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Cited by 151Migration and Labor DynamicsMemory, Trauma, and TestimonyDiaspora, migration, transnational identity

Circulating sadness: witnessing Filipina mothers' stories of family separation

Open access
Pratt, Geraldine·2009·Gender, Place & Culture
DOI 10.1080/09663690802574753
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Abstract

I reflect upon a collaborative research project with activist groups at the Kalayaan Centre in Vancouver, in which we collected stories of family separation, loss, grief and traumatic returns to more fully trace the impacts of the Canadian temporary work visa program (the Live-in Caregiver Program), which brings mostly Filipino women to Canada as live-in domestic workers. Our hope is that these stories of maternal loss will find an audience and evoke an affective response among policy-makers and a wide public beyond the Filipino community in ways that earlier critiques of the program have not. The article draws upon critical literatures on trauma and testimony to consider some of the risks of circulating these kinds of testimonials, and the possibilities of moving the audience from the position of spectator to witness. I then work closely with two mothers' testimonies to experiment with ways of establishing a ‘more difficult contract’ between those who give testimony and those who receive it, one that creates a complex ethical and political space in which the audience is required to register their own complicity in the other's loss or grief. I consider of the possibilities of assembling stories that tell a collective history without reducing the complexity of individual's lives into the same sad story of victimization, and of telling these stories so that the categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mother are exhausted and the listener/reader is forced to listen/read more closely, just beyond the expected story line or cultural cliché.

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Crossref · 10.1080/09663690802574753

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Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The result of this study supports the healthy immigrant effect: migrant workers arrive healthy but their health status declines during their stay in Canada.

    “The result of this study supports the healthy immigrant effect (ie, migrant workers arrive healthy as indicated during predeparture medical screening); however, their health status declines during their stay in Canada [21,44-46].”

    From Effects of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on Mental Health and Resiliency of Migrant Live-in Caregivers in Canada: Pilot Randomized Wait List Controlled Trial (2022) · cites this paper as [44]

    The Abstract describes family separation, grief, exploitative working conditions and deskilling under Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program. Neither it nor the passages found by searching for the healthy immigrant effect, predeparture screening and declining health report workers’ health on arrival or a decline during their stay in Canada. (LLM, conf=0.76)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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1 of the 48 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Oliver, K. 2001. Beyond witnessing. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

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Related

Authors
Pratt, G.
Affiliations
University of British Columbia (CA)
Corresponding author
Pratt, Geraldine
ORCID
Pratt, Geraldine
Venue
Gender, Place & Culture
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2009-02
Volume
16
Issue
1
Pages
3-22
ISSN
  • 0966-369X (ISSN-L)
  • 1360-0524
DOI
10.1080/09663690802574753
OpenAlex
W2037905915
Cited by
151
References
48
Citations by year
2026: 17 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 11
FWCI
19.41
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
public-domain
Locations
Gender Place & Culture (publishedVersion, public-domain)
Funders
  • National Taiwan University
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Migration and Labor Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Memory, Trauma, and Testimony
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Diaspora, migration, transnational identity
Keywords
family separation, Filipino migrant women, Live-in Caregiver Program, temporary work visas, maternal loss, grief, trauma, witness testimony, witnessing, spectatorship, ethics of testimony, collective history, migrant activism

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