Valerie Francisco-Menchavez

Valerie Francisco-Menchavez is an award-winning scholar-activist, researcher, writer and educator whose academic and political work calls attention to the experiences of Filipina migrants in care work industries and their indelible abilities to form solidarities and organize with one another. Her academic writing critically interrogates systems of capitalism that produce the conditions for historic and continued labor migration from the Philippines. More importantly, Dr. Francisco’s body of work aims to recognize the multifaceted experiences of migration and transnationalism for people in the Filipina/x/o diaspora exploring their communities of care, political activism, conditions of low-wage work, and intergenerational dialogue. Her development of innovative methods such as kuwentuhan in her research explores Filipino cultural practices as valid ways of knowing and navigation.

Her second book project, Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building during Crisis, will be the inaugural book in the University of Washington Press, Critical Filipinx Studies series, set to be published in November 2024.

Dr. Francisco is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University.

A Transformative Look at the Lives of Filipina Care Workers and Their Mutual Aid Practices

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In Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building during Crisis (University of Washington Press, 2025), Valerie Francisco-Menchavez centers the perspectives of Filipino caregivers in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2013 to 2021, illuminating their transnational experiences and their strategies and practices to help each other navigate the crumbling U.S. healthcare system.

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The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in a Digital Age

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The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in a Digital Age (University of Illinois Press, Spring 2018) is anchored in the experiences and lives of Filipina migrants and their families in the Philippines and the main objective of this book is to make visible all of the forms, roles and definitions of social reproductive labor and care work required in the maintenance … Read more