Networked Mobility in the ‘Migration Industry’

Influx of Labor Migrants

Since the mid-1990s, foreign workers from Asian and East European countries have arrived in Israel as temporary migrant workers to enter the low-wage job sector in the local labor market. By 1967, Israel already had a highly stratified labor market, in which Palestinian citizens were at the bottom of the job market (Batram, 1998). During the preceding decades until the late 1980s, the agriculture and construction sectors relied heavily on low-wage labor from Palestinian workers living in the Occupied Territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip), who comprised about 8 percent of the Israeli labor force by 1987 (Kemp & Raijman, 2003, p. 297).⁴ However, this began to decline in 1993 when the Israeli government limited the access of Palestinian workers, following the outbreak of the First Intifada (1987-1993) and Oslo Peace Process (1993).

Under these circumstances, Israeli government decided to recruit con-tract workers from abroad to replace the Palestinian workers. Whereas in 1993 migrant workers comprised only 1.6 percent of the Israeli labor force, by 2010, the number of foreign workers increased to 10 per cent of the total labor force (Nathan, 2013). The emergence of migrant sectors that employ exclusively foreign workers has accompanied the segmentation of Israeli labor market. According to Batram (1998), foreign workers with permits in the 1990s have come primarily from Romania (construction), Thailand (agriculture), and the Philippines (elderly care sector). In 1996, 75,600 workers–75 percent of all documented workers– were employed in the construction sector which was occupied by dominantly Romanians (Rosenhek, 1999), while 7 percent were employed in elderly care sector (primarily Filipinos) and the remaining workers were employed in agriculture.

However, the main sector of permits for employment has shifted from construction to the elderly care sector from 2002, comprising 28% of all permits (see Table 2). The rapid growth of the elderly population in Israel, who live alone or without easily available family members to care for them, increased the demands for long-term care, a situation exacerbated by the small number of nursing care institutions (Porat & Iecovich, 2010). In response to the growing demand for labor in the care sector, the Israeli Parliament enacted the Community Long-Term Care Insurance Law (LTCIL) on April in 1988 (Brodsky & Naon, 1993) and allowed Filipino women to work in an undervalued occupation as caregivers. In this way, Israel profits from the economic inequalities of the Philippines, saving the costs of care and avoiding institutionalization of the elderly, as well as significantly decreasing the family’s burden.⁵

Table 2.

Permits issued according to employment sectors 1996-2007

The ethnic composition of the flow has also changed over time, with a decrease seen in the number of workers from East European countries and an increase in the number of workers from Asian countries: in 2007 the Philippines, Thailand, and China were the major sources of labor flow to Israel (Kemp, 2010, p. 9). It is also noteworthy that the foreign labor market in Israel is highly gender-differentiated across the job sectors. While men comprised 85% of all arrivals in 1995, by 2010, their share had shrunk to 48%. According to the CBS (2013), 94 percent of the newly employed Thailand workers and 96 percent of Chinese workers are males, while 87 percent of the newly employed Filipino workers are females (see Table 3).⁶ Filipinos have comprised the largest ethnic group in the job sector, followed by Indian, Nepalese, and Sri Lankan workers, only to be recruited as caregivers.

Table 3.

Gender Distribution (%) by Foreign Workers’ Countries of Origin 2012

The Privatization of Labor Recruitment: Binding System

Similar to many other host countries, the recruitment of foreign workers in Israel involves a “guest”-worker regime, which intends to marginalize the workers as playing only temporary and substitutive roles. Principally, Israeli government has restrictions on family reunification, in which only the wife or the husband of a couple is allowed to apply for a caregiver job in Israel. Due to the legal constraints on family reunification, the migrants arrive in Israel alone, leaving their spouses and children back in the Philippines. Therefore, the majority of my informants are unmarried single women or mothers who are typically in their thirties and forties, even though their actual marital statuses are difficult to define: they could be identified as married, divorced, separated, widowed, or single moms.

Figure 2.

