Legacies of Care: Exploring the Migration of Aging Filipina Women in Canada and Its Impact on Transnational Families Across Generations

Abstract

This dissertation explores the life histories of aging Filipina migrants in Canada and their family dynamics and caring relations that have evolved over time. I examine how, through mobility, care becomes an agentive force in negotiating the political and economic conditions that inform the life course. Centering the life course as a temporal frame, I examine how migration influences intergenerational relations, career paths, aging, experiences of loss and the navigation of end-of-life care. Throughout the dissertation I build out a legacies of care framework to capture: 1) how Filipino migration is embedded in larger assemblages of relations, including histories of colonialism and global capital systems that shape mobility trajectories and the provision of and experience of care, 2) how the expansiveness of care is borne out of varying states of mobility, specifically related to diverse care practices employed to maintain social ties transnationally and the ways in which care is imbued with several affects, and 3) the multiple temporalities of migration, including how the past, present, and future intertwine and how Filipino migrants' care extends across generations and beyond their lifetimes. To support this framework, I ground my analysis in Tadiar's (2022) exploration of life-times to illustrate the complex historical, social, political, and economic forces that shape individual lives, particularly the value assigned to care labour and the long-term life outcomes associated with a lifetime of care work. I employ the term acquiescent mobility, an elaboration of Schewel's (2019) aspiration-capability framework, to demonstrate the multiple aspirations that a migrant holds in pursuing migration, the external forces shaping one's mobility pathway, and the movement of people, resources, and caring practices that adapt to various states of mobility. My methodological and theoretical approach centers on female migrants' agency as their stories and the retelling of their narratives reaffirm how migrant women have actively exercised autonomy in making life choices.