Category: Filipino migrant workers
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Lifting Up Filipino Caregivers Stories
Elaika Celemen and Kristal Osorio have been my research collaborators for the past two years. Both of them were my students, organizers in organizations that I deeply respect, and they are both Pinay immigrants who have roots in the Bay Area. Conducting research on Filipino caregivers with them really sharpened my ideas about how to…
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Racism in the Time of Corona
Lent some of my analysis on race and anti-Asian racism that Filipino health care workers face as they serve on the frontlines. This story skims the surface. The past administration has contributed to a more general anti-Asian xenophobia and racism but the reverberations can be felt in so many spaces. As we observe in the…
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PTO for Domestic Workers in SF
Did you know that San Francisco domestic workers are the workforce with the highest estimated number of minimum wage violations in the city? 70% of domestic workers do not earn enough to meet their basic living expenses. Domestic workers are entitled to paid time off like any other employees — but 87% of them never…
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A Short List to Read and Learn about Filipino/a Migrant Workers in the US
This list is not exhaustive, rather its responsive. This short list collates some resources, both academic and journalistic, that can help you learn more about the conditions of Filipino/a American migrant workers in the United States (US). In my current research project, I am looking closely at the lives of Filipino/a migrant workers in the…
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The Traffic in Filipino Teachers
Rachel Mabe published a longform piece on Oxford American, called “Trafficking in Teachers“. In this piece, she tells the story of Filipino teachers trafficked into the United States as a way to fill the crisis in staffing of teachers all across the US. In this piece she notes that the import of labor, specifically in…
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A Mother’s Day Call to Action
The CA Domestic Workers Rights Coalition has heard that SB 1257, The Health and Safety for All Workers Act, will be heard in the Labor Committee on this coming Thursday, May 14! Help us build visibility and lift your voices in the creative ways to make sure that the Labor Committee sees and feels the…
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Filipino Home Care Workers, Unseen Frontliners
There are frontlines that are behind the scenes. And there are workers on those unseen frontlines, who day in and day out, are also fighting the battle against COVID-19. Home care workers are some of those who are doing this work in private homes, in non-hospital settings, in residential care facilities. They, too, are in…
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Solidarity In Place, today and tomorrow
I’ve been thinking and writing about space and thinking about how separation, and seeming isolation, can lend itself to solidarity and transnational resistance. When I wrote and delivered the paper you’ll see above at Arizona State University in February, I was really theorizing about how migrant Filipinas working as domestic workers are often rendered isolated…
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Care in the Time of Corona
Two full weeks has passed since the “shelter in place” mandate was passed in the San Francisco/Bay Area. And we are all learning. My partner and I are working from home and have full-time work expectations that we must carry out while we juggle the care and learning of our 5 and 3 year old…
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Together But Apart: Virtual Connection in the time of Corona
A centerpiece of my book The Labor of Care is the chapter called “Skype Mothers and Facebook Children”. In it, I look at how care work and intimacy between transnational family members is shaped by information communication technologies (ICTs), specifically, Skype and Facebook during the time I was collecting research in the 2000s. In the…
VFM 