Migrant Care Worker Precarity Project
I am a co-lead of the research team for the Migrant Care Worker Precarity Project (MCWP), which emerged from the Understanding Precarity in BC SSHRC Partnership (UP-BC). UP-BC is a collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Simon Fraser University’s Labour Studies Program. Convened by Cenen Bagon, co-founder of the Vancouver Committee for Domestic Workers and Caregivers Rights (CDWCR), the MCWP examines Canada’s evolving migrant care worker programs. This includes the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker Pilots introduced in 2019 and the Home Care Worker Immigration Pilots introduced in 2024 by IRCC. The project focuses on care workers’ experiences under these pathways and how past and present policy changes may shape their futures. The project aims to support positive change for care workers, including amplifying the long-standing call for permanent status for all. We presently have funding to continue our research until 2030. Funding: SSHRC Partnership streams and TRU's Accelerate Grants.
BC Human Rights Education Project
I was the lead investigator of a comprehensive examination of human rights education (HRE) in British Columbia. The project included an environmental scan of existing human rights education and literacy initiatives, resources, and practitioners across formal and informal educational settings. Through a survey and practitioner interviews, we generated comprehensive data about existing practices as well as a database of services, offerings, and educational activities in the province. Along with two research assistants from TRU’s MA in Human Rights and Social Justice, I wrote and delivered a comprehensive report for the BCOHRC that is now informing educational planning. Funding: BC Office of the Human Rights Commissioner.
Tender Labour & Storied Migrations
This multimodal ethnographic project employed storytelling and visual methods with Filipinx-Canadian youths to explore their experiences of parental labour migration and long-term family separation. This work has culminated into my forthcoming book, Tender Labour (UBC Press), exploring migrant youths' paid and unpaid labour including affective and relational work, hope, and life-building in the context of mother-away families.
Kamloops & District Local Immigration Partnership Feasibility Study and Needs Assessment
I am lead investigator for the Newcomer Needs Assessment Survey, which is informing the strategies and projects of Kamloops' newly established local immigration partnership (LIP). The LIP was also generated through my earlier team-based research with Kamloops Immigrant Services (KIS). With KIS, I was Co-Principal Investigator of a TRU-KIS research team that completed a Local Immigration Partnership (LIP) feasibility study. We examined cross-sectoral possibilities in the Thompson-Nicola Valley region for collaborating and creating more welcoming communities, and this work facilitated funding to establish our community's LIP. Funding: TRU's Community-Engaged Research Fund and IRCC.
