Anti-trafficking or anti-migrant: rethinking the Philippine state’s role in global bordering architecture

The Philippines is simultaneously identified as a source country for trafficking and a leader in anti-trafficking. It imposes stringent pre-departure restrictions on its citizens travelling overseas, ostensibly to protect them from exploitation. This paper treats the Philippines as a generative location for theorising how global south states are recruited into and reproduce global bordering regimes. First, it argues that the Philippines’ emigration restrictions reinforce longstanding social hierarchies and help maintain the global order of labour extraction. Second, it analyses how contradictions of postcolonial statehood, marked by the United States’ influence on Philippine policies such as anti-trafficking, the Philippines’ reliance on labour export and limited regulatory leverage over destination states, and domestic demands for the protection of Overseas Filipino Workers, shape how the Philippine state articulates and enacts migrant protection. It examines how exit controls function as a performance of state capacity and responsibility, staged for domestic and international audiences. Third, the paper attends to gendered, racialised and classed rationalisations of support for emigration restrictions among Filipinos seeking to disassociate from negative global perceptions of Filipino travellers. The article concludes by proposing a global south-led divestment from the prevailing anti-trafficking paradigm and a reorientation towards a global movement for migrant rights and anti-bordering.