Filipino Migrants In Oman example essay topic

Section 1 Introduction Oman has a population of 2,713,462! V including 527,078 expatriate workers (20% of the population). Prior to 1970 there were only three primary schools in the country, six miles of paved roads, and it was estimated that over 50% of the workforce was practicing in the agricultural sector, almost all on subsistence level. Since 1970 Oman has become an oil-rich nation, and typically labor migration, to make up their workforce, has been a very important part of oil-rich economies. With Sultan Qaboos bin Said's rise to power, came a commitment to a series of ambitious, extensive modernization programs throughout the country funded by the countries new-found oil-wealth. The population became more empowered, but on Oman's way to development, it became highly dependent on a variety of labor migrants - typically from non oil-rich Arab nations, and Sub-continent and South-east Asia - because the Omani population weren! |t skilled or experienced enough to perform the jobs that the nation needed at the time.

The government began to offer incentives in an attempt to bring in both skilled and unskilled labor to work in the development of all aspects of the country, from the highly important oil- sector, to improving the country through a series of advancements, such as education and healthcare. This resulted in a huge influx of labor migrants from across the globe to come to Oman. Most of the immigrants now in Oman originated from middle-eastern countries such as Jordan, Palestine and Egypt, as well as Asia; the Philippines, Thailand, China, Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia. This essay looks at trying to better understand the motivation of the Filipino migrants, in particular.! SS What are the encouraging factors that influence Filipino migrants to come to Oman for work? !" The hypothesis is that; !

SSThe reason why Filipino's choose to come to Oman for work is the relative chance to earn more money and hence save more money. !" Below are population pyramids which are used to help better provide the basis in which to further understand the influx of Filipino migrants to Oman. It is the economic situation, or lack of, in the Philippines that is causing Filipinos to leave their country. With a GDP per capita of only US$4,000, (refer to figure 1.4) the Philippines are considered to be an economically challenged country. Oman, however, with a GDP of US$8,200, (refer to figure 1.4) and rising, is a beacon for migrants seeking to elevate their economic earnings.

The Filipino population pyramid (See figure 1.1) shows a huge young dependent base, which is known to be one of the serious economic growth impediments for developing nations. One can clearly see an anomalous bulge in the middle of the male proportion of the Omani graph, the economically active proportion of the country! V signifying that male labor migrants have moved to Oman and found jobs. Many of them are Filipino and do not generally work under what's known as [!

SS 3 D!" jobs] - the dirty, difficult and often dangerous jobs that earn the legal minimum - nor do they generally work for medium and large scale enterprises. This is because of the increasing movement of! yenOmanisation, !" a process where the Omani government is trying to slowly phase out the reliance of non-Omani laborers - so Omanis are increasingly being employed over any other nationality. - Camm, Camm, O! |Neill They do, however, work in the! yen middle level! | economy.

Middle level jobs are jobs that require some form of managerial skills and are usually found under the administrative or service sector of an economy. The majority of the middle level migrant laborers in Oman are occupied by Filipino migrant works, and they occupy such jobs as in beauty parlors, electronic sales and maintenance, sales personnel, managers of restaurants, secretaries, etc. They are able to occupy this niche in the economy due to an inadequate number of the Omani workforce being able to perform this level of job-skills. Oman Composition by sector Philippines 3% Agriculture 15% 55% Industry 31% 42% Tertiary 54% Oman INDICATOR Philippines 2,713,462 Population 84,525,639 67.20% Literacy 95.80% 8200 GDP - per capita 4000 7.40% GDP - real growth rate 2.80% $9.2 billion Budget - expenditures $10.9 billion $6.9 billion Budget! V revenues $13.8 billion 104 per 1000 Vehicles 7 per 1000 83% Urbanization - of total pop. 59% 8 per sq km Population Density 252 per sq km web - The World Factbook The geographical framework model which will be incorporated into this extended essay is; "X Everett Lee's Theory of Migration In 1966 Everett S. Lee proposed a conceptual framework which was made up of a set of hypotheses about the characteristics of migration.

He began by classifying the elements that influence migration into the following groups; 1) Factors associated at the origin 2) Factors associated at the destination 3) Obstacles between the two that the migrant must overcome - intervening obstacles 4) Personal factors It is common knowledge that people move for a huge variety of reasons, such as job changes, marriages, divorces, graduations and retirements. They could also move for economic changes, or political ones. Socials changes, such as religious affiliations may also be a factor in people's decisions to move. People move due to conditions in their present area (the origin) or conditions of desirable places to move to (the destination). Not all people in one particular area view conditions in exactly the same way and consequently may respond differently to the same stimulation motifs. Within the circles are plus, minus and zero symbols, each representing a different concern.

