Resisting and Reimagining: Critical Decolonial Praxis in Filipinx American Health and Social Work

This roundtable brings together scholars, practitioners, and students engaging with critical and decolonial frameworks to reimagine health and wellness in the context of Filipino and Filipinx American communities. Our collective work confronts how social work and public health have historically been shaped by Western epistemologies and settler colonial logics, obscuring the deep entanglements of empire, migration, and racial capitalism in shaping health outcomes. This conversation foregrounds knowledge systems, community values, and structural analyses that challenge these dominant frameworks.

Our participants offer multiple, intersecting perspectives. La Torre will present empirical research using kuwentuhan (storytelling) as method, articulating an Indigenist decolonial framework, or Halo-Halo Epistemology (HHE) to describe Filipinx Americans’ intellectual traditions and intergenerational cultural knowledge, demonstrating enduring agency and discernment in the context of colonialism. Sabado-Liwag will discuss community-based participatory research (CBPR) and decolonizing methods of data collection across various projects in the context of health research. Bacong will share insights applying critical race theory and anti-racist praxis to inform anti-colonial methodologies, particularly within quantitative and statistical approaches to data analysis, drawing on expertise in disaggregating quantitative data among Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Multiracial communities, including Filipinx/a/o individuals. Sangalang will share experiences drawing on participatory methods and decolonial framings in community-based research to understand health and well-being for Filipinx American and Southeast Asian communities, highlighting the importance of relationality and accountability throughout the research process. Finally, Alejandro, Contreras, and Dulay will discuss their research capstone project examining the concept of kapwa (shared identity) and its integration in professional practices among Filipino American social workers, exploring how cultural values can inform mental health interventions. Through these points of entry, we aim to create a more expansive space through which decolonial and critical approaches can reshape research, practice, and policy in social work, public health, and other applied professional fields.

Although social work and public health share common commitments to justice and equity with Asian American Studies, there are few opportunities to examine the tensions that arise when adopting critical and decolonial frameworks within practice-based professions. This roundtable will consider how scholars and practitioners are engaging these approaches to transform both scholarship and practice. A central component of this roundtable is aimed at creating space for dialogue among those with a shared commitment to navigating epistemological tensions (between Western and Indigenous or community-based ways of knowing) while remaining accountable to those most impacted by social and health inequities that are produced and sustained through the enduring legacies of colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and empire.