Homilies as knowledge transfer platform for Filipino migrant workers in Taiwan

Francis Raymond Calbay ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Labor migration has become entrenched in underdeveloped countries as a means to address rampant unemployment and to sustain the local economy. In the Philippines, it is estimated that one in ten Filipinos work abroad. With limited sources to address the information needs of widely dispersed Filipino migrant workers, this study explores how the Catholic Church could steward knowledge transfer, specifically through homilies. Under the framework of Symbolic Convergence theory, thematic content analysis is executed on homilies gathered from a Taiwan-based parish. Through close reading of themes from the recorded texts, migrant workers are said to have knowledge requirements based on their roles as: surveyor (of the foreign environment), survivor (of migrant challenges), and savior-returnee (of eventual homecoming). Findings suggest that homilies provide pragmatic, non-sectarian information. This exploratory study proposes that the church setting could host knowledge transfers for Filipino migrant workers.

Keywords: knowledge transfer; migrant labor; social communication; symbolic convergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-knm and nep-mig
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Published in Intercultural Communication Studies 3.XXI(2012): pp. 18-28

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