Bonifacio, Glenda Tibe. (2013) Pinay on the Prairies.

Filipino Women and

Transnational Identities. Vancouver and Toronto: University of British Columbia
Press.

Migration from the Philippines has been extensively surveyed and documented as a
gendered and feminized migration. In the past decades, academic researchers,
policymakers and practitioners have shown considerable interest in examining the
global exodus of Filipino women who occupy gendered and racialized niches in the
international labor market as domestic workers, caregivers, nurses, entertainers and
mail-order brides in specific migrant destinations in the Middle East, North America,
Oceania, Asia and Europe. This dominant construction of Filipino migrant women as
victims of globalization has shifted the focus on migrant agency and migrant
activism in relation to development, remittance, political mobilization, social
integration and transnational sociocultural activities amidst macro-structural forces
and systemic constraints. Glenda Tibe Bonifacios book Pinay on the Prairies:
Filipino Women and Transnational Identities contributes to this analytical, empirical
and theoretical shift in the examination of gendered transnational migration by
focusing on Filipino womens lived experiences, personal politics and transnational
identity making in Western Canada. The book aims to go beyond the predominant
construction and analysis of Filipino migrant women as passive objects and subjects
of disparate development in regions and imbalanced relations between states in
relation to global political economy. To effectively present an alternative portrayal of
Filipino migrants, the author extends Pinayism or Pinay peminism, a heuristic tool
which originated from Filipina American feminist theorizing, to examine the
embeddedness of culture and gender in migration processes and how this culture-
gender nexus is played out in the grounded experiences of Filipino migrant women in
the Canadian prairies. Through out the book, Pinayism as a unique feminist
theorizing which draws heavily on migrant womens lived experiences and culture-
specific consciousness and action (p. 13) was effectively and expertly applied to and
illustrated by case studies, life stories and interview vignettes of Filipino migrant
women with diverse migration trajectories and migrant categories.

