Filipino health workers in Norway: burden or blessing?

Norway has an ageing population that needs care and compassion. The needs for compassionate and diligent caregivers has been growing steadily. Filipino health workers have been filling the gap, helping Norwegian health system deliver services as required. Yet Filipino health workers strides in to the Norwegian labor market was hotly debated for various reasons encompassing from qualification to fear of dependency on foreign labor. The health workers from their side continue their struggle against the Norwegian educational and political bureaucracy to get recognition for their skills, experiences and education. As the debates focuses on these issues on the surface, there are other much deeper matters such as the home conditions, expectations and burdens these workers carry with them and the difficulties they face as they seek to secure and keep their jobs rarely touched in the debates.

What do we know about the personal and family conditions, the burdens of expectations Filipino labour migrants have? How are they recruited to take up jobs in Norway? Can we provide safe space to talk about dreams and difficulties? Can churches serving these communities listen to the living realities and the stories of Filipino labor migrants?

In connection with the global justice week campaign for 2019, The Christian Council of Norway invites Filipino Christian churches in Oslo and the surrounding to a conversation.

Preliminary Program
• Welcome and introduction by Lemma Desta, Christian Council of Norway
• What do studies tell us? By Aslaug Gotehus, Doctoral Research Fellow at Oslo Met
• Testimonials/stories (names to be confirmed)
• Open discussion
• Remarks from the embassy? (tbc)
• A song by Advent Ambassadors