Families Apart: Migrant Mothers and the Conflicts of Labor and Love

In the introductory chapter, the author critically self-reflects on her longterm collaboration with the Philippine Women's Centre (PWC) without which, she concedes, the pages of this book would have been blank. [Geraldine Pratt] clarifies that she moves between the "I" as a singular white academic voice and the unstable "we" of various research collaborations. Importantly, she states that the book is not an attempt "to speak for but to bring domestic workers and their children more fully into the public debate about the justice of a temporary-worker program to which the Canadian state is firmly committed." (xxi) In Chapter 4, Pratt notes that years of research had not resulted in any discernable policy changes around the lcp, so she/they jumped at an opportunity offered by two theatre artists to develop a "testimonial play" using the research transcripts. The play, which is "episodic and fragmented with a multiplicity of entry points," (118) has been a way to draw a wider public into the debate around the lcp and care-work in Canada. With the inclusion of ten photos, Pratt describes the various scenes of this unique play and the audiences' responses to it. She concludes that documentary theatre can "instantiate performativity epistemologies" (131) and generate critical debate.