Filipino, Tagalog

About 55,000 Filipinos live in Bahrain, most of them overseas workers who came for jobs in homes, hotels, malls, hospitals, offices and airlines, and more than half of whom are domestic workers. They come from every region of the Philippines and use Filipino and English together, with the Bahrain Filipino Club, women's and caregivers' groups, basketball leagues and the Philippine School in Isa Town (founded 1994) at the centre of community life. Overwhelmingly Catholic in a Muslim kingdom, they fill the Tagalog masses at Sacred Heart Church in Manama and the ark-shaped Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia at Awali, the largest church in the Arabian Peninsula. The 2026 Iran war sent several hundred home by bus across the causeway to Saudi Arabia, but the community and its remittances of about 140 million dollars a half-year remain.

Filipinos in Egypt are a small community of a few thousand, about 85% of them women: domestic and other workers in the affluent districts of Cairo, Filipinas married to Egyptians who are raising Egyptian families, and around 300 Muslim students from Mindanao at Al-Azhar University. The first Filipinos came in the 1950s as Muslim scholarship students; workers followed from the 1990s, many arriving on tourist visas because Egypt issues no work visas for foreign household help, which leaves them undocumented and outside the labour law. Most are Catholic and worship at the English Masses of Cairo's old Latin parishes, as the country has no Filipino chaplaincy, while the students return home to teach in Mindanao's madrasas. Community life is small and informal: a handful of clubs of married Filipinas, the students' association and gatherings at the embassy, where an Independence Day town hall in 2025 drew about 400 people.

Filipinos in Israel, around 31,000 people, are mostly women working as live-in caregivers for elderly and disabled Israelis, and they are the largest group among the country's home-care workers. They began arriving in the 1990s, and many have stayed for a decade or more; some raised children in Israel, several hundred of whom were granted residency. During the week they live in their employers' homes across the country, and on Saturday, Israel's day of rest and their day off, they gather in south Tel Aviv for Tagalog and English Mass at the Our Lady Woman of Valor pastoral centre, for shared 'weekend flats', karaoke and Filipino food. Filipino caregivers have died beside their patients in the 7 October 2023 attack and in Iranian missile strikes in 2026, and Israelis widely admire their loyalty and care.

Filipinos in Jordan, around 45,000 people, are mostly women working as live-in domestic workers in Amman households, with smaller numbers in hotels, hospitals and resorts from the Dead Sea to Aqaba. They began arriving in numbers in the 2000s under Jordan's sponsorship system, and many have stayed for decades, some marrying and raising children who speak Arabic and English better than Tagalog. Their faith is the backbone of community life: since 2017 the Latin Patriarchate has kept a Filipino chaplaincy, and on Fridays, their usual day off, members gather for Mass, choir practice and fellowship in central Amman. Long hours, withheld wages and the risk of falling into irregular status are the community's main worries.

Filipinos are Kuwait's fourth-largest foreign community, after Indians, Egyptians and Bangladeshis, about 226,000 people, and more than half of them are household workers: housemaids, nannies, cooks and drivers living in Kuwaiti homes. They are the backbone of Kuwait's Christian congregations, filling Tagalog Masses on Fridays at the Holy Family Cathedral in Kuwait City, St Therese in Salmiya and Our Lady of Arabia in Ahmadi, and keeping the nine dawn Masses of Simbang Gabi before Christmas. The killings of housemaids Joanna Demafelis in 2018 and Jullebee Ranara in 2023 led both times to deployment bans and visa freezes between Manila and Kuwait, and the community lives with the memory of those cases.

Filipinos in Lebanon are a community of about 12,000, almost all women who work as housekeepers, nannies and carers in Lebanese homes and hotels, some of them in the country for decades. They live overwhelmingly in Beirut and the Christian suburbs north and east of it, and are the most visibly Catholic of Lebanon's migrant communities: on Sunday noon St. Francis Church on Hamra Street fills with Filipinas who close the Mass with a Tagalog song and stay for birthday parties and a small bazaar in the schoolyard. Tagalog is their shared language, though many come from the Visayas and the Ilocos. The community has shrunk from about 30,000 in the 2000s, since the Philippines first banned new deployments to Lebanon in 2006, banned them again in 2023, and repatriated thousands during the wars of 2006, 2024 and 2026.