An Israeli employer and his Filipino caregiver (Tel Aviv)

Until 2005, the foreign workers system in Israel was based on the restrictive “binding system,” which prohibited visa portability, making foreign workers’ work and residence permit valid only for a single employer. The indentured employment system created a ground for violations of human, civil, and social rights. It meant that any change in work relations, such as dismissal, resignation, or employer bankruptcy, would lead to the loss of the worker’s residence permit and his/her becoming automatically subject to arrest and deportation (Kemp & Raijman, 2014, p. 615). The so-called “binding system” thereby maximizes employer and state control over the workers and limits foreign workers’ ability to negotiate their status with their employer in private households for fear of losing their visas. Paradoxically, the system resulted in the increase of illegalized workers because many of the workers ran away from their abusive employers and exploitive work conditions.

In 2006, the High Court of Justice invalidated the binding system, referring to it as “a new form of modern slavery” (High Justice Court 4542/02), since “it constituted a violation of human rights and was a poor fit between policy objectives and the measures chosen to meet them” (Mundlak & Shamir, 2014, p. 97). As a consequence, the Israeli government introduced a more flexible type of system. One of the main components of the reformed arrangement stipulates that “the hiring process must be conducted by authorized agencies and these agencies are to be functioning as employers to the foreign workers they are bringing in to the country” (Drori, 2009). In addition, the new system provides more options for the workers to move from one employer to another within the period of 51 months and apply for extensions of their visas annually. However, the migrants are still dependent on their employers for their legal status after the period of 51 months and have extremely limited access to redress: they are not allowed to switch their employer and lose their work permit if their employers dismiss them or pass away (Kav LaOved, 2008).

The revised binding system reduced the need for irregularity as the only option when the workers encountered exploitation in their work or “the termination of the employment relationship with a designated employer” (Mundlak, 2008, p. 5). Nevertheless, there was a rapid increase of overstay by workers whose permits had expired or whose contract with the employer had been broken voluntarily or un-voluntarily, comprising 60 percent of all foreign workers in Israel in 2003 and 47 per cent by the end of 2007 (Kemp, 2010). Distinctively, the majority of them became undocumented by overstaying the period of their work visas. “According to the Hotline for Migrant Workers, between February and March of 2003, 81 per cent of migrant caregivers under arrest entered Israel with a valid work permit (based on a sample of 607 detainees) (Kemp, 2004, p. 275).”

My interview data reveals that there are several reasons that the migrants decided to overstay, instead of returning to their country of origin. First, the majority of them still had to repay the loans they have taken out to pay their placement fee. Second, many of the workers strategically leave their employers in their fourth year before their legal period ends, especially when the health conditions of their employers are very serious, and request re-employment. Third, some of them become illegal workers due to giving birth, instead of sending the baby alone back to the Philippines. Finally, they could easily gain access to the domestic labor market, avoiding the restrictions imposed by the legal regime (Shamir, 2010). In other words, the unauthorized placement fee and the demand for cheap labor in the local labor market became the main catalysts in the increase of illegalized workers and the black job market.

The state regulators fail to control the overseas employment market, driving the proliferation of a private brokerage industry and the increase of undocumented workers. The Israeli government has so far refused to sign bilateral agreements⁷ with the Philippine government to regulate recruitment and employment conditions, thereby enabling profit-seeking private agents to dominate this field (Kemp & Raijman, 2014, p. 615). As Fernandez (2013, p. 815) points out, “intensified border controls make the regular migration routes more expensive and push more people into irregular routes that are diverse, complex, dangerous, and often equally expensive.” This is the case in the Philippines-Israel migration system, in which the actual recruitment procedures are complex, taking on a variety of configurations including formal, informal, or hybrid arrangements for profit (Hernández-León, 2005).

