Teresa Cruz is one of many millions of adults who have travelled thousands of miles from home to earn money to send back to their families. Teresa lives in Dubai, the UAE’s largest city, 7000 kilometres from her home country, the Philippines. She earns the minimum wage as an assistant at a clothing store in a shopping mall in Dubai. She works six days a week and Friday is her day off.

On Friday at 12:00, it is time for Teresa to see her 11-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son who live with their aunt, who is raising them in the Philippines. As she is an overseas worker, she does this in the modern way. She pulls a stool up to a desk inside the small bedroom she shares with four other people. She logs on to the computer, clicks a video chat button and waits.

Teresa lives in the bedroom with her husband, Luis, who, like Teresa, left the Philippines years ago. They decided that the only way to do the things a parent wants to do—pay for schoolbooks, make sure the grandparents in the Philippines have enough to eat, prepare the children for college one day—is to leave the family behind and find work in a distant country with a different language and culture.