"X The pluses are used to indicate the elements which potential migrants would respond favorably towards. "X The minuses are used to indicate the elements which potential migrants would respond negatively towards. "X The zeros are means to represent the factors that are neutral to any potential migrant. Therefore a plus symbol at the destination, such as a job waiting for the migrant, acts as a positive factor and hence a pull factor, while a minus symbol at the origin, such as religious persecution, acts as a negative sign and thus a push factor. Theoretically speaking, a possible migrant should tally up both the pluses and minuses for both the place of origin as well as the destination. His / her decision is then meant to be decided upon whether the balance of pluses and minuses would encourage moving to the destination, or not.

After the decision to move or not, a migrant may be faced with further circumstances! V intervening obstacles. This includes the actual costs involved in making the move and the physiological costs involved, such as breaking ties with families, friends and the community. Though not portrayed in the model, there are many personal factors that may also influence a potential migrant's decision. These usually include a wide range of factors, such as the migrant's age, gender, martial status, number of children or number of elderly dependents. Section 2 Methodology A survey was conducted - in order to achieve the required information needed to answer this essay - through the construction of a questionnaire (Appendix 1) The survey was comprised of 33 questions relating to personal particulars, and their economic particulars for both the Philippines and Oman.

The survey was divided into three sections: personal particulars, economic situation in the Philippines and economic situation in Oman. This was done to show the comparisons needed to make a good essay, and to make the survey easily to follow through for the respondents. Selective random sampling method was chosen to be used. It is known to be selective random sampling because only Filipinos that were willing to participate were given the survey and if they looked by part of the economically active proportion of the Filipino population, i.e. only Filipinos who looked 20 years of age and older were asked to fill out the survey. This brings the survey to the issue of data reliability. When weighing up the options of wither to give the questionnaire to a Filipino or not, a bias is formed in which the appearance of the potential respondent is analyzed.

If I deem the potential respondent to be under 20 years of age, but he / she is actually 24, then the data can be said to be faulty. Section 3 Data Analysis and Interpretation A total of 25 Filipinos, all Omani- residents, were interviewed. Their ages ranged from 20 to over 46 years of age, with the majority of them falling under the! SS 23-35!" age range.

Figure 3.1 shows the gender make-up of the interviewees. Of the 25 Filipinos interviewed, 9 were female and 16 were male. A broad pattern emerging is that the Philippines are predominantly a male labor migrant society. This is reinforced by figure 1.2 which clearly shows that the male economically active population's proportion of the diagram has a anomalous bulge, which signifies that the economically active population of the Omani economy is made up of a large number of migrant laborers.

As can be seen from Figure 3.2, 64% of the sample population is between the ages of 26-35, with the next largest percentage composition being the 15-25 age range, 16% of the sample population. The 3rd largest age ranges found are the 36-45 year range, followed closely by the 46+ age group, a cumulative percentage of 20%. The most compelling reason for the disproportionately large percentage of interviewees being in the 26-35 years of age bracket is that this is the most active of the economically active proportion of the population. Hence a trend is deducted from the results; all of the interviewees are part of the economically active percentage of the economy. While many LEDC's (Less Economically Developed Countries) do experience children working by the age of 16 or younger, the Filipino government is strongly committed to educating its population, and an ever increasing number of the Filipino youth are attending universities across the Philippines, refer to figure 3.3, which clearly shows that the largest proportion, 40% of the sample population, were university educated. This could account for the largest bracket being the 26-35 years age gap, the years of a person's life after they get out of university.

Figure 3.3 provides information on the level of education that the interviewees have received. Of the 25 Filipinos who answered this question, 1 Filipino attained primary school, 6 attained high school, 8 attained college and 10 attained university. None of the 25 interviewees highest educational attainment was a secondary school, technical school or any other kind of educational institute. Contrary to the general paradigm that LEDC's are too poor to offer public university education, the Philippines does in fact spend a lot of its resources on educating its people. Figure 3.3 helps to strengthen the introduction's! | argument that the Philippines has a highly educated workforce (refer to figure 1.3) where nearly 96% of the population is literate. Figure 3.4 refers to question 9 which was only filled out by 22 of the 25 interviewees because three of the 25 were unemployed before coming to work in Oman.

The clear majority of Filipinos, 54% of the sample population, earned 50+ Omani Riyals (OR). The next largest percentage is 22% who said that they earned 100+ OR, followed closely by 14% of the population that earned 200+ OR. The 300+ and 500+ OR earners comprised of only 5% each of the sample population, while the 400+ O / R earners made up no percentage at all. Figure 3.5 - Question 21 refers to how much money the interviewees make in Oman.

