Judges of the New South Wales Premier's General History Prize
In The Filipino Migration Experience, Mina Roces enticingly conjures up the life worlds of the immense transnational Filipino diaspora, artfully drawing together oral testimony, archival sources, memoirs and her personal experience. Roces combines historical narrative with sociological insight, showing how Filipinos ventured into the wider world and adapted to their new, often trying, situations — sometimes languishing, sometimes thriving. This is multi-sited, comparative history at its best, where social history meets human geography. A work that superbly balances shrewdness, empathy and generosity, The Filipino Migration Experience is a history of our present, in that it helps us see current patterns of social life in a new light, illuminating their full complexity. In composing this model of transnational history, Roces gives voice to multiple migrant communities, thereby transforming our understanding of how we move about and resettle—indeed, of how we globalise, and how we might do better.
Robyn Magalit Rodriguez
The Filipino Migration Experience deftly gives voice to Filipino migrants themselves while tracing Filipino migration that spans almost half a century.
Denise Cruz
Mina Roces significantly alters the portrait of global Filipino migration and offers a new perspective on migrants' influence that extends beyond labor. The Filipino Migration Experience documents and demonstrates how migrants have also become agents of change in varied arenas—as consumers, historians, activists, and philanthropists.
