Call for Papers

Call for Papers

The Contours of Filipino Social Work Praxis in the Canadian Diaspora (and Elsewhere) Workshop

Tentative Dates: February 6-8, 2025 (online)


Since the 2017 formation of the Filipino-Canadian Social and Community Workers Network (FCSCWN, https://filcanscw.ca/), there has been a growing number of Filipino and Filipino Canadian social work scholars entering into graduate studies as well as tenure-track faculty positions. The Contours of Filipino Social Work Praxis in the Canadian Diaspora (and Elsewhere) Workshop offers a generative and supportive process to workshop papers-in-progress on the topic of Filipino-Canadian and Filipino diasporic social work. We encourage works that are interdisciplinary in nature. We invite scholars and practitioners in all stages of their academic careers, including undergraduate and graduate student scholars, as well as community-based researchers and organizers.


The key questions driving this gathering are, 

  1. How do we foreground Filipino epistemologies, lived experiences, and knowledge to inform social work theory, policy and practice?

  2. In what ways do we push and transgress the boundaries to include and foreground critical, feminist, and decolonizing frameworks?

  3. How can our process of building Filipino epistemologies contribute to the decolonizing work of Indigenous, Black, Queer, and other racialized and marginalized scholarship and activism in ways that are more reflexive, mutual, and reciprocal?


Participants are expected to circulate a portion of their draft (between 5-10 pages, double spaced) one month in advance; this is for panel presenters and discussants to read and offer feedback to each writer. Participants will then present their papers to a closed number of peers for 20 minutes, in panel format during the workshop. 


Each participant will be offered a small honorarium for their participation. A select number of papers will be invited or encouraged to join our special issue journal and/or co-edited book.


Participants are invited to address one of two of the following themes:


THEME 1: Strengthening the transnational links between the Philippines, Canada, and elsewhere

  • Expanding the boundaries of social work theories and epistemologies

  • Theorizing Filipino diasporas for social work

  • Methodological explorations


THEME 2: Combatting in/visibility in Canadian social work

  • Highlighting current and urgent realities for Filipino-Canadian social work practice

  • Documenting practice models and learnings from critical clinical and community work for Filipino clients/communities/populations

  • Genealogies of practice

  • Conceptualizing future directions, hopes and imaginations for Filipino-Canadian social work


THEME 3: Bridging theory, practice, and policy

  • Filipino health and wellbeing

  • Feminist theorizing from lived experience

  • Incorporating practice experience and promising practices into theorizing

  • Anti-racist, anti-colonial, and decolonizing efforts in practice

  • Navigating critical orientations within our social work values and/or our new Code of Ethics


We invite abstract submissions (500 words maximum, excluding references) and a short 50-100 word biographical statement by Sunday, September 29, 2024 to [email protected]. 


Contact information

Monica Batac, [email protected]

Fritz Pino, [email protected]

Ilyan Ferrer, [email protected]