“Manpower Contractors Act of Israel (1996) states that in the triangular relationships between the agencies, user–employers and employees, the placement agencies in Israel are the legal employer” (Lobel, 2001, p. 124).⁸ Migrant caregivers can be employed only through licensed private employment agencies. In order to formally employ a foreign caregiver in Israel, licensed agencies must be involved in the entire process of recruiting caregivers, even when user-employers find a caregiver through word-of-mouth. Such a legal system thus is likely to increase the recruitment of new workers overseas, providing placement agencies with additional profits. Moreover, there is no administrative cap on the number of migrant care workers that can enter Israel (Shamir, 2010, p. 979), while quotas are set in other job sectors by the Israeli government. When supply exceeds the demand, there is fierce competition among the applicants and this competition makes the recruitment system a lucrative business, forcing potential migrants to use the services.

Locating Israel in the Global Circuits of Female Labor

The state policies play a pivotal role in determining the direction, extent, and character of cross-border migrant flow (Castle & Miller, 2003). While some liberal democratic states facilitate the transition of temporary labor migrants to permanent settlement, the majority of receiving countries accept temporary migrants only within strict functional limits, enforcing exclusionary policies on them, namely restricted durations of migration and ineligibility of family reunification. Under these circumstances, the migration of OFWs tends to fall under the rubric of “circular migration” (Parreñas, 2007; Oishi, 2002), although some of them attempt to settle permanently or semi-permanently by means of overstaying their visa or marrying a local citizen. However, the state is not the only compelling factor in shaping migrant trajectory.

In her research on Filipino caregivers in Israel, Liebelt (2011) points out that upon “deciding” where to move, migrant workers create a global hierarchy of desirable destination countries, defined by differences between nation states with regard to the salaries and the legal entitlements migrants can claim, the costs and risks migrants faced in order to enter and the overall subjective and imaginative attractiveness they attribute to these places. My own research data indicates that the migration flow is based on various push-pull factors along the lines of individual migrants’ life course, gender, and the economic/social capitals in a trajectory of the changing global market. The migrants decide upon their destination countries within their capability regarding the capitals they have, responding to the conditions demanded by the host countries such as job experience, age, gender, English proficiency level, level of education, and placement fee.

The migration profiles of my informants who have overseas labor experience can be summed up as follows: Females who are currently in their 40s and 50s who have worked as housemaids in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Middle Eastern countries such as Kuwait, Dubai and Saudi Arabia during the 1980s and 1990s; males who are in their 40s who were factory workers in South Korea or construction workers in the Middle Eastern countries during the late 1990s and early 2000s; and males and females in their 30s who worked for local companies in the Philippines or as factory workers in Taiwan during the 2000s. Because many of them plan to eventually migrate to Canada in which foreign caregivers are accepted under relatively liberal labor policies and granted permanent residency, they tend to see their career as a caregiver in Israel as a steppingstone toward Canada. Lucy’s case exemplifies how Filipino women in their 30s decide to move to Israel.

[Lucy’s case]

Lucy came to Israel in 2008 after working in Taiwan as a factory worker for five years during her 20s. Although she was permitted to work two more years, she returned to the Philippines because the salary of factory workers in Taiwan decreased at that time.⁹ Lucy returned to Manila and opened a small restaurant with the money that she had earned in Taiwan, but she closed the restaurant when she found it was not profitable and applied for work in South Korea as a factory worker. She failed to obtain work in South Korea because, in her belief, the factory owners preferred men and she was already over 30 years old. Then Lucy wanted to join her aunts in Canada and work as a caregiver, but when she discovered that the entry conditions were strict, requiring a job experience as a caregiver, she gave up the plan. At that time, one of her relatives returned from Israel and informed Lucy about job opportunities in Israel. Lucy did not hesitate to make up her mind when she was encouraged by one of her hometown friends, who had a cousin working in Israel. Finally, Lucy came to Israel as a caregiver through the cousin of her hometown friend. As of 2012, Lucy had accumulated four years of experience as a caregiver in Israel, and already initiated her migration to Canada by contacting an agency.

