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Paper short abstract

This paper critiques how remittances from Filipino nurses in Finland subsidize global care extraction. We reveal a paradox: these funds alleviate Philippine state pressures while locking migrants into deskilled roles, perpetuating inequality through a constrained cosmopolitan mobility.

Paper long abstract

The Philippines, constructed as a global “empire of care,” systematically educates nurses for export, a practice rooted in postcolonial debt and economic strategy. Finland, facing elder care deficits, has actively recruited from this reserve since 2009. This paper shares findings from a project tracing the transnational political economy of this migration corridor. It critically investigates bilateral remittance flows, treating them not as neutral monetary transfers but as core social relations within extractive economies.

The paper argues that remittances subsidize and perpetuate systemic inequalities in the corridor. While they alleviate pressure on the Philippine state to generate domestic jobs or raise health sector wages, they simultaneously lock migrant nurses into deskilled positions in Finland to meet familial financial obligations. This dynamic exemplifies a constrained cosmopolitan imaginary, where global mobility is necessitated by, and perpetuates, asymmetric development.

Adopting a multi-scalar “follow-the-money” methodology, the analysis connects micro-level migrant remittance practices (via a survey of n=200 nurses) with meso-level household interviews (n=20) in the Philippines, examining fund usage and transformed family dynamics. This is contextualized within a macro-level political economy analysis of Philippine dependency. Framed by critical postcolonial and heterodox economics, the paper positions remittances as integral to the architecture of global care extraction. It ultimately explores how the cosmopolitan imagination of migrant nurses is shaped by and negotiates this extractive political economy, moving beyond Western-centric models to reveal a landscape of constrained world openness.