divorce is illegal but migrant work is like prison
Divorce is illegal but migrant work is like prison
Filipina women who migrate without professional training sacrifice their social lives to support families back home, while the men often find similar restrictions when they work on ships. The re-enactment of Magellan’s death at the hands of Lapu-Lapu’s warriors is a part of Philippine culture expressed in traditional theatre.
Graham Douglas
Leonor Noivo continues our conversation about her documentary on Filipina migrant workers, focusing on the working conditions they meet abroad, and the effect they have on families at home.
The Philippines, along with Vatican City are the only two countries in the world where divorce is still completely illegal.
The recent election of the son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos as president with the daughter of the murderous Duterte as VP has led to a shift in foreign policy, but domestically the economic and housing problems are left unnoticed by the state. As a country with thousands of islands Filipinos’ allegiance tends to be to their place of birth, but the Catholic Church holds enormous influence over the population.
Migration is a big part of Filipino culture, and families at home depend on money sent home from abroad, very often my mothers working as cleaners in private houses, where they are almost under house arrest and in some countries are subject to physical and mental abuse. Fewer men migrate, but many of those who do work on ships, where they remain onboard without shore leave for months at a time, before the next voyage.
Leonor’s film won the Alchemies Gran Prize at the Valladolid film festival last week https://www.seminci.com/en/peliculas/bulakna/
I got the impression from the film that the number of women who leave is much greater than the number of men.
Yes, a lot of the men stay. And there are many family problems. Many of the women I met in Portugal suffer because the men who stay in the Philippines have other women. Women who were married in the Philippines have small kids and leave them with their husbands. There are many stories of these separations, but in the Philippines, it's not legal to separate or divorce, so the women stay here. The Philippines is very Catholic, and the rules are very hard for women.
But if a woman is living in Europe for years, presumably they too are going to start new relationships and maybe new families.
The woman starting new relationships? Oh, very rare. Because they are inside the house. They are inside the boss’s house: they don't have a private life. Their body is really shut up in a foreign house, and they all go out on Sunday and stay together, and they don't have time for other relations, that is also part of the tragedy.
Are the Filipinos that you met in Lisbon all involved in domestic work?
Yes, but I know that in northern Europe there's another kind of immigration where a woman goes to a man's place, for example in Holland for marriage with some guy. They stay there as a good wife, and they are there. It's also a contract, to be a good wife, but in Portugal I didn't see that.
In Britain there are also many nurses who have trained in the Philippines.
Maybe they're from Manila. They have education.
You met some Filipino men in Lisbon, but they are not in the film
I wanted to concentrate on the women’s story. That would be another documentary :) and yes, it's yet to be made! One was a cook, another a chauffeur, and another a tailor. All three came through acquaintances of women who were here. I didn't meet any man who had come alone, without this prior contact. The cook had been a history teacher in the Philippines, and a woman close friend, upon learning of a vacancy in a restaurant in Portugal, challenged him to come. The chauffeur was the son of an older domestic worker who, after 16 years working in the same house, convinced her employers to hire her son. The tailor, the older one who lives in a neighbourhood near me in Lisbon, came because his daughter is a domestic worker in a Portuguese house. After two years, she convinced him to open a shop here. He was already a tailor in the Philippines, and today he maintains his profession. It's a rare case, as there are very few Filipino men in Portugal.
Of the men on ships, I only learned these stories from a distance. They don't come ashore - or if they do, they only spend a day in port.
Rozel comes across as a very strong personality, I don't know if she was also playing to the camera.
She's naturally like that.
When she was talking to Melissa, she said, “you have a boyfriend here, if you leave, how will you have sex?” She doesn’t seem like a typical Filipina woman, is that because she experienced a different way of life abroad?
It's like a young woman talking. And we put it on the film because it was really something that they were talking about out of camera. She came back after only five months in Malaysia. She was feeling that her private life was impossible because of the work. And she was abused by the bosses.
And Norma, when she was in the previous boss's house, he retained her passport. She was afraid because he was very rich and involved in politics. They had big parties, where she was expected to be available all night, and she was locking herself in the room because she was also afraid of the male guests. And one night she just ran away. And Josephine ran away from a previous boss. The priest helped her because she was always in the house, like a slave, and getting depressed. There are many stories of that kind that are not talked about, and even in the film they didn't talk, although they did a bit in the Q&A.
There are many stories in the UK press about Saudi Arabia, and it's the women that run the house and they treat the worker as slaves. They beat them. They lock them up. Did you meet any Filipinos who had been to other countries?
It was a big topic, especially among young people. The theatre group that I was working with, have a scene about it. Almost all of them are sons and daughters of Filipino workers. And they were talking about this. Some of them were in the Middle East. And it is very difficult, the situation there. The sons and daughters of the woman that went. They were very traumatised, and they wanted to talk about it. And now they are questioning this reality. And they are trying to talk with the Filipino state about this. But it's difficult because of the dictatorship and it’s something that the Filipino state doesn't want to see, and it doesn't protect these Filipino workers.
Can you say more about theatre groups, karaoke, and this character, Ketulat Tahimik, it seemed like quite an important part of Filipino culture?
He's a filmmaker. He was in Portugal in 2019 when I met him, and again by coincidence when we were in Manila making the film in 2023. He's also an artist, and there was a big show of his work in the museum for a month. He lives in a village five hours from Manila, and we went there. And suddenly it was very organic how he entered the film because he was talking about his historical moment, and we put it in the film. He's 83 years old, very active, a very interesting person. He helped us reflecting on these things, and it was important to have a Filipino perspective in the film. That's why I also called the theatre group, and they had this idea of a scene where they kill Magellan. And the karaoke and the man singing.
It's an ironic perspective of the country. The title, Bulakna, connects with our culture of the female warrior, she was involved in the killing of Magellan in 1521.
The interview with images and links was first published here:
https://theprisma.co.uk/2025/11/10/divorce-is-illegal-but-migrant-work-is-like-prison/