Filipino Healthcare Workers’ Narratives on Work and Care in Houston

• In Event: Asia and Asian American Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 7: Asia and Asian America Section Roundtable - Health and Medicine

Abstract

This study explores the intersectionality of care, gender, and ethnicity at the workplace by focusing on Filipino healthcare workers’ lived experiences in Houston, Texas. Since WW2, the American healthcare industry has faced a nursing shortage in the healthcare industry, and this gap has largely been filled by the foreign-educated workforce. Historically, Filipinos were the highest proportion of such workers, and they played a crucial role as frontline care providers; nevertheless, they regularly experienced racial and gender disparities and microaggressions as an immigrant population. During the COVID pandemic, 1/3 of the nurses who sacrificed their lives were Filipinos working in the critical care units, while the Filipino community was exposed to anti-Asian hate crimes during that time. Despite this stark reality, Filipino nurses’ lived experience is not only culturally underrepresented but also academically understudied; there is not much literature that asks how they understand themselves, based on their collective narratives and shared culture. In this study, I situate culture as a “tool” that allows people to tell others about their stories in everyday experiences, instead of understanding culture as “motivation,” which is assumed to be given and internalized. My primary research question is: How do Filipina healthcare workers understand the meaning of nursing and caring? Additionally, I ask: Does their understanding overlap with their racial/ethnic identities? How does the American healthcare industry shape the lives of female immigrants?

Author

• Soyoon Lee, Rice University