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At one level, labor activism offers migrants practical means of challenging the hardships they experience in the workplace. Yet workers’ material assertions and demands often meet with only partial success (and not always that). The attractions of labor activism for participants, therefore, cannot be understood solely in terms of the movement’s overt political achievements. Rather, the labor movement and associated activities represent compelling avenues through which participants can contest and rework broader experiences of marginalization (as workers, as migrants, and as women). In this analysis I examine some ways in which the labor activism of migrant women workers takes shape in relation to their understandings and reimagining of gendered norms and their claims to new forms of spatial practice and autonomy.

For our first film showing, Prof. Nick Tiongson chooses “Jay”. Jay is　an independent film that illustrates how media, in this case　television, manipulate reality in order to improve ratings. A gay　reporter named Jay covers the gruesome murder of a gay school　teacher, also named Jay, and makes a spectacle of the grief of Jay’s　family for a TV reality show.

Pasion’s first full-length feature was the five-man jury’s unanimous　choice for the Best Film award in the 2008 Cinemalaya Independent Film　competition because of “ its sheer originality, its energetic　storytelling, its mastery of digital technology in order to tell a　story that is trenchant commentary on the technology itself, and its　very revealing take on the media and the uses and abuses of the　truth.” It also won the Cinemalaya Best Actor award for Baron Geisler　and Best Editing for Francis Pasion, Kate Sarraon and Chuck Gutierrez.　Later it won the Special Jury Prize at the Bangkok International　Festival, the Audience award in the Black Movie Film Festival in　Geneva, Switzerland and a Special Mention award at the Bahamas　Filmfest.　

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