Interrogating Policy Discourses on International Migration and Development in the Philippines: Demystifying ‘Diaspora for Development’

The Philippines’ policy and institutional set-up for labour migration has been a perennial subject of migration studies given nearly four decades of active state involvement in facilitating migrant labour. Amid criticisms of it being hailed as a global model on migration management, this study sets out to examine through frame analysis how labour migration policy discourses are constructed by theoretical perspectives on migration-development nexus (MDN), and what values and goals are embedded in these discourses. This study also takes a critical look at the latest reading of the MDN, the Diaspora for Development discourse, which emphasizes the centrality of migrants as agents of development. The paper suggests that while this latest discursive ‘shift’ has toned down previous adversarial relations among policy actors involved, the continuing dominance of the government’s deployment-oriented strategy raises questions as to whether this ‘new kid on the block’ is indeed a shift that it purports to be.