Sensing the Contours of De/Colonizing Asian-Filipina Canadian Feminist Praxis: How to Unsettle "Newcomer Settlement and Immigrant Integration"

Background and Purpose: Weaving together literature on the U.S. ethnic agency and the Canadian settlement agency with Asian-Filipina Canadian feminisms, this study takes up a de/colonizing orientation to researching Filipino/a/x experiences in and contributions to the immigrant-serving sector. In this paper, I offer methodological insights on the possibilities, limits, and complexities of de/colonizing research with practitioners from my own community. I also provide technical steps and considerations for program development that unsettle normative approaches to newcomer settlement and immigrant integration.

The study’s main objective was to center the diverse knowledges (ways of being, knowing, and doing) of Filipino/a/x workers who have chosen to work with the Filipino community. The main research question was How do Filipino/a/x settlement / community / social workers describe their work and experiences in providing settlement support to Filipino newcomers and immigrants in Canada?

Methods: This paper draws on a recent study that utilized de/colonizing auto/ethnographic approaches with exploratory methods from Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP, or Filipino Psychology in English). In addition to pagdalaw-dalaw (informal and frequent visiting) and pakikisangkot (deeper involvement with community groups and organizations), I spoke to 24 practitioners who worked with Filipino clients or community members in three different Canadian sites: Ontario, Manitoba, and the Yukon. Practitioners were recruited through pre-existing relationships and snowball sampling. Using kwentuhan (storytelling) during individual interviews, practitioners were asked to share the reasons why they came to Canada and how they supported Filipinos in their paid or voluntary work. I utilized multiple approaches to data analysis, including open emergent, in vivo, and holistic coding alongside non-sequential, creative auto/ethnographic writing and arts-informed inquiry.

Results: This paper shares two findings from the study. First, I describe the critical pedagogy of settlement work, how Filipina practitioners enacted processes of teaching and learning when working with Filipino community members to settle and integrate in Canada. Second, I share practitioners’ critical reflections on the settlement sector and in-roads they were making to connect Filipino newcomers and immigrants with local Indigenous communities.

I focus on three practitioners’ stories. First, I offer critical reflections from Kelly, an Igorot practitioner in Toronto who resists being essentialized as Filipino. Second, I share insights from Iris, a first-generation immigrant and settlement practitioner in Neepawa who recounted ways service provision can intervene to combat Filipino invisibility in the public sphere. Third, I highlight the ways Gwyneth, a mixed-race practitioner in Whitehorse made connections with growing up in a multi-generational household to how the local Indigenous community restores family and community support networks for children and youth.

Conclusions and Implications: The study offers theoretical, methodological, and practice contributions to Filipina Canadian feminist praxis in settlement / social service provision. This paper ends with a critical reflection about the necessary work to cultivate critical feminist leadership capacity among Filipina and Asian North American practitioners and researchers in the immigrant-serving sector.