The informants who had worked in Asian and Middle Eastern countries as domestic workers during the 1980s and 1990s explain that they went to those countries because it was easy for them to go there as a “nanny.” For instance, Jenny, who had worked in Kuwait and Dubai as a housemaid for 4 years, stated, “The salary is very low there but I had no money for placement fee and I just wanted to go abroad.¹⁰ The agency paid the placement fee for me and deducted it from my salary.” In practice, Hong Kong and several Middle Eastern countries have been the primary destination countries for Filipino women despite low wages. This is not only because those countries employ foreign domestic workers on a large scale but because the entry conditions for domestic workers are loose and the migration cost is cheap. Sally’s experience below reveals how Israel emerged as a preferred destination for Filipino women in the gendered global labor market.

[Sally’s case]

Sally worked for a small company in Manila until 2000 when the company closed due to the financial crisis. As a woman of age 32 at that time, she had difficulty in finding a new job in the Philippines. According to her, many companies tend to push the female employees to leave their jobs when they reach the age of 30. In this situation, Sally decided to seek a job opportunity abroad and attempted to apply for a factory job in Taiwan, together with an ex-coworker, since the factory worker job was desirable for the OFWs due to a relatively high salary. However, Sally was not even allowed to submit an application due to age limit restrictions for such workers, whereas her ex-coworker in her mid-20s successfully migrated to Taiwan. Shortly after, she was approached on the street by a broker who was looking for “young and pretty women” to recruit as entertainers in Japan. Numerous foreign workers, known as Japayuki are employed in Japan, but she was discouraged by her parents from doing this since Japayuki were regarded “sex workers” in the Philippines.¹¹ The only option left for her then, as a female over 30s without special job skills or financial resources, was to go abroad as a domestic worker. Nonetheless, Sally never considered Hong Kong and Middle Eastern countries as her destination because she did not want to work as a domestic worker at a lower salary. Through the information she received from her sisters working as caregivers in Israel, however, Israel emerged as a desirable destination country where she could convince to earn a high salary and maintain her self-esteem as a caregiver, differentiating the job from other domestic work. Her three sisters persuaded her to come to Israel by stressing that the work of a caregiver is not a difficult job and, most importantly, that they would help her pay the high placement fee. The most decisive factor in Sally’s decision was the offer of financial support from her sisters. After her sisters lent her $6,000 for the placement fee, Sally came to Israel as a caregiver in 2005.

Those cases above illustrate the economic circumstances that often set the stage for the decision to migrate. However, the migrants’ decision is often a combination of individual choice based on a various push-pull factors. According to my informants, Israel is one of the more desirable destination countries due to the higher wages, relatively favorable work conditions, and the positive job image of caregiver. More strikingly, the age restriction for foreign caregivers in Israel is looser than in other destination countries hiring domestic workers, so that even women in their 40s who lack job experience are able to apply for jobs. It is important to point out, at the same time, that the exorbitant placement fee turns out to be a major obstacle for Filipino workers desiring to enter Israel, a country that offers the advantage of significantly higher wages. As indicated in the case of Sally, the access to financial resources serves as a crucial factor in their decision to choose Israel and the possibility of access to economic resources facilitates the potential migrants’ decision as regards about migration, making it appear to be an irresistible offer.

Significantly, Filipino migrants are required to find an employer and pay their placement fee before they enter Israel. Although the Israeli law prohibits the placement agency from requiring any direct or indirect fees from the employee (Lobel, 2001, p. 125), it has become an accepted practice that the agencies collect a much higher amount underground. Although the law permits agencies to collect brokerage fees of no more than 3,479 NIS (roughly $900),¹² the placement fee greatly exceeds the sum of their one-month wage as required by law. For instance, those who came to Israel in the late 1990s paid $2,000, while some paid $5,000. The placement fee for Filipino caregivers has increased each year and reached up to $5,000-6,000 in late 2000s.

The Operations of Intermediaries: Between Formal and Informal Networks

In what follows, I provide specific descriptions of the migration process for Filipino women based on my fieldwork data and take a close look at the ways in which the migrants realize their migration within the institutionalized “migration industry,” which consists of a set of invisible networks. In the overseas employment industry, there are various actors engaged in the recruitment process such as personal networks and agents. In analyzing the production of formal contract labor migration, Tyner (2000) points out that, “paradoxically, the complex networks binding origin countries and destination countries are invisible” (Goss & Lindquist, 1995, p. 337). As Tyner emphasizes, the role of migration networks in framing the global circuits of labor is critical in my study.

