Differentiation and Marginalization of the Indigenous People’s Labor

Pinatubo Aeta and the Local Labor Market in the Philippine

Abstract

 Globalization is said to restructure the labor market and to polarize the class structure. And it has been discussed the transformation of characteristic, system and function of labor. The Philippines also experiences to increase in the contractual employment and other new type of informal jobs in the urban labor market. Such labor transformation has been also arisen in the rural area. This paper tries to analyze those transformation by focusing an example of Aeta, the indigenous people in the Philippines. Their way of life has been transformed by the forced evacuation due to natural and political incidents resulting to their settlements near the lowland society. This paper analyzes the labor transformation of the Aeta people in three perspectives. Firstly, the diversity of working types and the changes in the nature of work will be discussed. As the Aeta continue their hunting, food gathering and slash and burn agriculture, they change the meaning of these “traditional work”. At the same time, the Aeta combine those traditional works with new type of labor such as contractual employment, emotional labor and the miscellaneous work outside their community. Secondly, the stigma of the Aeta as “indigenous people” in labor market will be presented. The Aeta are differentiated as “indigenous people” as they join the local labor market, and they are differently “positioned” from lowland people. Lastly, as a result of this transformation of the type, nature and differentiation of work, the Aeta have become marginalized in local labor market. It is often said that the economic globalization causes the bi-polarization of labor class in lowland economy, but in the case of the Aeta, they are differentiated and wholly marginalized in the same lowland labor market. This paper examines specific examples of the Aeta labor from these perspectives in order to capture the process in which the indigenous people have been involved into the globalized economy.