Schooling, family, and future lives of left-behind children from mother-away households in the Northern Philippines Seminar

Left-behind children within transnational families occupy an ambivalent role that constantly shifts in various stages of their parents’ migration process, for example preparation, departure, during, and return.

In this presentation, I examine the construction of the ‘good’ left-behind child among mother-away transnational families from the northern Philippines by looking into the schooling and domestic lives, and imagined futures of left-behind children across various stages of their mother’s migration.

This is valuable because earlier and emergent notions of ideal childhood among families and educational reforms, shifting labour conditions, and rising entrepreneurialism in the villages are interacting and are negotiated by transnational families.

In navigating these changes, transnational families adjust their notions of the ideal left-behind child. This presentation reports findings from two projects that engaged with migrant women domestic workers and left-behind children in 2017 and 2021.