Filipinos In Canada

Filipinos make up one of the largest immigrant groups in Canada and the majority continue to retain their Roman Catholic faith long after migrating. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research in Canada and the Philippines from 1880 to 2017, Bayanihan and Belonging aims to understand the role of religion within present-day Filipino Canadian communities. With a focus on Winnipeg, home to Canada’s oldest and largest Filipino Canadian community, Alison R. Marshall showcases current church-based and domestic religious routines of migrant Filipinos. From St. Edward the Confessor Church, the principal site of worship for Filipino Catholics in Manitoba, to home chapels, and healing traditions, Marshall explores the day-to-day celebrations of bayanihan, or communal spirit. Drawing on experiences from Manitoba’s Filipino population, Bayanihan and Belonging reveals that religious practise fulfills not only a need for spiritual guidance, but also for community.

The Philippines became Canada’s largest source of short- and long-term migrants in 2010, surpassing China and India, both of which are more than ten times larger. The fourth-largest racialized minority group in the country, the Filipino community is frequently understood by such figures as the victimized nanny, the selfless nurse, and the gangster youth. On one hand, these narratives concentrate attention, in narrow and stereotypical ways, on critical issues. On the other, they render other problems facing Filipino communities invisible. This landmark book, the first wide-ranging edited collection on Filipinos in Canada, explores gender, migration and labour, youth spaces and subjectivities, representation and community resistance to certain representations. Looking at these from the vantage points of anthropology, cultural studies, education, geography, history, information science, literature, political science, sociology, and women and gender studies, Filipinos in Canada provides a strong foundation for future work in this area.

Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries is the first edited volume of its kind, featuring the works of leading scholars, artists, and activists who reflect on the contributions of queer Filipinos to Canadian culture and society. Addressing a wide range of issues beyond the academy, the authors present a rich and under-studied archive of personal reflections, in-depth interviews, creative works, and scholarly essays. Their trandsdisciplinary approach highlights the need for queer, transgressive, and utopian practices that render visible histories of migration, empire building, settler colonialism, and globalization. Timely, urgent, and fascinating, Diasporic Intimacies offers an accessible entry point for readers who seek to pursue critically engaged community work, arts education, curatorial practice, and socially inflected research on sexuality, gender, and race in this ever-changing world.

Drawing on archival and ethnographic research in Canada and the Philippines from 1880 to 2017, Bayanihan and Belonging aims to understand the role of religion within present-day Filipino Canadian communities.

In the 70- year history of Filipino migration to Canada, their number has increased from 770 in 1964 to about a million in 2021. Yet no book has been written and published in Canada about the Filipino community in its entirety. This book fills that vacuum. The first major wave of primarily professional Filipino immigrants, mostly nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals arrived in the 1960s from the U.S. They came to renew their U.S. visas but decided to stay. They were admitted on Canada’s merit-based point system. The succeeding waves of Filipino immigrants came mainly through the government’s Live-in Caregiver Program, the Temporary Foreign Workers Program and the Family Reunification program where requirements for education and technical skills were less demanding. These immigrant programs, with racist undertone, brought them to Canada mainly to do work that most Canadians did not like to do. They felt they were needed as temporary workers but not as citizens. These immigrants were driven to accept these undesirable jobs to escape from poverty and turmoil back home in the hope of achieving a better future in Canada for their children. They came in the prime of life, trained and competent to take on whatever job they could get to survive. And they toiled away quietly minding their own business, raising their children as best as they could while instilling in them the value of good education. But Filipinos are an indomitable lot and can’t be kept down for long. In the last two decades, a new breed of notable young Filipinos has emerged from the shadows and into the light. This book tells how a million Filipino immigrants turned hardships into opportunities and a better life in Canada for their children. This is their contemporary history. This is not a mere collection of published articles. It is an ongoing narrative, linking chapters from Introduction to Conclusion, by academicians, researchers, journalists and essayists who provide the necessary in-depth theorizing and analyzing of the 70-year history of Filipino immigration to Canada.

The Philippines became Canada's largest source of short- and long-term migrants in 2010, surpassing China and India, both of which are more than ten times larger. The fourth-largest racialized minority group in the country, the Filipino community is frequently understood by such figures as the victimized nanny, the selfless nurse, and the gangster youth. On one hand, these narratives concentrate attention, in narrow and stereotypical ways, on critical issues. On the other, they render other problems facing Filipino communities invisible. This landmark book, the first wide-ranging edited collection on Filipinos in Canada, explores gender, migration and labour, youth spaces and subjectivities, representation and community resistance to certain representations. Looking at these from the vantage points of anthropology, cultural studies, education, geography, history, information science, literature, political science, sociology, and women and gender studies, Filipinos in Canada provides a strong foundation for future work in this area.