About 2,000 Filipinos live in Libya, most of them nurses and clinical instructors in public hospitals, with some engineers and oil workers. More than half work in the east, in Benghazi, Al Bayda, Derna and Tobruk, and the rest in Tripoli and Misrata. Before 2011 more than 13,000 worked in Libya; most left in the revolution, and the Philippines has barred new deployments since 2014, so the community is largely made up of veterans who stayed through the wars. As Catholics in a Muslim country they fill much of the Friday Mass at Tripoli's St. Francis church, while in Benghazi, whose church was destroyed, they worship in a hospital room, and a Filipino workers' association and a Filipino school keep community life going there.

About 1,300 Filipinos live in Morocco, seven in ten of them women, most working as nannies and housekeepers for well-off Moroccan and expatriate families in Casablanca, Rabat and Fes, where an English-speaking nanny is prized. Others work as beauty and spa therapists, dental technicians and welders. Many came from the 2000s through recruiters, some promised jobs in Dubai and sent to Morocco instead, and the Philippines had no embassy in Morocco until 2020, so workers relied on each other; in 2021 they founded the Filipino Society of Morocco, which holds Independence Day and Christmas festivals and helps workers who are unpaid or have lost their papers. As Catholics they gather at Rabat's Saint Francis of Assisi church for the Christmas dawn Masses of Simbang Gabi.

About 50,000 Filipinos live in Oman, roughly seven in ten of them women, most working as housemaids, nannies and caregivers in Omani homes, alongside nurses, hotel and retail staff, engineers, technicians and port staff. Before the pandemic the Philippines sent about 25,000 workers a year to Oman, and remittances now exceed $340 million a year. Catholic faith shapes community life: Filipinos fill the parishes of Ruwi and Ghala, where a Filipino Capuchin has led the main parish and dawn Masses of the Simbang Gabi novena are said in Tagalog before Christmas. The Filipino Community Social Club is the only officially recognised umbrella body for the community's associations.

Filipinos are one of Qatar's largest and most visible communities, some 220,000 to 250,000 people from across the Philippines who use Tagalog (Filipino) as their common language. Many women work as live-in household helpers, while men and women fill jobs in hotels, malls, hospitals, transport, construction and the gas industry. They are the backbone of Christianity in Qatar: Tagalog is one of the main languages of Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary, the Catholic church in the walled religious complex outside Doha that holds no outward cross, and a Filipino pastor led the evangelical alliance that won permission to build its own church there. A smaller Filipino Muslim community, including many converts known as Balik Islam, has its own federation of associations.

Filipinos are Saudi Arabia's largest Christian community and one of its oldest Asian workforces, about 726,000 strong. They come from every region of the Philippines, Tagalogs, Cebuanos, Ilocanos, Hiligaynons, Bicolanos and Kapampangans, and Muslim Maranao, Maguindanao and Tausug from Mindanao. Migration began in 1973 with engineers for the oil boom; today Filipinos staff hospitals as nurses, work in households as maids and drivers, and fill jobs in construction, engineering, hotels and shops, and Saudi Arabia receives more Filipino workers than any other country. The community runs Philippine schools in Riyadh, Jeddah and the Eastern Province, and Manila Plaza in Riyadh's Batha district is its market of Filipino food, remittance counters and shops. Most are Catholics who keep their faith without churches, meeting quietly in homes on Fridays, while a Muslim minority, from Mindanao or converts made in the kingdom, worships openly in its mosques.

Filipinos in Türkiye are a small community of about 4,000, most of them women working as live-in nannies, housekeepers and carers in wealthy Turkish and diplomatic households in Istanbul and Ankara. Turkish families prize them for their English and their schooling, and a smaller number work as English teachers, engineers, hotel staff and professionals or are married to Turks. They are Roman Catholic Christians in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, and their parish life gathers at St. Esprit Cathedral in Istanbul's Harbiye district, where they hold Independence Day Masses in Filipino dress and the Marian Flores de Mayo festival each May.

Filipinos are the fourth-largest foreign community in the United Arab Emirates, about 700,000 people, half of them in Dubai, working as nurses, engineers, retail, hotel and office staff and, in large numbers, as nannies and housemaids. Speaking Tagalog laced with English, they fill the malls, parks and Filipino eateries of Al Karama and Satwa on their days off and send home some 1.5 billion dollars a year. They are the largest community in the Catholic Church of southern Arabia: before Christmas 30,000 to 35,000 Filipinos a night crowd St Mary's Church in Dubai for the nine evening Masses of Simbang Gabi, and on Holy Thursday they drive across the emirates to visit seven churches. Most have come since Dubai's boom of the 2000s, and when Iranian missiles and drones struck the Emirates in 2026 most chose to stay.