Reskilling the Skills of the Skilled

Abstract

In this globalizing and gradually more competitive world even the lowest skilled jobs in the employment market increasingly require workers to (re)skill themselves and obtain training certificates. This is true for the (highly) educated Filipino women that aspire to migrate to Hong Kong as domestic workers and are obliged to take a household training sponsored by the Philippine government before their departure. Once in Hong Kong they have the choice to again take skill trainings but this time to prepare them for their migration back to their home country. The main goal of this paper is to compare the two to types of training programs and to determine the impact they have on the lives of the Filipino Domestic Workers. This paper will first argue that the two training programs are fundamentally different in all aspects ranging from their goal to their usefulness. It will then demonstrate that even though this migration „deskills‟ the women, the Hong Kong-based training programs can help mitigate the effects of this by offering them new employment opportunities as entrepreneurs. Conversely, the pre-departure household trainings can have adverse (long-term) effects on the future of the FDWs. Finally, this thesis will present recommendations on how to improve the two training programs and make the migration of these women more edifying.