Marie Boti

Three Filipino families struggle to rebuild their lives in Canada after years of separation. The third part of a trilogy on the impact of labour migration, including Brown Women Blond Babies and Modern Heroes Modern Slaves.Every year thousands of women enter Canada as domestic servants, the majority of them from the Philippines. Leaving their own children and families behind, they can spend many isolated years cooking, cleaning and caring for others. Sending much of their wages back home, they dream of the day their families can join them.

Each day, thousands of people leave countries like the Philippines to seek work abroad. They work as nannies, domestics, clerks and labourers for low wages and with few rights. What little money they earn they send home to their families. This contribution to their country’s economy has prompted the Philippine government to call these contract workers “modern day heroes.” But that’s only half the story.

Thousands of women leave their homes and families in the Philippines every year to work abroad as domestics. Thousands have made their way to Canada, forming part of “the Third World in our living rooms.”