The official recruitment procedure involves the process of recruitment and screening and is undertaken by licensed agencies in both sending and receiving countries. Officially, the placement agencies in Israel are required to find prospective workers in cooperation with recruitment agencies in the Philippines. Once the applicants decide to migrate, they submit the required documents to a licensed recruitment agency in the Philippines for verification from the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Philippines (DFA). The verified documents are transmitted to a placement agency in Israel with the approval of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Israel. Following this, the placement agency submits the paperwork together with the documents from a potential employer to the Israeli Ministry of Interior. Upon approval, these documents are transmitted to the Israel Embassy in the Philippines, in which the applicants receive their work visas and sign labor contracts. Finally, the applicants participate in orientation seminars.

The case of Analyn illustrates the official recruitment process from the migrant’s point of view. Analyn decided to go to Israel when she heard about a caregiver job from an agent who approached her on the street in her hometown. She then visited a recruitment agency in Manila guided by the agent and submitted the required documents to apply for a caregiver position in Israel. As part of the process she underwent an interview and then participated in a two-week language course for Hebrew and job training course for caregivers, including instruction on house cleaning, cooking, and care of the elderly. After that, she was interviewed by the Israeli embassy in Manila and waited another seven months until the agency arranged an employer for her. Analyn paid $4,200 for her placement fee, which included her flight ticket and document processing fees.

However, my research data indicates that the actual recruitment procedures are more complex than this official procedure due to the intervention of an intricate web of licensed agencies, unregistered agents or sub-agents and personal network, constituting the migration trajectory through irregular operations but through legal channels (see Figure 3). While the intervention of licensed agencies is mandatory for managing the document procedure, the role of the agent as a recruiter is distinctive. Although the local agencies in the Philippines advertise openings by posting job orders on their websites or running ads in newspapers, it is the agent who practically recruits caregivers from the Philippines and links them to the placement agencies in Israel. Usually, the agent is a Filipino women currently working as a contract caregiver or a former caregiver who married Israeli men. An agent is connected with several placement agencies in Israel as a freelance broker and involved in all stages of the migration process, providing the agencies with promising caregivers.

Figure 3.

Recruitment Process Flow

The power of an agent is emphasized in the niche of the Israeli labor system that stipulates that “the issue of working visa must be secured in priority to the entry of the migrants to the receiving country” and “the legal recruiter is the placement agency in Israel.” Once the applicants are connected to an agent, the agent then forwards the applicant’s resume to a specific placement agency in Israel who conducts an under– the–table recruitment. When the placement agency decides to enroll the applicant, agents instruct the applicant to apply through a certain recruit ment agency in the Philippines, which is affiliated with the placement agency in Israel. In sum, the applicants apply to the placement agencies in Israel through an informal channel beforehand and then officially apply through the licensed agencies only after their recruitment is pre-determined through the agents. Then the placement agencies match the applicants with potential employers in Israel, issuing working visas for them. By this, it is obvious that the legitimate agencies hire migrant caregivers through illegal employment practices.

Most importantly, the majority of my informants report that the operation of the agents guaranteed the success of their movement to Israel by securing the employment and shortening the recruitment process to three months, while the process without the intervention of agents takes almost one year. Many of the informants emphasize the significant role of agents in actualizing their labor migration and still believe that without agents they might not have succeeded in migrating to Israel. For example, Roger, a Filipino caregiver, argues that “If you don’t have an agent, it takes time. [It is] very hard. But if you find an agent here in Israel, the process goes fast.” According to Analyn, rumors circulate among Filipino migrants that placement agencies have now begun rejecting applicants without the intermediation of agents. Sub-agents are those persons who work for agents, helping the agents find as many as applicants. As a sub-agent, Lucy’s role is to mediate between an applicant and an agent like Mark, who works with several placement agencies that are eligible to legally recruit foreign caregivers in Israel. The testimony of Lucy, who is working as a sub-agent for Mark, an agent, gives us a view into how agents operate in the recruitment system:

