Founded in 2020 by Camille Esquivel, a second generation Filipinx-Canadian and first generation architect-planner, SQVL is a NY-based think tank with a mission of making architecture, research, and the planning process accessible to communities who need them the most through technical and engagement services.
portraits of care
COVID-19 and the Filipinx Diaspora of Care
Portraits of Care is a visual research project that builds on the data collected by the digital memorial created and managed by transnational feminist organization AF3IRM, Kanlungan (meaning shelter or resting place in Tagalog), which tracks the deaths of transnational Filipinx healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By cross-referencing local news reports of fallen Filipinx healthcare workers across the country with obituaries, public GoFundMes, social media advocacy, and reports from national organizations like National Nurse’s United, this project aims to illustrate the shared grievances, experiences and nuanced stories behind why almost half of the registered nurses of color who have died were Filipinx, despite making up only 4% of nurses in the United States.
This work acknowledges the exceptional and continued contribution of the Filipinx diaspora to “care” for the US and its inhabitants that began during America’s occupation and colonization of the Philippine archipelago in 1898. The historic relationship between the Philippine islands and the US which trained thousands of Filipinx nationals in American-established hospitals continues to bring thousands of individuals to immigrate to the US to work in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and even live or care for individuals in-home; a history that is further detailed and done justice by scholars like Catherine Cezina Choy in Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (2003).
With the Center for Spatial Research’s recommendation of a New Deal for Public Health that identifies where a “Community Health Corps” of one million community health workers (CHWs) were needed at the height of the pandemic, this research is careful and critical of the implications that the deployment of a “corps” has to address a pandemic that Filipinxs are describing as “similar to times of war”.
By sharing the stories of the Filipinx healthcare workers who died during the 365 days since the pandemic started on March 14, this research aims to amplify the concerns that families, friends and workplaces shared in order to move towards a space of collective healing and responsibility for the transnational Filipinx community seeking justice for these fallen frontline workers.
Portraits of Care (2021)
