And yet the popular construction of the Filipino migrant as a suffering martyr — enduring the challenges of living in a foreign environment, separated from family and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse — remains entrenched and unchanged despite more than a century of labour migration history.

What is less acknowledged is Filipino migrants’ collective consumer power and the ways in which this consumer power is transforming businesses in the Philippines.

Consumption fills an important vacuum in migrants’ lives. It is the reward for all the hard work they endure overseas. Since shopping and spending are important rituals in the day-to-day affirmation of migrants’ increasing wealth and status, their purchasing power has tremendous impact. Migrants are transforming the Philippine business landscape and generating enormous profits for the lucky businesses that migrants choose to patronise.

For example, some Filipino overseas domestic workers’ addiction to romance novels in Tagalog is responsible for elevating this genre to bestseller status. Migrants are also preoccupied with the regular shipping of boxes of food, school supplies, clothing and all sorts of sundry items (called balikbayan boxes). Companies that provide this ‘door-to-door’ delivery are mushrooming globally in places with significant Filipino populations.

One area that is especially benefitting from migrant investment is the Philippines’ real estate market. The real estate boom in Metro Manila and surrounding areas from the early 2000s onwards is being attributed to the increased demand for housing by overseas Filipino migrants. According to Manuel Serrano, the head of the Chamber of Real Estate and Builders Association of the Philippines, ‘overseas workers have revitalised the condominium market’.

The effect of the real estate boom is extending beyond the Metro Manila area too. New homes and high rises are being built in Tagaytay, in provincial capitals like Cebu and booming rural towns like Las Piñas and Angeles.

Real estate companies in the Philippines initially responded to overseas workers’ demand for houses and condominiums by expanding their services and thinking to the international level. Ayala Land launched Ayala Land International Sales in early 2005 to target overseas Filipino workers, emigrated Filipino professionals as well as Filipino dual citizens residing in the United States and Europe who may be thinking of retiring in the Philippines. Real estate companies such as Rockwell, Century Properties, Filinvest Land and Ayala Land sent teams of sales representatives overseas to target potential Filipino buyers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Dubai and Singapore. Between 2004 and 2005, Rockwell sales representative Mika Bautista travelled to the United States four to five times a year to sell condominiums to Filipino Americans. And in the United Kingdom, real estate companies presented at Philippine events such as the Filipino Barrio Fiesta.

Philippine real estate companies also advertised aggressively and ran attractive promotions in international Philippine media. Rockwell advertised on The Filipino Channel (Filipino cable television) while companies based in London, Canada and Australia advertised in magazines like Planet Philippines and US-based companies advertised in Filipinas Magazine. They also opened international branches (complete with a physical office and permanent staff) in countries such as Singapore and London.

These strategies yielded enormous profits. In 2007, 31 per cent of Ayala’s unit sales and between 40–50 per cent of Filinvest’s unit, house and lot sales were bought by overseas Filipino workers. Megaworld — a company that is known to focus on overseas Filipino clients — reported a 92 per cent profit increase of US$30.2 million in 2006, and Ayala earned 5.2 billion pesos (US$98 million) from US-based Filipino workers in 2007. These companies have transformed their business practices and become transnational operators to attract Filipino migrant customers to buy their products, to great success.

Migrants are now imagined not just as consumers but also as worthy and reliable investors. As consumers and assertive investors, Filipino migrants are clearly not marginal actors — they are transforming business and physical landscapes. As owners of condominiums, Filipino migrants have become purveyors of the new ultra-modern lifestyle that is rapidly being introduced to every corner of the Philippines.

Mina Roces is a Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Languages in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the University of New South Wales (UNSW).