By Benjie de Ubago
Historian, author & multi award-winning educator, Mina Roces recently released her latest book – “The Filipino Migration Experience – Global Agents for Change”. It’s a new take on Filipino migration.
Mina looks at the Filipino migrant as more than just the Philippines’ labor export but as migrants who affect change and contribute economically, socially, and culturally in their host country and to their homeland. It tells of the assimilation process from the migrant’s perspective.
She travelled to Hong Kong, Singapore, Hawaii, Greece, Italy and the Philippines to unearth the migrant stories that tell of a migrant’s struggles for their distinct identity and the preservation of their culture and traditions, gender equality and family values. It’s a deep dive into the very soul of the Filipino migrant who most times fades and disappears into their environment.
“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.”
Professor Mina Roces Arrived in Australia in Australia in 1977. She completed a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in History at the University of Sydney and a masters a doctorate degree in History at the University of Michigan. She is a Professor of History and Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of NSW.
She’s a woman and gender specialist and has received the Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Award for Teaching Excellence in 2012; the FASS Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 2013; the Grant Goldman for Scholarly excellence in Philippine History in 2019; and is the first woman in 20 years to be given the Historical Studies Award by the Association for Asean Studies, USA.
Her other books include: Women’s Movements and The Filipina, 1986-2008, Kinship Politics in Postwar Philippines, and Women, Power, and Kinship Politics.
Filipin-Oz
17 March 2022
