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The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age
For generations, migration moved in one direction at a time: migrants to host countries, and money to families left behind. The Labor of Care argues that globalization has changed all that. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez spent five years alongside a group of working migrant mothers. Drawing on interviews and up-close collaboration with these women, Francisco-Menchavez looks at the sacrifices, emotional and material consequences, and recasting of roles that emerge from family separation. She pays particular attention to how technologies like Facebook, Skype, and recorded video open up transformative ways of bridging distances while still supporting traditional family dynamics. As she shows, migrants also build communities of care in their host countries. These chosen families provide an essential form of mutual support. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of today's transnational family sundered, yet inexorably linked over the distances by timeless emotions and new forms of intimacy.
- GenresNonfictionLabor
256 pages, Paperback
Published March 27, 2018
5 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Valerie Francisco-Menchavez
5 books3 followersValerie 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, 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, will be the inaugural book in the University of Washington Press, Critical Filipinx Studies Series, set to be published in November 2024.
Her first book entitled, The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age, explores the dynamics of gender and technology of care work and intimacy in Filipino transnational families in the Philippines and the U.S. Through an examination of neoliberal immigration policies and market forces, Francisco contextualizes the shifts in the long-standing transnational family formation in the Philippines. The Labor of Care won an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award competition for Outstanding Achievement in the Social Sciences. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at City University of New York, The Graduate Center.
Her second book project, Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building during Crisis, will be the inaugural book in the University of Washington Press, Critical Filipinx Studies Series, set to be published in November 2024.
Her first book entitled, The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age, explores the dynamics of gender and technology of care work and intimacy in Filipino transnational families in the Philippines and the U.S. Through an examination of neoliberal immigration policies and market forces, Francisco contextualizes the shifts in the long-standing transnational family formation in the Philippines. The Labor of Care won an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award competition for Outstanding Achievement in the Social Sciences. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at City University of New York, The Graduate Center.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 21, 2024
Well researched and written book that effectively uses multisited family histories to analyse the relations of transnational families living in New York City and the families they left behind in the Philipines within the substantial history of institutionalised migration, separation and transnational experiences
The author proposes a model of multidirectional care to demonstrate that care in a transnational context is never a one-way formula. Care comes in different forms (i.e., financial support and remittances from migrants or emotional support from families left behind) and there is no one metric to recognise these work as they assist in the functioning of the transnational family
Interesting discussion on technological dynamics in the care work of transnational families in the larger historical and political economic trajectory of capitalism that forces apart families to begin with. Technologies that provide communication and connection, and at the same time, this technology necessitates the separation of the family, as well as facilitating the continued flow of remittances from abroad, while normalising migration as a means to sustain Philippine families
Echoes Manalansan (2003)'s "cautionary hopefulness" regarding migrancy and mobility as while migration can superficially improve a family's income, it may not improve their quality of life, as the reconfiguration of social reproduction is the context under which communities of care are produced
Resentment and strain felt by transnational family members stemming from the social process under which transnational families absorb the heavy weight of the shifts in gendered work in the family. Although patriarchal norms such as the ascribed gendered work maintained in institutions such as the family are becoming undone, there isn't a parallel process that dismantles the very logic that keep gendered family care intact.
Labour migration not only relies on the migrant workers, but the vast family networks and coping strategies employed by families that have reconfigured care under conditions of migration and separation
Extensive and well documented research methods included in the appendices
The author proposes a model of multidirectional care to demonstrate that care in a transnational context is never a one-way formula. Care comes in different forms (i.e., financial support and remittances from migrants or emotional support from families left behind) and there is no one metric to recognise these work as they assist in the functioning of the transnational family
Interesting discussion on technological dynamics in the care work of transnational families in the larger historical and political economic trajectory of capitalism that forces apart families to begin with. Technologies that provide communication and connection, and at the same time, this technology necessitates the separation of the family, as well as facilitating the continued flow of remittances from abroad, while normalising migration as a means to sustain Philippine families
Echoes Manalansan (2003)'s "cautionary hopefulness" regarding migrancy and mobility as while migration can superficially improve a family's income, it may not improve their quality of life, as the reconfiguration of social reproduction is the context under which communities of care are produced
Resentment and strain felt by transnational family members stemming from the social process under which transnational families absorb the heavy weight of the shifts in gendered work in the family. Although patriarchal norms such as the ascribed gendered work maintained in institutions such as the family are becoming undone, there isn't a parallel process that dismantles the very logic that keep gendered family care intact.
Labour migration not only relies on the migrant workers, but the vast family networks and coping strategies employed by families that have reconfigured care under conditions of migration and separation
Extensive and well documented research methods included in the appendices
May 15, 2020
Happy Asian-American Heritage Month!
This year, the class I joined was assigned to read "The Labor of Care" for my Filipinx-American Experiences class in Asian Interdisciplinary Studies 400X at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with Professor Constancio Arnaldo. I was also assigned to write an essay about it, and I titled it "How Transnationalism Changed The Lives of Filipinx Families" and to say the least, this book is something I'll carry for the rest of my life. Never have I read something nor had anyone talk so accurately about the lives of Filipina migrants and transnational Filipinx families. Please give this book a read and also my essay on it! And thank you, Professor Francisco-Menchavez, for your honest research and work.
https://medium.com/@angelatampol/how-...
This year, the class I joined was assigned to read "The Labor of Care" for my Filipinx-American Experiences class in Asian Interdisciplinary Studies 400X at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with Professor Constancio Arnaldo. I was also assigned to write an essay about it, and I titled it "How Transnationalism Changed The Lives of Filipinx Families" and to say the least, this book is something I'll carry for the rest of my life. Never have I read something nor had anyone talk so accurately about the lives of Filipina migrants and transnational Filipinx families. Please give this book a read and also my essay on it! And thank you, Professor Francisco-Menchavez, for your honest research and work.
https://medium.com/@angelatampol/how-...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews