Airports have always been known to be spaces of rigid screening and surveillance to assure passengers a certain sense of security. I am sure that for most of us, we had to go through the usual queues for document checks, protocols, and the unfortunate announcements of delays or last-minute boarding gate changes. All of these aspects contribute to our familiar understanding of an airport milieu. However, passenger movements inside these transport infrastructures differ based on many factors. The mobility of labour migrants and foreign workers, unfortunately, remain as one of the most precarious aeromobilities in this age of air travel and migration. 

In this short article, I would like to share stories of stories, a pattern of observations gathered from years of engaging with airport infrastructures, Filipino labour migrants, and the lived airport experiences shaped by these groups of people amidst the site of airports shaping the narratives of these labour migrants. Particularly, I aim to problematize it further by engaging on the concepts of precarity, security in solidarity, and aspirations as ideas that have the potential and potency to reclaim and subvert.

The latest UN International Migration Report mentions the Philippines as part of the top 10 countries of origin with the largest diaspora populations. In 2023, there were about 2.33 million registered overseas workers from the Philippines and majority are female domestic helpers. Tagged as modern-day heroes, these labour migrants are significant contributors to the Philippine economy for decades. They provide additional income source for the Philippines, as migrant workers consistently send remittances, both in cash and in kind, to support the needs of their families back home. In 2023, the Philippines was the fourth largest recipient of remittance globally, with remittances accounting for 9% of the country’s GDP. Given the numbers of Filipino migrant workers across the globe, it can easily be deduced that they also have a collection of narratives, stories, and experiences traversing the harshest of infrastructures built to function as a sifting machine: the modern airport.

Newspaper headlines in the Philippines are no longer new to outlandish stories of exploitation, corruption, and incapacity occurring inside our airports. Most of the time, victims of these systemic modus operandi are our labour migrants. Just to give you an idea of some of the latest issues that plagued our airports: New Year full shutdown of our airspace; infestation of bed bugs and mites in our arrivals area; customs offices/airport staff swallowing stolen cash caught on camera; unforgivable metered-taxi rates using the logos of the airport and the Department of Tourism to make it seem like it’s legitimate; and just a few days ago, the baggage-sorting and handling system glitch not working properly, affecting thousands of luggage; and just this morning, the main airport servicing Metro Manila was hit by water service interruption due to damaged water pipes. These are just some of the issues facing the main airport of the Philippines. 

Precarity or precariousness is linked with insecurity and instability. Airport infrastructures in themselves are not dangerous spaces. The insecurities and risks emerge from the massive impact these mega-structures have on national economies or how these architectural works have become not only iconic landmarks but direct symbols of nations and states. The most usual tactics to exploit these OFWs during departure happen while going through and clearing immigration protocols, and upon their arrival, in customs check. When they return to the Philippines for their annual vacation, they are already tagged as easy victims because airport staff and officers know that these OFWs bring home enough money to enjoy their one-to-two months of vacation. In a sense, this precariousness is also linked with systemic vulnerability. While these stories are already normalized, there are no sustained scholarships pertaining to the precarious aeromobility of OFWs. These narratives are shared within their circles, during moments of communal sharing with other OFWs, with familiar tones of frustration and anger, but oftentimes ending in a collective laughter of helplessness and hopelessness. According to Mika Aaltola, “the airport relates to a larger political context by offering a shared place for remembering and memorizing. To understand the memory-creating and memory shaping effects of the international airport, the intimate relation between memory, thought and movement is central.” Thus, the physical motion of a private person through the various places of an airport corresponds to movement in a shared memory of the world order. This correspondence produces not only specific memories but, more importantly, an acknowledgement of a particular method of recognizing substance, worth and legitimacy.

For instance, just before the global lockdown due to the recent pandemic, a notorious anomaly plagued the nation’s capital airport – the Ninoy Aquino International Airport or NAIA. Named after one of the heroes assassinated on the tarmac of then Manila International Airport, his assassination sparked events that led to the deposition of a dictatorship under Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. A few decades later, our president is the son of this dictator. Looking at these threads of moments, our international airports are bastions of heroism but still tainted and littered by anomalies. The tanim-bala scheme makes use of bullets purposely planted inside the luggage of unknowing passengers. They are then escorted to private offices and harassed into submission – to pay a “fine” instead of being offloaded or a delayed return to employers. If these are the cases that happen to OFWs inside airports, what memories and narratives are created and sustained? As Mark Salter mentions, “airports are spaces that that contain dangerous aspects of the unknown that render certain mobilities visible and others impossible or invisible.” The trick of the modern airport is to present immobility as mobility, stagnancy as efficiency, and incarceration as freedom.

