ABSTRACT
It is interesting to listen to my long-time research collaborators at the Kalayaan Centre in Vancouver speak of the research partnerships that they have refused.1
There was the case of the young playwright who ‘woke up last week and realised that he was Filipino’. He was artist-in-residence at a local theatre, with the resources to train four writers to create a play on the experiences of Filipino migrant domestic workers and mail order brides. He came to the Centre asking for insight into these experiences, but was lukewarm to the possibility that there are youth at the Centre worth training as writers. They turned down the collaboration. In Charlene Sayo’s words, ‘You’re going to take our stories and that’s it? …It’s very personal for us, to have somebody who will write our stories but not really listen to us. Or take the process seriously.’ In another case, a researcher studying violence against women approached the Kalayaan Centre for access to Filipino women to interview. Again, the collaboration was refused. ‘For us’, says Cecilia Diocson, ‘there was no collaboration anyway, because collaboration means that we need to sit down and formulate what kind of project we really want to do: what kind of research? That is what we call collaboration’ (Box 12.1).
