The Filipino Migration Experience: Global Agents of Change

Winner of the New South Wales Premier’s History Awards, General History Prize (2022)

The Filipino Migration Experience introduces a new dimension to the usual depiction of migrants as disenfranchised workers or marginal ethnic groups. Mina Roces suggests alternative ways of conceptualizing Filipino migrants as critics of the family and cultural constructions of sexuality, as consumers and investors, as philanthropists, as activists, and as historians. They have been able to transform fundamental social institutions and well-entrenched traditional norms, as well as alter the business, economic, and cultural landscapes of both the homeland and the host countries to which they have migrated.

Roces tells the story of the Filipino migration experience from the perspective of the migrants themselves, drawing on underused primary sources from the ＂migrant archives＂ and more than seventy interviews. Bringing together migration studies and Filipina/o/x American studies, The Filipino Migration Experience explores how these migrants have profoundly reshaped the status quo.

Mina Roces is Professor of History at University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She is author of Gender in Southeast Asia.