That is just one of several anomalies and schemes that insinuate a feeling of insecurity and anxiety when OFWs go through airports. Their departure from the Philippines is supposed to be a moment of hope toward a better life for their immediate households and in turn, higher remittance income for the Philippines. However, over the years, OFWs have learned to reclaim their rightful places. The theory of social-psychological frames, developed by Erving Goffman (1974), offers a methodological tool with which to understand what takes place when a heterogenous group of people from diverse ethnic, national, religious and regional backgrounds comes together in the political architecture of an international airport. I began thinking about these moments of subversion almost three years ago, when it was my first time to return home from Hong Kong for Christmas vacation. Christmas is something huge in the Philippines. Hence, most OFWs choose their two to three weeks of annual leave to spend these days until the New Year with their families back home. OFWs always bring back tons of presents and gifts for their families and relatives that they collected for the whole year. Hence, balikbayan boxes are oftentimes used. What I experienced three years ago while in the middle of a long queue of OFWs checking-in for their flight back to the Philippines for Christmas was something communal. When an OFW passenger exceeds baggage allowance, a person from the line calls out anyone from the check-in queue who still has luggage room and takes on the baggage. They exchanged contact details and eventually return the goods once they land in the Philippines. Check-in counters are known to be strict when it comes to baggage weight. Thus, these are one of the ways where solidarity is articulated, circumventing the policies of the airport. For Hemmings, solidarity emerges from situated experience and uneasiness in relation to dominant norms and relations of power and can potentially lead to a desire for social transformation. Without them knowing, these OFWs were able to create affective solidarity that impacted and would impact generations of labour migrants. In a sense, the baggage, both in the literal and figurative sense, is redistributed to others to make it bearable.

At this point, I want to problematize and linger on the various iterations of the word dwelling and how it connects with the spatial politics of airports and its impact to the lived experiences of labour migrants. To dwell means to reside or live in or at a specified place. Labour migrants remain liminal when it comes to their dwelling places. They are both residents and non-residents in both home countries and host countries. In technical terms, a dwell is a slight regular pause in the motion of a machine. Airport infrastructures are considered surveillance machines, continuously processing and sifting to ensure security measures. However, for some, the process involves anxiety-inducing pauses at any given point within the airport process. In airport parlance, dwell-time is defined as the total amount of time that a passenger spends in the airport prior to boarding their respective flights. To dwell in this context means to spend extra time, not only within the physical realm of the airport space but to remain in that space where memories and lived experiences (mostly traumatic and sad) occurred, occurs, and will occur. However, these same stories, when shared within their communities, establish a narrative that makes them realize that there is a need to reclaim their rights and identities as informed by their precarious aeromobilities. Ultimately, to dwell, then, means to remain and retain the vision that propelled them to leave in the first place, but at the same time, a figuration of a better experience that should be accorded to each and every one of these Filipino labour migrants. As these stories are shared, turned viral through various social media platforms, or even when they share these experiences during their Sundays off, it establishes a communal understanding of belongingness within that rigid infrastructure and machine that controls, dictates, and surveys; an aspiration to circumvent an unyielding location.

I want to wrap-up my sharing with the penultimate representation of Filipino labour migration and the nature of their mobility – the balikbayan box. It has become unique and particular to this cultural phenomenon because of the amount of gifts and presents they collect upon their temporary return back home. However, this would also signal that it takes a long period of time before they return to their families to have been able to accumulate so many presents. With the precarious nature of their work overseas, a lot of scholars and artists claim that it is such a tragedy for the Filipino diaspora because the ultimate price that is paid is the eventual ruin of the household (due to absence) and most of the time, death. In one of the poems written by a Filipino poet, he claims that the eventual balikbayan box that returns to the family is the coffin. This has always been the narrative of demise that plagues the plight of Filipino labour migrants everywhere.

While this may be the reality and the case that needs to be probed further (because the plight, safety, and security of Filipino labour migrants are still not prioritized), I wish to conclude my presentation with a glimmer of hope. Our Filipino labour migrants still manage to care for themselves by creating spaces of solidarity and belongingness, communities and homes that are built from a common vision and dream. In Hong Kong for instance, during Sundays, thousands of domestic helpers populate the public spaces of the city, bringing with them huge cardboards from their balikbayan box. In a sense, it is also through these boxes, symbolic of their plight, difficulties, experiences, care, and solidarity, wherein migrant communities are held stronger and more persistent. Supported by cut-up pieces of cardboard from balikbayan boxes, these micro-communities function as anchors to their homes and their aspirations; something that these labour migrants have longed for and sought for in many, different and differing sites. The flight, plight, and fight continue.