The Migrant Worker as Disposable Body: Testimonial Narratives from a Nongovernment Organization

Abstract

Lived experiences of social marginality necessitate tactics that engage varied forms of exploitation, discrimination, and abuse. These include writing testimonial narratives, which Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) use to foreground their many-layered subalternity. Through labor export OFWs have become vulnerable to different kinds of oppression, including psychological trauma. This paper examines letters written by OFWs that have been culled from the archives of Kanlungan Foundation, a non-government organization concerned with the welfare of migrant workers. It analyzes the letters according to a two-pronged concept of resistance—one that fuses the discourse of critique with that of affirmation and hope. More specifically, this paper shows how the letters narrativize OFW experiences of victimization, and how such experiences dialectically create spaces for possible emancipation and fuel the search for collective justice.

Keywords: Testimonial narratives, testimonio, OFW, resistance