Diaspora Report: Bristol, England

At the Fun Day at Clifton College in Bristol I met three Filipinas who have been working in England as domestic helpers. (I prefer to think of them as our agents and moles, ensconced in the houses and lives of the natives.) 

Elizabeth Arellano has been in England for five years, working in the Philippine Ambassador’s residence. Ayen Erea arrived in Bristol last year, Lolita Azares has been living there for six.

“There’s more economic opportunity in the UK,” Elizabeth says, summing up the motive of the millions of Filipinos working abroad and sending money to their families back home. There must be Pinoys who leave the Philippines to re-draw the borders of their personal maps and satisfy their curiosity about what’s Out There. For the most part, Pinoys travel in search of better-paying work.

Before London, Elizabeth worked in Singapore. “But there’s a four-year limit for domestic workers there,” she points out. She is planning to take the “indefinite stay” test that will allow her to become a permanent resident in the UK; after that she can apply for citizenship.

“Of course it’s great to live in the Philippines,” Ayen declares, “if you have money. If you want to earn money, then you come to the UK.” Ayen is from Bacolod; she came to England to work as a maid. Not long after she arrived she met an Englishman and fell in love. They’re getting married this year; she’s already quit her job. “He’s an aircraft engineer,” she says. “In England the common practice is for people to live together before they marry — that way they can be certain of each other.”

Lolita Azares lives near Clifton College; her employer is the Bath FC rugby player and England national player Dave Edgerton. “He’s retired,” Lolita tells us, “and recovering from a dislocated shoulder. This morning he was doing push-ups and I said, ‘That’s it? Big professional athlete, that’s all you can manage?’ He said, ‘You try it’ and when I did he laughed at me.”

Lolita is single. I suggest half-jokingly that she should get her boss to introduce her to a professional rugby player so she can marry and produced future Philippine rugby players. She laughs uproariously. For 18 years she had worked as a domestic in Bahrain. “They have better Filipino food there,” she notes, “and the food is cheaper.”

“But clothes are cheaper in England,” Ayen points out, “if you know where to shop.” She and her fiancé are doing a partnership arrangement for six months. “One of the first things I learned here is how to drink alcohol,” she laughs. 

At the same occasion I spoke to LD, who has resided in the UK for 22 years as a nurse. “It used to be much easier for Filipino nurses to come to England for work,” she explains. “They have something called a national vocational qualification. A midwife in the Philippines is considered to have a Level 2 qualification, a nurse a Level 3. Upon arriving here they are required to take adaptation courses before they can start working in the hospitals.

“On Nov. 22 last year the system was changed and the rules for admitting nurses became more stringent,” she says. “Now Filipinos have to take the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) test for English language proficiency in order to be recognized as professionals.” We Pinoys have always taken pride in our English communication skills, but in recent years the proficiency level has dropped alarmingly. “A lot of Pinoys who were already working here had to be sent home,” she adds. 

LD had come to England as a support worker for persons with disabilities. She took nursing courses to beef up her qualifications. “The Filipino nurses in England support each other,” she notes. They augment their salaries by putting in a lot of overtime. “The rule here is that after 48 hours, you work at your own discretion.” At private hospitals such as the one LD works in, nurses do between 32 and 39 hours a week. The rest is overtime.

She has two children from a former marriage to a Brit — both children are now at university. “The great thing about England is that children can avail of free education until the age of 19. Kids have no reason not to study. And there are supervised after-school and community activities so they have no time to get into trouble.

“My children feel biracial — they’re British, but are strongly drawn to their Filipino roots. They have Filipino friends here. I just don’t like it when the Pinoys who have just arrived in the UK speak to each other in Pilipino, excluding the Brits in the group — that’s rude.”

Nurses and caregivers make up the largest group of Filipinos in the UK — at Guy’s Hospital in London, for instance, the nurses are 92 percent Filipino. I had expected to run into Pinoy nurses constantly while I was wandering around London — grocery shopping, walking in the park, taking the Tube. But the only Pinoy nurses I met were my friends, and one of them explained that London’s Pinoy population prefers to hang out at home. Besides, most of them are still at the hospital, doing overtime.