The first chapter of the book provides a theoretical foregrounding of Pinayism

and its positioning within the feminist and migration studies. Drawing on Kimberle
Crenshaws notion of intersectionality and Tintiango-Cubales Pinay peminism,
Bonifacio presents a multilayered feminist framework which centers on personal
migration experiences shaped by political, economic, social and cultural milieu of
home society and personal/collective negotiations using migrant womens cultural
ethos in their associational life, everyday politics and integration practices in the host
society. This chapter also discusses Pinay peminist methodological issues such as
positionality, objectivity and reflexivity of the researcher. The introduction and
theoretical/methodological chapters set a thorough and nuanced tone for the entire
book. Chapter 2 provides an excellent political, economic, social, cultural and
historical backdrop of Philippine international migration which paved the way for
Pinay migration in Canadian prairies. Not only did Bonifacio present updated facts
about Filipino migration but she also contextualizes these facts within national and
global processes of migration. Following this skillful contextualization of Pinay
migration to Canada, the book offers a glimpse of Canadian prairies specifically the
provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan as Welcoming Prairies. Drawing
from Filipino migrant womens subjective construction and experiences of Canada as
a migrant destination and host society, Chapter 3 examines how Filipino migrant
women negotiate and bridge their expectations of Canada as a host society and the
realities of migrant integration manifested in three areas: (1) employment barriers
especially deskilling and non-recognition of previous non-Canadian work experiences
and professional qualifications; (2) housing strategies employed by newcomer
permanent immigrants and temporary foreign workers under Canadas Live-in Care
Program; and (3) social interactions with co-ethnics and local Canadians at the
personal, group, community and institutional level. Chapter 4 deepens the discussion
of Filipino migrant womens negotiation within the process of integration, settlement
and multiculturalism in Canada by underscoring Pinays multiple identities based on
class, religion, ethnolinguistic origin and sexuality. In doing so, this chapter
contributes to a nuanced reconfiguration of Filipino womanhood as an analytical
category to understand a culturally-nuanced gendered migration. Chapter 5 entitled
Building Bridges: Activism and Community Engagement contributes to the scarce
literature on migrant activism of Filipino migrant women by focusing on personal
politics as a multidirectional, involving informal, formal and personal avenues (p.
151) of political processes to engage with the host and home communities. This
chapter strikingly demonstrates the agentic potential of women migrants in platforms
such as faith-based, professional, sociocultural and education-based organizations that
are outside the purview of conventional locus of politics. Another interesting section
of this chapter outlines the associational landscape of Filipino communities in
Canadian prairies. Departing from simply describing the community demographics
and activities, Bonifacio linked community life back to Filipino culture in the form of
Filipino values such as pakikisama (good public relations), pakikipagkapwa-tao
(concern or regard for others), bayanihan (community spirit), utang na loob (debt
of gratitude) and respect for elders and authority. Although the author thoroughly
elaborates on these values, she is able to avoid valorizing and romanticizing these
values by positing how Filipino migrant women employ these cultural ethos to
negotiate their new identities and subjectivities in Canada. However, a small section
portraying a unique Pinay leadership style based on an integrative humanist
paradigm consisting of womens caring or nurturing qualities, intelligence, relational
skills, responsibility, accountability, and morality (p. 202) is a huge theoretical and
empirical claims that the chapter could not completely substantiate. Chapter 6
introduces the notion of vested transnationalism to illuminate the construction of
transnational spaces which foster binational belonging and prove beneficial to
migrants and their communities in the host society and to migrants families and
localities in the home society. Filipino women engage in transnational practices and
strategies such as sending cash remittances and balikbayan boxes as symbolism and
expressions of love, motherhood and filial duty. While the former has sustained
families, household and even national economy in the Philippines, the latter has
become an institutionalized transnational cultural icon in Filipino migration (p.
220). Another new area explored by Bonifacio in explaining vested transnationalism
is the visible presence and power of media and popular culture in the form of
Philippine global television networks, beauty and fashion shows and Pinoy celebrity
concerts in Canada. This chapter skillfully demonstrates how the gender paradox is
illuminated in these transnational activities with Filipino migrant women claiming
higher economic positioning and status within their families and communities yet
perpetuating gendered constructions of Filipino women in popular culture such as TV
dramas, beauty and fashion shows.
 The book successfully incorporates rich empirical data and convincing
theoretical framework to explore the relationship between migration, identity and
community of Pinays in the Canadian prairies. Bonifacio is commendable in
presenting Filipino migrant women as an analytical category to understand
theoretical and empirical issues within migration and gender studies. The author,
however, failed to show the particularity of Filipino migrant womens lived
experiences in Canadian prairies as new or alternative geographies of immigrant
gateways in North America. The chapter on Canadian prairies as welcoming
prairies is one of the stimulating chapters but it fails to establish the distinctive
characteristics of Canadian prairies as migrant destinations. The author could have
made references to other emerging and established immigrant gateways which
have caught much scholarly attention recently. In-depth engagement with literature on
migrant gateways would have deepened the spatial and scalar analysis of quotidian
transnational activities shaped by local, provincial, regional and national migration
regimes. Similarly, the question of particularity and generalizability in employing
Filipino migrant women was not clearly addressed. What makes Pinay peminism and
Filipino migrant women distinct from other migrant groups and other types of
feminisms in diaspora (i.e. Latina feminism)? Does Pinay peminism only applicable
in the North American or perhaps European contexts where the middle-class white
hegemony is the norm? Although Bonifacio, following Tintiangco-Cubales
elaboration, maintains that issues of Pinays in diaspora are part of the larger Pinayism
conversation, comparison with and/or reference to Filipino migrant women with
similar trajectories in various contexts or migrant women across nationalities and
ethnicities could produce a stronger and sharper theoretical framework. Another issue
that the book fails to thoroughly elucidate is the idea of Filipino migrant women as a
racialized category. Race within the context of migration is multilayered and
multileveled. The book would have benefited greatly if each layer of manufacturing of
Filipino race is unpacked. For example, positive stereotyping and manufacturing of
Filipino migrant traits is done at the macro-level (sending state in response to the
demand of the global labor market and receiving societys needs), meso-level (how
migration infrastructures such as brokers, placement/recruitment agencies package
and sell Filipino migrant women or how pro-migrant organizations (un)intentionally
perpetuate these racial othering) and micro-level (how Filipino migrant women
negotiate and/or resist racialization and gendering).

Despite the aforementioned shortcomings, this book is an important

contribution to existing literature on Philippine international migration and Filipino
migration to Canada. It showcases an exceptional level of knowledge and outstanding
nuanced understanding of Filipino migration from both the sending and receiving
society perspective. Its attempt to shatter the conventional portrayal of Filipino
women as mere nannies or caregivers provides a more holistic depiction of
migrant women with multiple identities, subjectivities, trajectories and collectivities.
This multidimensional approach to gender and migration will be of great benefit to
academics, students, policymakers and practitioners from various disciplines.