Bayanihan during the COVID-19 pandemic: Grounding in community organizing and social movement praxis toward transformative social work

This article analyzes ways to transition toward transformative social work by drawing from the historical, social, political, and economic contexts of Filipino migrant workers and their organizing praxis during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper provides an overview of how the inequitable impacts on migrant and racialized populations by systems shaped around neoliberalism and racial capitalism only intensified the vulnerable conditions that Filipino migrants faced during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Mutual aid networks burgeoned as a response to systemic failures and the need for communities themselves to provide basic needs, combat isolation, and advocate for systemic change. These networks build from existing forms of solidarity and support that communities often excluded from dominant discourses already have in place. These communities continually revitalize forms of collective action through cultural and local knowledge systems and histories of resistance, such as the Filipino notion of Bayanihan. The authors critically reflect on their participation in two mutual aid and community organizing initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic drawing from Filipino epistemologies of Bayanihan and research on mutual aid, critical social work, community organizing, and social movements. Through these reflections, the authors unveil some of the practices and epistemological orientations that may help guide the profession toward its transformation by learning from community organizing and social movement praxis.