Organizers: Canadian Southeast Asian Studies Initiative (CSEASI), York University

Type/Location: Hybrid / Toronto, ON

Description:

Join York University’s Canadian Southeast Asian Studies Initiative for a talk by Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, who will discuss her new book, Caring for Caregivers. The book centers the perspectives of Filipino caregivers in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2013 to 2021, illuminating their transnational experiences and the strategies and practices they employ to help one another navigate the crumbling US healthcare system.

Discussant: Nikki Mary Pagaling (York University)

Moderator: Ethel Tungohan (York University)

About the Speakers:

Valerie Francisco-Menchavez is an award-winning scholar-activist, researcher, writer and educator whose academic and political work calls attention to the experiences of Filipina migrants in care work industries and their indelible abilities to form solidarities and organize with one another. Her academic writing critically interrogates systems of capitalism that produce the conditions for historic and continued labor migration from the Philippines. More importantly, Dr. Francisco’s body of work aims to recognize the multifaceted experiences of migration and transnationalism for people in the Filipina/x/o diaspora exploring their communities of care, political activism, conditions of low-wage work, and intergenerational dialogue. Her development of innovative methods such as kuwentuhan in her research explores Filipino cultural practices as valid ways of knowing and navigation. Her second book project, Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building during Crisis, is the inaugural book in the University of Washington Press, Critical Filipinx Studies series, set to be published in November 2024. Dr. Francisco is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University.

Nikki Mary Pagaling holds an MA in Geography from York University, where her thesis research focused on the experiences of Filipina personal support workers in Toronto. She is the Coordinator of the CITY Institute and Research Communications and Programs Assistant at the Robarts Centre. 

Registration:

To attend the event in person, please register here.

To attend the event virtually, please register here.