Through Photography, Migrant Filipina Care Workers Share Their Hopes and Fears While Working During COVID-19

In this article, journalist Celina Gallardo interviews York University professor Ethel Tungohan, who organized the “Matatag: Filipina Care Workers During COVID-19” photo series to address the underrepresentation of Filipina care workers in dominant COVID-19 essential worker narratives. Seventy-eight migrant Filipina nurses, personal support workers, and caregivers contributed thirty printed photographs between July 2020 and August 2021 and participated in kwentuhan, or Filipino storytelling sessions. The series and its accompanying petition demand formal recognition of the struggles these workers face, including burnout, employment precarity, and systemic neglect within Canada’s healthcare system. By combining visual imagery with storytelling, the project produces a rich, embodied account of Filipina care workers’ hopes and fears, challenging the common romanticization of resilience and revealing the lived realities behind policy failures.

Tungohan critiques Canadian labor and immigration policies that glorify Filipina health professionals while avoiding meaningful reforms to support them. Through this participatory visual storytelling approach, the “Matatag” series empowers its subjects to articulate their experiences on their own terms, foregrounding intersectional issues of labor, race, and migration. This project contributes a vital visual and narrative dimension to your COVID-19 storytelling databank by centering marginalized voices and expanding the modes of pandemic testimony beyond traditional journalistic or literary forms. It documents how visual storytelling can document pandemic trauma and resistance while advocating for social justice in healthcare.