Abstract:
The Philippines is known to be one of the top exporters of human labor in the world through its
long-established labor-export tradition, which has become a pillar of its economy (United
Nations, n.d.; PSA, 2022). With this, the Philippines is a propitious case study of
transnationalism—the idea that migrants remain active in the politics of their home country
(Scholten, 2022). Thus, using the theory of political socialization, a process by which an
individual acquires and consolidates the political circumstances of their surroundings, this paper
investigates the effects of exposure of Filipino migrant workers to the political culture of the
United States of America (USA) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to their voting
behavior, political interest, attitude, and perception. It is hypothesized that the process of political
socialization could affect the local political landscape. The researchers conducted twenty
semi-structured interviews of selected migrant workers, specifically ten participants from the
USA and ten participants from KSA, and through Colaizzi’s method of analysis, the results
found that the collected data support the existing hypothesis. This means that exposure to the
political culture of the study sites led to possible changes in their politics, which they tend to
transmit in the domestic sphere.