A clear majority, 60% said they earned more than 100 OR a month. Out of the 25 interviewees, 16% said that they earned 200+ OR a month, 8% earned 300+ OR a month, 12% earned 400+ OR and 4% earned 500+ OR. Of the 25 interviewees, not one earned 600+ OR a month. Using figure 3.4 and figure 3.5 in contrast, it is clearly evident that Filipino migrants to Oman did indeed earn a comparative larger amount of money working here than in the Philippines. While figure 3.4, shows that only 22% of the sample population earned 100+ O / R in the Philippines, the verity of figure 3.5 highlights that 60% of interviewees now earn 100+ O / R a month by working in Oman. The calculation below shows the increase in the number of Filipinos who earn 100 OR or more riyals a month, upon coming to Oman, than those who earned a 100 OR or more in the Philippines.

A trend that emerged that an overwhelming 96% of the respondents (24 of the 25 respondents) actually increased their salary by coming to work in Oman. Only 4% (1 respondent) experienced a decline in the salary earned, an anomaly. It can now be deduced that almost 3 times as many migrant works now earn 100+ OR a month in Oman than the amount who earned 100+ OR a month in the Philippines. Figure 3.4 shows that none of the interviewees earned 400+ OR while working in the Philippines, but figure 3.5 clearly shows that 12% of the same sample population now earned 400+ OR while working in Oman. Figure 3.6 highlights approximately how much of their income the respondents were able to save. This question was used to contrast the discrepancy to question 24 which asks the same question but for the interviewee's ability to save from the income earned in Oman.

In Figure 3.6, none of the sample population saved a! yenreasonable! | amount of their income. Only 9% of the sample population was able to save! yensome! | of their income. 27% of the sample population was able to save! yenvery little! | which is used to describe being able to save between 0 - 10% of their income and 64% of the sample population were unable to save anything. The largest section of figure 3.6 was the interviewees who saved! yen nothing! | of their income, which gives rise to the pattern that the clear majority of Filipinos in the Philippines were unable to save any money at all. This justifiably can represent a push factor for potential migrants.

Figure 3.7 asks how much the respondents were able to save of their salary in Oman. Figure 3.7 shows that 4% of the sample population was able to save a! yenreasonable! | amount of their salary in Oman. This contrasts highly to question 10 (Figure 3.6) where no respondents were able to save 25% or more of their income in the Philippines. 28% of the sample population was unable to save anything of their salary in Oman, down from 64% of the sample population who were unable to save anything of their salary working in the Philippines. Another 28% were able to save! yenvery little!" of their salary by working in Oman. This figure is not very different from the 27% who were able to save! yenvery little! | of their salary in the Philippines.

The biggest difference however is where in Oman 40% of the respondents were able to save! yensome! | of their income in Oman, whereas only 9% of the same sample population were able to save! yensome! | of their income in the Philippines. That's a 444% increase, in relative terms, of the proportion of the sample population who were able to save between 10-25% of their incomes while working in Oman. Figure 3.8 shows the comparison between the percentage of their salary spent on food, in the Philippines and in Oman. 18% of respondents in the Philippines had to pay a! yenreasonable! | amount of their income to purchase food, while in Oman, it went up to 24%.! SS Some!" in the Philippines accounted for 46% of the sample population while it went down to 44% in Oman. Overall, no general trend was observed from this question.

Figure 3.9 - 68% of the sample population had to commit a! yenreasonable! | amount of their income to providing for their family in the Philippines, while only 44% of the same sample population had to provide a! yenreasonable! | amount of their income to providing for their family while in Oman. This shows that in general, the respondents are able to save more of their income in Oman as they have to devote a smaller proportion of their income to providing for their Philippines back in the family in the form of remittances. Figure 3.10 analyses perceived push factors that motivated Filipino's to move away from the Philippines. Each interviewee was allowed to tick as many boxes as they wished. Of the total 51 ticks for this question, 16 fell under the! yen lack of job opportunities! | box. That's just over 31% of the tick count, the largest proportion.

The next section is the social / family pressure box with 20%, followed by overcrowding with 18%, rising cost of living with 10%, marriage with 8%, divorce with 6%, unemployment and high crime rates with almost 4% each followed lastly by religious persecution, with no percentage. From the table it's easy to summarize that the strongest reason for pushing Filipinos away from their homeland is due to a lack of job opportunities. Figure 3.11 shows the pull factors that Oman exerts to potential Filipino migrants. Each interviewee was permitted to tick multiple boxes. There are a total of 96 ticks. The largest choice ticked was the!

