Story

Our site is not complete if the facts we delivered are not accompanied by real life stories. Below are some real stories about what migrant workers have experienced since they left their home countries until they arrived at the destination countries. The stories are taken from "Women Motion in Globalization" by Nana Oishi.

Mercedita

Mercedita comes from a poor family. She started working in a garment factory in Manila when she was seventeen, as soon as she graduated from high school. She wanted to go to college, but her family could not afford the tuition. After working for a few years, she met her husband; soon after that, she got pregnant. After she gave birth to a son, she moved in with her husband and his family. At the time, he was still a student in the police acad- emy; they were not yet married. They were only engaged, and married af- ter he graduated.

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Salma

Salma is a thirty-year-old Muslim woman living in a small village south of Dhaka. She was an orphan and never attended school. She got married but was divorced fourteen years ago and has been raising three boys since then. Because she has no family or relatives, there was no one to help her ?nancially. "I have no husband," she said. "I had no money or property to inherit. I had no savings. And I had to keep paying the rent for a small room. The life was hard."

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Pacita

Pacita is a twenty-seven-year-old domestic worker working in Dubai. She is originally from Manila and arrived in Dubai in October 1998. At the time of the interview she had been working there for just over a year. She is married and has two children, who are being taken care of by her mother- in-law in the Philippines.

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