Phil Gresham and Marieke Smit are MSc. students from the Department of Human Geography, Faculty of Management at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Gresham is American with a background in anthropology and Smit is Dutch with a background in social work. Dr. Leny Ocasiones, faculty of the Department of Anthropology, Sociology and History, has been requested to be the research facilitator of the two graduate students.
Phil and Marieke are doing research on social and economic changes in the households of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and overseas contract workers (OCWs) within Metro Cebu. Data to be gathered will contribute to a further understanding of the effects of migration on household gender roles. The same data will be applied by the development organization Oxfam Novib in the Netherlands (part of the family of Oxfam institutions) which will result in two international conferences on gender and remittances, multiple formal reports, and policy recommendation briefs, aimed toward engaging the Filipino diaspora abroad.
In order to produce the necessary data Gresham and Smit have conducted in-depth, exploratory interviews with approximately 40 men and women who are immediate family members to OFWs and OCWs. Two USC graduates, Jeff Lim and Karen Dereche, assist in data gathering. Respondents have been found using snowball and respondent-driven sampling techniques and also through a radio guest appearance on DYAB. Using an extensive literature review and these new data, they are able to draw conclusions as to what changes have taken place in the household and how some prior conclusions have been overgeneralized, the result of which has sometimes been a gendered approach to development aid policy.
Phil and Marieke will end their Philippine research engagement and be going back to the Netherlands on 7 July.
Author: Office of External Affairs
21 / June / 2011
via USC web
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