Filipino migration in Europe remains underexplored in academic debates, which are often dominated by North-american and Asian perspectives. This special issue of Asian and pacific migration journal seeks to rethink transnationalism, care economies, and the politics of everyday life through the lens of Filipino trajectories in Europe. We invite empirically grounded and theoretically engaged contributions addressing transnational families, gendered and racialized care regimes, religious solidarities, precarious legal statuses, as well as forms of engagement and everyday resistance. 

La migration philippine en Europe reste encore peu étudiée dans les débats académiques, souvent dominés par les perspectives nord-américaines et asiatiques. Ce numéro spécial de la revue Asian and pacific migration propose de repenser le transnationalisme, les économies du care et la politique du quotidien à travers le prisme des trajectoires philippines en Europe. Nous invitons des contributions empiriquement fondées et théoriquement engagées, portant sur les familles transnationales, les régimes de care genrés et racialisés, les solidarités religieuses, les statuts juridiques précaires ainsi que les formes d’engagement et de résistance au quotidien.

Guest editor

Davi de Carvalho Malheiros — Chercheur associé (Université de Strasbourg)

Argument

Filipino migration has long been a central theme in global migration studies, with a rich body of scholarship focusing on North America (Espiritu, 2003; Rodriguez, 2010), the Middle East (Tyner, 2004; Constable, 2007), and East and Southeast Asia (Parreñas, 2001; Lan, 2006). Yet, the European dimension of the Filipino diaspora remains marginal in academic debates. This special issue seeks to address this lacuna by exploring Filipino migration in Europe not as an exceptional or minor case, but as a vantage point for rethinking broader frameworks in migration, transnationalism, and care.

Filipino migration to Europe is shaped by specific configurations: it is predominantly female, linked to care and domestic labor markets, and intertwined with fragmented legal regimes and religious solidarities. The experience of Filipino migrants in Europe thus reveals how gender, race, religion, labor, and legality intersect in ways that deserve focused analytical attention (Fresnoza-Flot & Shinozaki, 2017). These dynamics raise new questions about how transnational lives are sustained or interrupted across welfare states under strain, how migrants build community and belonging in the absence of institutional recognition, and how everyday strategies of resilience challenge conventional notions of resistance and agency (Bastia & Piper, 2021; Yeoh & Huang, 2010).

By centering Europe in the analysis, this issue contributes to a more multidimensional understanding of the Filipino diaspora and opens up space to investigate how migrants navigate care economies, generate new social formations, and enact political subjectivities across constrained and unequal landscapes. The issue calls for empirically grounded, theoretically engaged contributions that shed light on the situated practices, moral economies, and affective infrastructures that sustain Filipino migrant lives in contemporary Europe.

We invite submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

1.  Transnational Family and Work Trajectories: How Filipino migrants in Europe navigate professional aspirations, family responsibilities, and mobility across borders.

2.  Gendered and Racialized Care Regimes: Examining the roles Filipino migrants play in domestic and care work and how they experience structural inequalities.

3.  Religious Practices and Networks: Exploring both formal and informal religious solidarities, faith-based gatherings, and their role in shaping community and resilience.

4.  Legal Status and Precarity: Investigating the effects of migration regimes, regularization processes, and constraints on intra-European mobility.

5.  Transnational Engagements: Including long-distance parenting, remittances, and diaspora-building initiatives.

6.  Everyday Resistance and Agency: Focusing on informal strategies, adaptive practices, and non-heroic forms of political subjectivation.

Submission Guidelines

This call for papers aims to foster an interdisciplinary and comparative dialogue on Filipino migration in Europe. We welcome original contributions based on ethnographic or mixedmethods research from scholars in migration studies, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, geography, and related fields.

Papers should be written in English and range from 7,000 to 9,000 words. Submissions will undergo double-blind peer review and must follow the journal’s guidelines.

Key Dates

• 15 December 2025 – Submit a 250-word abstract including title, author name, institutional affiliation, and contact information.

• 15 February 2026 – Full draft submission for peer review.
• June 2026 – Deadline for revised manuscripts after peer review.
• Late 2026 – Tentative publication of the special issue.

For further inquiries and to submit your abstract, please contact: Davi de Carvalho Malheiros Guest Editor davi.decarvalho@unistra.fr  

Cited literature

Bastia, T., & Piper, N. (Eds.). (2021). Migration and Inequality. Routledge.

Constable, N. (2007). Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers. Cornell University Press.

Espiritu, Y. L. (2003). Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries. University of California Press.

Fresnoza-Flot, A., & Shinozaki, K. (2017). “Transnational Perspectives on Migration: The Roles of Gender and Social Class.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(3), 363– 376.

Lan, P.-C. (2006). Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan. Duke University Press.

Parreñas, R. S. (2001). Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work. Stanford University Press.

Rodriguez, R. M. (2010). Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World. University of Minnesota Press.

Tyner, J. A. (2004). Made in the Philippines: Gendered Discourses and the Making of Migrants. Routledge.

Yeoh, B. S. A., & Huang, S. (2010). “Transnational Domestic Workers and the Negotiation of Mobility.” Mobilities, 5(2), 219–236.