A Generation of Crisis-Responsive Reintegration in Migration Management: Reflections from the Philippines

Migrant-origin country Philippines will enter the fifth decade of organized migration management in 2024. It is only in the last two decades, however, that return migration is being institutionalized as a response to address the needs of the Philippines’ overseas workers (especially those facing distressed situations). The COVID-19 pandemic all but exacerbated the necessity to systematize state-run return migration and reintegration programs. This chapter intends to provide reflections, through documentary analysis and data from more recent qualitative research, on Philippine government efforts at migrant reintegration that is induced by crises in overseas migrants’ host countries. It took decades to insert migrant reintegration into overall Philippine development policy, more so the determination of a formula to facilitate the needs of returning overseas Filipinos (including migrant workers who escaped crisis situations). A pandemic just cemented such systematization of migrant reintegration, just as the Philippines is slowly reaping the demographic and economic benefits of overseas migration.