This is because you have a contract and a family at home. Another way of saying, once you land in prison, you are on your own. And in the fears of the Philippine state of rocking diplomatic relations or simple neglect, is actually often the case.
Aside from preparing for the antagonistic possibilities the living and working set up entails, it is also worth discussing the clashes of intimacies migrant domestic helpers face. There are two separate episodes that I would like to link. One is a role play workshop wherein the child you are taking care of would rather spend time with you than his or her mother. The madam scolds the DH when she finds her child eating with her. The employer starts weaving a narrative that Filipino food has poison, with the function of making kids emotional distant to their mothers. This is an old feminist conundrum that is still not resolved, or barely even recognized as such. In developed countries where women have more economic opportunities, the need to hire migrant women to do their former domestic tasks, problematizes this form of ‘empowerment’. The flip side also exist. These migrant women now earning more call the shots and can provide a middle class lifestyle but when they do go home, their own kids, looked after by extended family members while they are away, can barely recognize them. Is this ‘empowerment’ as well? The Philippine state, dubbed by Robyn Rodriguez as a ‘labor broker’, would argue yes.
This valorization of migrant workers as ‘Bagong Bayani’ or ‘new heroes’ is candidly interrogated by the students in the wash area, chatting while doing tasks. One of them argues, how can I be a hero when I just wanted my family to have better life? What they really meant, another added, is that you’re a hero to the economy because of the money you send back. The Philippine state’s labor export policy was started during the Marcos regime, coinciding with the oil boom in the Middle East in the 70s and by an internal crisis at home. By sending workers abroad, you lessen the local unemployment rate and the remittances boost the GDP as well as the purchasing power of citizens. The national credit score improves, hence more borrowing from large financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF. The money is either corrupted, or goes to projects that benefit multinational companies or the landed elites who has run the government after formal independence. The imposed structural adjustment programs cripple social safety nets, or prevent a semblance of a welfare state from emerging.
After the Marcos regime was overthrown in the late 80s, succeeding presidents maintained and even furthered institutionalized labor export. There are now several government agencies facilitating the training and deployment of workers, at the moment largely female as the film attests, to meet the labor needs of other countries. They have been praise as ‘new heroes’ as they literally keep the country economically afloat. Beyond the rhetoric, they are mostly milking cows exposed to extreme precariousness. Joanna Demafelis’ name came up, a domestic helper whose body was found in a freezer hidden more than a year after she was reported missing. Her employers, husband and wife, were arrested in 2018. After recounting the gruesome details of the beating and eventual murder, by someone who was in Kuwait around that time, she ask how the hell are migrant workers heroes if things like that happen to you?
This self reflexivity is framed by the film as just another layer or irony, as the last few minutes show some of the students go through the final stages of the bureaucracy of departure. They undergo a medical exam, a mechanical psychological counseling session, and wait in line in an unidentified and crowded government office. The lobby of the said office is filled with sacks of documents, thousands of records of people leaving. They go home, riding a jeepney, passing a flooded street. They are exhausted, hopeful but apprehensive. A permanent state of people, mobile or made mobile, in a country whose leaders exert more effort in sending worker overseas rather than generating jobs at home. The less you have in life, like the unnamed subjects of the film, the less options you have.
I was expecting some concluding data to tie up the film, but there was none. An hour and a half of painful interactions, but Overseas chooses to remains nothing more beyond that. Now, after finishing it unflinchingly, it feels like masochistic viewing. I find this odd since the credits will mention several migrant organizations Sung-a Yoon consulted, including progressive ones like Migrante International which has been making direct calls to end labor export policy, but not even a watered down situationer has been given. Would the affluent audiences in film festival circuits in Europe view their cleaning ladies or nannies any differently (assuming they weren’t let go when lockdowns were imposed)? I would like to hope so, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t. I wasn’t expect the film to give an accusing finger to a complicit audience, but an opportunity to build networks of solidarity was regretfully lost. This is easily seen in the selected, largely formalist, reviews of the film. Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian called it a ‘study of loneliness’ while Thomas Flew from Sight and Sound described the students ‘rehearse their art’ in the workshop sessions.
Depicting the ironic crevices of neoliberalism and globalization, not coupled with calls to action, could only get you so far. From there, it is a slippery slope towards exoticization. This came out in 2019, and the pandemic has done extreme blows to migrants workers in US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, among other places. If this decades long order isn’t outrageous enough, maybe recent events has made it clear, not to mentions six years after Anthony Chen’s nostalgic Ilo ilo (2013), that these semi-invisible populations deserves a documentation beyond mere irony.
Jacob Laneria 