Document Details

For many Filipinos, one word -- kumusta, how are you -- is all it takes to forge a connection with a stranger anywhere in the world. In Canada’s prairie provinces, this connection has inspired community building, and created both national and transnational identities for the women who identify as Pinay.

This book is the first to look beyond traditional metropolitan hubs of settlement to explore the migration of Filipino women in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Based on interviews with first-generation immigrant Filipino women and temporary foreign workers, this book explores how the shared experience of migration forms the basis for new identities, communities, transnational ties, and multiple levels of belonging in Canada. It also considers the complex cultural, economic, and political factors that motivate Filipino women to leave their country and family in search of better opportunities in a strange land and the welcome that awaits them in Canada, where multiculturalism plays a large role.

A groundbreaking look at the experience of Filipino women in Canada, Bonifacio’s work is simultaneously an exploration of feminism, migration, and diaspora in a global era.

Glenda Tibe Bonifacio is an associate professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Lethbridge. She is the editor of Feminism and Migration: Cross-Cultural Engagements and co-editor of Gender, Religion, and Migration: Pathways of Integration.