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, 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 where she is committed to teaching, organizing and conducting research on the topics of Filipina migration, transnational lives, family-making in the United States and in the Philippines. Her first book entitled, The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age, explores the dynamics of gender and technology of care work and intimacy in Filipino transnational families in the Philippines and the U.S. Through an examination of neoliberal immigration policies and market forces, Francisco contextualizes the shifts in the long-standing transnational family formation in the Philippines. The Labor of Care won an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award competition for Outstanding Achievement in the Social Sciences. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at City University of New York, The Graduate Center.
