The Paths that Pandemic-Hit Women Migrant Workers Take for their Reintegration: A Policy-Oriented Case Study

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact on international migration (including labor migration) and on migrant workers. Women migrant workers particularly felt the abrupt changes of needing to return to their home country, to safely elude the SARS-CoV-2 virus, to reunite with their families, and to move on from earning incomes overseas to maintaining a livelihood at home. On the backdrop is a migrant-origin country, the Philippines, which has assisted over-600,000 repatriated and returnee overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who were displaced by the pandemic. This qualitative case study research documents the lived experiences of 11 Filipino women returnee migrant workers on their repatriation, return migration and reintegration. It was found that these women returnees trekked different reintegration paths in the Philippines, as government assistance for thousands of returnees faced both extensive outreach efficiencies and logistical challenges.

This study puts forward recommendations that can help make reintegration smooth for individual returnees and more efficient for migration-related government agencies.