[Testimony of Lucy as a Sub-agent]

If the placement agency fails to match the applicant with an employer, the agent tries to look for a job through another agency. Sometimes, the employer doesn’t wait [the long procedure for employment and cancel the process]. They prefer Filipina [who is already] in Israel to a newcomer who doesn’t speak Hebrew. Then what will you do? To find an employer for the applicant is now my job [sub-agent’s job]. That’s the normal case. The applicants cannot choose [their job] because there are a lot of applicants. If the applicants don’t have an agent, it’s very hard. It’s impossible [to find a job for them]. It is the agent who communicates with the agencies in the Philippines and Israel. The applicant doesn’t communicate directly with the agency. [There are] Always agents. The agencies never communicate even with the sub-agent like me because they don’t know me.¹³

When agents are not “at hand,” applicants employ different strategies to get in contact with them, mainly through their personal networks. As indicated in Lucy’s statement, placement agencies are reluctant to “indirectly” recruit Filipino caregivers through the recruitment agencies, due to the potential risk of migrant desertion upon arrival. Instead, the placement agencies employ agents, who screen the applicants beforehand and undertake the responsibility for all follow-up problems relevant to the applicants. Therefore, agents and their network of sub-agents are required to be what Lucy calls a “guarantor.” In this sense, agents and sub-agents do not attempt to recruit “strangers” but those who are within their extended networks. Lucy continues to explain:

It was me who connected Nelrose’s sister, Jasmine, with the agent, Mark. It took only three months. If I don’t know Nelrose, I would not “help” her because the agencies don’t want to recruit strangers. The agency needs guarantor like me. I am the guarantor. Right now I have an applicant, Suzan. She is my cousin. The agency in Israel will not call Suzan. Instead, they will call me. They collect placement fee directly from me, not from her. If the process goes wrong, I am responsible for it. If Suzan doesn’t pay her placement fee, I have to pay for her. [It’s] a little bit dangerous. That’s why I recruit only someone I know.

In the same way that agents and subagents attempt to recruit caregivers within the circle of their own networks, applicants tend to perceive the agents or agents as trustable networks in their uncertain journey to Israel. As an agent, Mark recruited Lucy as a reliable resource of labor through his cousin, Jenny, because Lucy is one of Jenny's close friends from her hometown. Likewise, Lucy came to Israel through an agent, Mark, who was also a cousin of her close friend. According to Lucy, she decided to come to Israel because she trusted Mark as an acquaintance, who was guaranteed by one of her close friends. In this sense, agents and sub-agents within the migrants’ network circles can be regarded as “migrant social capital,” enabling the prospective migrants to secure information or other forms of assistance from current migrants to reduce the cost and risks of migration (Garip, 2008).

Significantly, it is difficult to differentiate between the migrant network and the migration industry since the agents and sub-agents are deeply embedded in migrant networks and the role of Nelrose in linking her sister to Lucy, a sub-agent, is crucial for the migration of Jasmine. In practice, my informants often describe their agent as “a trusted helper” who serves as “a safety net,” as a direct and quick passage to Israel. It is noteworthy here to mention the connotation of the word “help” in what Lucy recounted. However, the sums the migrants paid for placement fees are against Israeli law, as noted earlier, and the agents benefit from such network-embedded jobs. Furthermore, the agents and sub-agents play the role of a brokerage that offers services for monetary rewards and facilitates migration, perpetuating the migration flows under the restrictive migration policies in the destination country. In this way, the agents and sub-agents are part of the “migration industry,” which creates an intricate and costly infrastructure (Hernández-León, 2005, p. 13).

This is especially evident in the agents’ and sub-agents’ role as moneylenders. In addition to the role as a guarantor and intermediary, agents and sub-agents often prepay the placement fee for the migrants in the form of a loan. According to my interviews with the informants, the intervention of agents in the recruitment process enables those who are not capable of paying the placement fee to migrate to Israel and the possibility of access to economic resources drives the potential migrants to decide about migration. It was from Grace that I heard of an agent as a money lender for the first time. As Grace says, “I don’t have money to apply here [for job in Israel]. So if an agent doesn’t want to help me, I cannot come here. If you don’t have an agent, how do you pay to the agency here?”

