How migration lifts poor from poverty explored in Filipino family’s 30-year journey

Jason DeParle explores global migration through a Filipino family who went from living among rats in a Manila shantytown to migrating to the US

In the book, ‘A Good Provider is One Who Leaves’, he explains that ‘migration is the world’s largest anti-poverty programme’

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Emet Comodas (left) and his wife Tita in 2016. Emet was forced to leave the Philippines and work in Saudi Arabia to provide for his family. Their story forms the basis of ‘A Good Provider is One Who Leaves’.

Published: 11:00am, 25 Jan 2020Updated: 11:24am, 25 Jan 2020

A Good Provider is One Who Leaves, by Jason DeParle. Published by Viking. 4/5 stars

The Philippine economy has, relative to both its history and many other parts of the world, seen something of a recent boom. Yet although the poverty rate plunged by about a third in the three years to 2018, many Filipinos still leave their country for a future abroad.

Long-time New York Times reporter Jason DeParle explores global migration through a tightly woven biography of a Filipino migrant family in A Good Provider is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century.

Back in 1987, DeParle, a young and struggling reporter who wanted to cover shantytowns, went to Manila without a concrete narrative in mind. After some unsuccessful attempts to find a place for field work, a not-so-eager nun who was escorting him was able to find him a home with Emet and Tita Comodas’ family in a shanty in a run-down Manila street.

Jason DeParle and Tita Comodas in the 1980s.

DeParle would live with them periodically for eight months, wedging himself between Tita’s nephew and the scampering rats. Then he would devote a good three decades documenting their journey out of poverty.