Situating data from a pilot study conducted in the Philippines within the research literature, we examine the impact of the recent global economic crisis on the experiences of Filipino migrant workers and their families in the context of previous economic upheavals. In so doing, we highlight the gendered effects of shifts in the global economy and detail government response to the premature return of migrant workers to the Philippines primarily due to retrenchment impelled by the global economic crisis. While the current conditions of migration and return are significant, we argue that these are not the result of a new global economic crisis, but are instead the ongoing effects of neoliberal globalization that have resulted in sustained multiple crises with which residents of the Global South have had to contend. Moreover, the reputed solutions offered to returned migrants are rooted in the same faulty paradigm that will be destined to produce only further hardship. 

This article, part of a major research project dealing with return migrants, delves into the feeling of loss experienced by female return migrants who migrated in their youth and returned home as older women. Analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data confirms that most of the respondents regretted their decision to migrate mostly because they thought it had harmed their marriage prospects. Many of them also felt that their long absence from home had weakened their roots in the family and community. A substantial number of respondents rued that the professional skills they possessed before migration had become redundant in the country of their origin as they were not able to use these while they were away.