[Grace’s case]

Grace came to Israel in 2009 when she was 30 years old as a single woman but soon fell in love with a married Filipino man and started a family. She quitted her job in 2010 after she gave birth to a daughter and has been working since as a house cleaner without a fixed income. Before coming to Israel, Grace worked in South Korea as a factory worker. Upon returning to her hometown, she began looking for job opportunities abroad again. At that time, Suzan, one of her local friends, encouraged Grace to go to Israel by providing her detailed information about a caregiver job, work conditions and how to apply. When Grace responded to the news, Suzan introduced her to Evelyn, Suzan’s cousin who was on vacation from Israel where she was working as a caregiver. Suzan presented Grace with two offers: firstly, she would manage the recruitment procedure quickly so that Grace could come to Israel within a few months; secondly, she would lend money to Grace for the migration costs. As Grace had no finances for migration at that time, she was very enthusiastic about the offer and proceeded with the migration process through Evelyn. From the moment that both sides agreed go ahead with the plan an 8% interest rate on the $5,000 loan began to accrue. Two months later Grace received a text from Evelyn in Israel, saying “Okay, now you have a visa.”

However, many of the migrants end up in indebted mobility due to the excessive illegal brokerage fee. For each month Grace paid Rosa $500 from the principal and $400 for the interest after subtracting from her first salary. Even after she had paid the money back for more than three years, she still had a balance of $4,500 and $360 for interest on the $4,500. Sometimes she paid only $200 because she had to send money back to her family in the Philippines. However, she couldn’t keep repaying her debt after she quit her job. Most of the informants evidently knew that to hire an agent and pay an exorbitant amount for a placement fee are unreasonable propositions. Grace says, “Maybe she knows that I paid her enough. Yah, it’s more. I paid already a lot of money.” As such, she shows an ambivalent attitude toward the agent.

The precise division of profits between agencies in Israel and in the Philippines remains unknown, but estimates range from 50 to 70 percent of fees paid to the placement agencies in Israel (Kav LaOved, 2008), which coincides with what Lucy states. The agent working as a caregiver in Israel directly or indirectly collects fees from the applicant in the Philippines through personal cash delivery or money transfer system. In a case where the applicant loans money from the agent, as shown in the case of Grace above, the agent directly pays the fee from his or her own pocket to the Israeli agency. Lucy explains that the majority of the fee (between $6,000-8,000) goes to the Israeli placement agencies, while roughly $1,700 of the placement fee goes to the recruitment agency in the Philippines for the payment of the flight and document- processing fee. The agent takes $500 from the total amount the applicant paid. As a sub-agent, Lucy receives $200 per head from Mark.

It is noteworthy that such a complex migration pattern of Filipino migrants has developed within legal regulatory frameworks, while creating a black market. The emergence of a black market can be summed up as follows: Firstly, it is an illegal practice that migrant caregivers work as agents because they are prohibited to circulate in the local labor market but work only in the care sector for a single employer. Any kind of part-time work that migrant caregivers participate in is illicit. Secondly, the placement agencies create a black route in the employment process, which takes place outside the formal route, by hiring informal agents. Finally, those placement agencies collect an illicit fee. It violates the laws because the fee greatly exceeds the sum of the workers’ one-month wage.

The privatization of labor recruitment system under the state regulatory scheme shapes the entry of foreign labor to the labor market through which the influx of Filipino caregivers is perpetuated. Due to their multiple roles in the recruitment process, significantly, agents are located at the intersections of private actors and systems, in which the distinction between social networks and profit-oriented brokers becomes blurry. As indicated above, placement agencies, which are authorized by government, depend on informal agents who utilize their own network ties to recruit potential migrants. Relevant actors, such as agencies, agents, sub-agents, and personal networks, are separated from one another but perform complementary functions to realize the migration.