It doesn’t. There is no real social mobility in the Philippines. While there is some economic mobility, the idea of money changing your social class is pretty laughable. Even people who achieve celeb status in the Philippines are pretty much treated by the status they were born to by anyone from an oligarchical status.
Here are a few situations I can tell you about.
prior to the pandemic my wife and I ran a karaoke bar that made a lot of money. Even after expenses which included protection money. We still made p250k+ ($5000 USD) per month in cash. Because my wife and her family were considered low class provincial scum by Davao Oligarchs the city would not authorize a business license and necessary permits for the karaoke bar. Within in a day of receiving their third denial a member of a certain political family with ties to high office told us that they had a space we could rent and for a fee would not need to worry about licensing, permits or even taxes. My wife and her mother were explicitly told that no matter how much the business made that they would always be low class nobodies and acting like they were better than that even if they were millionaires would have consequences for the entire family.
Almost everyone we hired were for non waitressing jobs was family. Two of my cooks were rejected from multiple fast food locations because they lacked college degrees something that even middle class families have trouble affording for their kids.
My lighting and sound engineer had a masters in electrical engineering who made more selling cellphones at the Globe Store in the mall than she could as an electrical engineer because she was from a poor family in the provinces and no degree would change that. She only got the mall job because she slept with a district manager and then threatened to expose the affair to his wife and her family with ties to a different political family.
Many teachers even those from the middle classes will find themselves being disrespected by their students from higher classes and will be told by admin from the school, the district, and even the provincial level that they just need to accept it as the disruptive students all have higher social status.
Lastly let me give you the story of a 26 year old Filipina who comes from the lower middle classes. She grew to a fair amount of fame as a singer and actress during her younger teen years in the Philippines. I met her and her mother in an airport lounge they were surprised to see a white guy in a middle eastern airport lounge speaking Bisaya. We have been casual friends ever since.
She has Filipino Celeb status mostly doing model work and most recently an acting gig in a string on streaming services movies plus a current role in a long time series. She has money as well since her father has oil wealth in his family. She was flat out told she would not be allowed to purchase a condo in three different of the high end buildings in BGC because her family status didn’t justify it.
So how does social mobility work in the Philippines, it doesn’t.
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