Living Space for Philippine Female Nurses Working in Kuwait

The purpose of this study is to clarify the existence form of female nurses in the host society who moved from Philippines, which is the world's most dispatching country of migrant workers, to Kuwait in the Middle East. Their living space is classified into three: working space, residential space, and social space. All of those are examined the actual condition in there and satisfaction of each space quantitatively. Much of the research that has been done so far on the work side of the nurses, and very little on their daily life. It is assumed that it is an important viewpoint to consider Philippine female nurses working in Kuwait from both sides, which are labor and life. By getting the permission of Kuwait Health Ministry, I conducted a questionnaire survey in the field and received 187 valid responses. As a result of analyzing and examining these, the following were clarified. Most of the informants work 6 days a week on hospital shifts, including night shifts. In doing so, they keep sending a large sum of their salary to their families in the Philippines. They are satisfied with the work they do in the workplace but are strongly dissatisfied with their working hours and wages. Their common underlying grievances result from ethnic issues such as the disparity in treatment between them and their Kuwaiti colleagues. Their percentage of unmarried is very high, and they continue to live in shared rooms in an old hospital dormitory. When they get married and form a household, they get out the hospital dormitory and start renting an apartment. At that time, they prioritized proximity to the workplace and the Philippine community, those were regarded as local conditions for choosing a place of residence. Their utilization of Philippine facilities was high for food and low for fashion. The event participation rate of the Philippine community was only a little over 30%. Only approximately 30% of the respondents had non-Philippine friends and had little interaction with other ethnic groups. Looking at these results spatially, it can be said that the living space of Philippine female nurses working in Kuwait is extremely small. This is caused by their occupation. Nurses move to the host society under a contract as immigrants and they have jobs and housing in the host society by making the contract. Furthermore, since their residence has located in a hospital or in a nearby hospital dormitory, they basically do not need to commute to their work. Even if a problem occurs in daily life, Philippines in hospitals and hospital accommodations are so many that they can easily connect each other and, can leverage them as their human capital. In other words, the spatial characteristics of migrant nurses can be seen in the fact that the working space, residential space, and social space required for immigrants to live in the host society are almost the same