BERLIN, Germany – IT TAKES some migrants here three rides to the Holy Ghost Church wake up their Filipino spirit.

One of them is 65 year-old Filipina Ludivina Kielgas, who tugs at her coat during the 15-minute wait for her first ride, a bus.

PASIG CITY – A REAL-TIME crash course in cash management still grips Filipinos in Japan as the world’s second-largest economy still attempts to clamber out of recession.

“They [Filipinos] have to start saving or investing rather than just spending” in these times of crisis, sociologist Ma. Rosario Piquero-Ballescas of Toyo University in Bunkyo-ku district said.

PASIG CITY – ANALYSTS claim the movement of workers from home countries in Asia already reached a level wherein their economies are now “structurally dependent” on migration.

Labor migration for Asia is “not a mom-and-pop story anymore,” Ma. Alcestis Mangahas of the International Labor Organization (ILO) told migration analysts and stakeholders at a recent forum here.

PASIG CITY — CRISIS not only brings out the best in people; in the Philippines’s case, it brought out the best people and in droves.

So claims Maruja M.B. Asis of the Scalabrini Migration Center.

MANILA – IS Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III his mother’s son when it comes to overseas labor export?

Aquino, set to become the 15th Philippine president, may opt to follow-through with his mother’s institutionalization of the economy’s resilient force: overseas Filipino workers.