SSbetter salary!" box, which contained 19 of the 96 ticks, or 20% of the sample population, followed closely by a! yen greater choice of job opportunities! | which had 18 ticks, just under 19%. !" Better chance to save money!" clocked in 16%, while! SS live life without family hassle!" clocked 13%. The remaining 5 ticked boxes accounted for similar results, cumulatively accounting for just over 33% of the total sample populations ticked choices. From the results, the trend shows that the biggest reasons for emigrants to come work in Oman is the chance to earn a better salary, a greater choice of job opportunities and a better chance to save money. Section 4 Evaluation There were problems identified with the survey.

The survey consisted of 33 questions, but only 13 of the questions were analyzed in the context of the investigation. If the investigation was to be carried out again, it would be suggested that the questions asked only be applicable to the research question. This would include asking questions such as! Show long have you been working in Oman? !" because this question can help identify if a new-comer is paid as much salary in a firm as a employee who's been here longer... For questions 29 and 31, there should have been an! SS Others!" column, so that the respondents could have answered other than to the assigned answer tick boxes.

As it lies now, the questions asked in questions 29 and 31 are restricting, and somewhat drives the analysis towards the hypothesis, as only questions relating to the hypothesis were asked. If this questionnaire was to be repeated, questions more appropriate to the theory set-down by Everett Lee's Model of Migration would be addressed. The hypothesis! SSThe reason why Filipino's choose to come to Oman for work is the relative chance to earn more money and hence save more money, !" cannot in any way be related to questions 8 and 20 which inquire if their jobs in Philippines and Oman, respectively, were full-time or part-time. Questions such as this, as well as marital status, would not be reused if this survey was to be conducted a second time.

Overall, the questions asked in the survey were relatively clear and concise, and could have all been used in the investigation if the word limit allowed it. For analytical consideration, and for times sake, the survey was limited to 25 respondents only. This was done so that the figures can be multiplied by 4 for an easy percentage breakdown. Next time however, it would be wiser to conduct the survey with a minimum of 50 so respondents so that the answers would be less partial.

Also, the only areas that Filipinos were interviewed in were in an office, and shopping malls. Obviously, since the respondents all worked in the same niches, their salaries, saving habits, spending habits etc, would be similar. Section 5 Conclusion Figure 5.1 attempts to place the push and pull factors into a diagram which can be easily interpreted. These results are arranged vertically, and in the order of the most frequently ticked, to the least frequently ticked. Figure 5.1 clearly identifies the push factors at the origin, and the pull factors at the destination. On the left hand side is the origin: the Philippines and the factors at the top of the box are the push factors that the respondents found most profoundly unfavorable and were the major reasons for them wanting to leave the country, while the factors at the bottom of the box were still unfavorable, but not to such a strong extent.

Neutral factors were not taken into account for figure 5.1 as they had no significance to the research question. On the right hand side lies the destination: Oman. The factors at the top of the box are the most compelling and the strongest pull factors that influenced the respondents to come to Oman for work. The factors at the top of the box are therefore the most appealing to potential migrants, while the factors at the bottom were still appealing, but not as much. Intervening obstacles are not identified in Everett Lee's model because that was not the focus of this investigation, which was! !" The data and evaluation of the survey confirms that the hypothesis is correct.

Figures 3.11 and 5.1 clearly illustrates that the most common pull factor ticked by the respondents was the! SSbetter salary, !" which was just under 20% - the greatest proportion ticked by the respondents from all the choices. However, the expectation that following the! SSbetter salary!" would be the! SSgreater chance to save money, !" was proven incorrect While! SSgreater chance to save money!" was the third down on the list of pull factors, it wasn! |t as important to the Filipino migrants as a!

SSgreater choice of job opportunities!" was to them. Why is this? This is probably the case because of human physiological patterns. The respondents came to better their salary as their first priority, while the second priority was to be offered more job opportunities.

While! SSgreater chance to save money!" was a high priority, it obviously wasn! |t as important to the respondents as better job opportunities. Referring to questions 10 and 24 (Figures 3.9 and 3.10), it is safe to say that Filipino migrants in Oman earn more money, and while coming to Oman to save more money wasn! |t the top priority, about two-thirds of the sample population were able to go from saving! SS nothing!" in the Philippines to saving!

SS very little!" in Oman, which in relative terms is a great improvement. The reason why! SSgreater choice of job opportunities!" is second is most probably due to the fact that in the Philippines, they were underemployed, a term which is used to signify that they were over qualified for the job they had. For example, one respondent that was interviewed attended university in the Philippines and graduated.

She was however, unable to find a job in the Philippines, and so moved to Oman and now works as a secretary in an environmental engineering firm. Figure 3.6 shows that the respondents are indeed educated, but it's the economy that cannot sustain them in its weak conditions: hence they emigrate elsewhere. Word count: 3,928.