Not Just Another Woman in Love: Spotlighting the Eldest Daughter in Filipino Films About Migration

This essay explores the dominant discourse of feminisation in migration studies, particularly focusing on the female migrant workers (FMWs) in the Philippines as primary breadwinners and caretakers in their families. I examine how the ate or eldest daughter FMWs—often more popularly referred to as OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers)—represent the new face of Philippine migration, and indicate a departure from the “mother OFW trope” that used to dominate filmic representations. Using feminist conceptions of agency and relational autonomy, I analyse the complex negotiations between duty and empowerment for eldest daughter OFWs by considering films as ethnographic data. This chapter aims to describe how the portrayals of the ate characters in the films Never Not Love You (2015), and Hello, Love, Goodbye (2019) represent and/or possibly contest the existing normative expectations of the eldest daughter in Philippine society. The chapter scrutinises the intersecting identities of womanhood, daughterhood, and migrant worker status, emphasising the constraints imposed by traditional kinship norms and societal expectations. Ultimately, this chapter aims to register a new and nuanced understanding of FMWs’ subjectivity, and calls for a shift away from deterministic narratives of victimisation towards a recognition of the active negotiations and complexities inherent in their lives.