Women Migrant Workers

This volume makes the case for the fair treatment of female migrant workers from the global South who are employed in wealthy liberal democracies as care workers, domestic workers, home health workers, and farm workers. An international panel of contributors provide analyses of the ethical, political, and legal harms suffered by female migrant workers, based on empirical data and case studies, along with original and sophisticated analyses of the complex of systemic, structural factors responsible for the harms experienced by women migrant workers. The book also proposes realistic and original solutions to the problem of the unjust treatment of women migrant workers, such as social security systems that are transnational and tailored to meet the particular needs of different groups of international migrant workers.

This volume makes the case for the fair treatment of female migrant workers from the global South who are employed in wealthy liberal democracies as care workers, domestic workers, home health workers, and farm workers. An international panel of contributors provide analyses of the ethical, political, and legal harms suffered by female migrant workers, based on empirical data and case studies, along with original and sophisticated analyses of the complex of systemic, structural factors responsible for the harms experienced by women migrant workers. The book also proposes realistic and original solutions to the problem of the unjust treatment of women migrant workers, such as social security systems that are transnational and tailored to meet the particular needs of different groups of international migrant workers.

Migrant Ecologies investigates the ways in which Zheng Xiaoqiong’s poetry exposes the entanglements of migrant ecologies embedded within local and global networks of capital and labor. The author contends that women migrant workers in particular, as portrayed in Zheng’s poems, are the visible manifestation of the interconnections between the so-called “factories of the world” and slum villages-in-the-city, between urban development and rural decline, and between the local environmental degradation and the global market. By adopting an ecological approach to Zheng’s poems about women migrant workers in China, the author explores what Donna Haraway calls “webbed ecologies” (49). The concept of “ecologies” serves to enhance not only the layered, complex interconnections underlying women migrant workers’ plight and environmental degradation in China, but also the emergence and transformation of migrant spaces, subjects, activism, and networks resulting in part from globalization.

Women’s labour migration is an important aspect of labour mobility and can be a crucial source of empowerment for women with women migrant workers making vital socio-economic contributions to their families and communities. This book is the outcome of the seminar sponsored by the NCW, New Delhi where 31 papers were presented, out of which 16 papers have been selected for this volume. This book throws light on the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on women migrant workers, gendered sensitive migration and integration policies, adult migrants’ education: current challenges from a gender sensitive perspective, working life, social life and integration from a gender sensitive perspective, gendered norms and roles in migratory contexts, gender-based violence and migration, representations and constructions of migrant masculinities and femininities. This book will be useful to students, research scholars, teachers and policy makers.

Migrant women across Asia disproportionately work in precarious, insecure, and informal employment sectors that are subject to few regulations, pay low wages, and expose women to harm, of which domestic work is among the most prevalent. This book uses the cases of the Philippines and Sri Lanka to develop a comprehensive, intersectional, rights-based approach to better protect women migrant domestic workers against exploitation. As accounts of exploitation, gender-based violence, torture, and death among migrant domestic workers increase, the recognition and defence of their human and labour rights is an urgent necessity. The Philippines and Sri Lanka are two of the leading labour-sending states of women domestic workers in Asia, and their economies have become increasingly dependent on the remittances they send back home. Drawing on extensive original research this book argues that these two sending states are guilty of structural violence by sustaining a network of institutions, policies and practices, which serve to systematically disadvantage and discriminate against women migrant domestic workers. The research covers the entire migration process, from pre-departure, through to overseas employment, followed by return and reintegration. This book’s innovative application of structural violence theory as a way to investigate the role of state institutions in labour-sending countries in the Global South will be of interest to researchers from across the fields of migration studies, gender studies, human rights law, and Asian Studies.

To date, most research on immigrant women and labor forces has focused on the participation of immigrant women on formal labor markets. In this study, contributors focus on informal economies such as health care, domestic work, street vending, and the garment industry, where displaced and undocumented women are more likely to work. Because such informal labor markets are unregulated, many of these workers face abusive working conditions that are not reported for fear of job loss or deportation. In examining the complex dynamics of how immigrant women navigate political and economic uncertainties, this collection highlights the important role of citizenship status in defining immigrant women's opportunities, wages, and labor conditions. Contributors are Pallavi Banerjee, Grace Chang, Margaret M. Chin, Jennifer Jihye Chun, Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, Emir Estrada, Lucy Fisher, Nilda Flores-González, Ruth Gomberg-Munoz, Anna Romina Guevarra, Shobha Hamal Gurung, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, María de la Luz Ibarra, Miliann Kang, George Lipsitz, Lolita Andrada Lledo, Lorena Muñoz, Bandana Purkayastha, Mary Romero, Young Shin, Michelle Téllez, and Maura Toro-Morn.

This volume is focused on Asian women who migrate either globally or across the Asian continent or within their respective countries in order to seek work. The contributors cover a broad terrain of issues including the changing gender composition of migration streams; the motivations of individual migrants; the different outcomes of male and female migration; and discernible patterns in the migration of women.

Millions of female migrants experience various forms of exploitative and unsafe conditions when migrating for employment and income generation, both in countries of origin and in destination countries. Vulnerabilities increased further due to the Covid-19 pandemic, causing income and job losses, entrapment in countries of destination without financial or social support and stigmatization upon return. One of the key migration routes travelled by millions of migrants is from South Asia to the Middle East. We examine this migration route for low-skilled female migrant workers highlighting the impacts of interventions along the migration pathway to determine the effectiveness of alternative mechanisms for reducing forced labour and trafficking. We draw lessons from the literature as well as from interviews with key informants in the field, including academics, development partners, NGO workers, and policymakers, to identify promising interventions that successfully reduce the vulnerability of women migrants. We find that, while Covid-19 has increased migrant vulnerability, it has also exposed the current system’s violations in facilitating trafficking and exacerbating poor working conditions.

Hong Kong is a meeting place for migrant domestic workers, traders, refugees, asylum seekers, tourists, businessmen, and local residents. In Born Out of Place, Nicole Constable looks at the experiences of Indonesian and Filipina women in this Asian world city. Giving voice to the stories of these migrant mothers, their South Asian, African, Chinese, and Western expatriate partners, and their Hong Kong–born babies, Constable raises a serious question: Do we regard migrants as people, or just as temporary workers? This accessible ethnography provides insight into global problems of mobility, family, and citizenship and points to the consequences, creative responses, melodramas, and tragedies of labor and migration policies.

Based on insights from Filipina experiences of domestic work in Paris and Hong Kong, this volume breaks through the polarized thinking and migration-centric policy action on the protection of migrant women domestic workers from abuse to link migrants' rights and victimization with livelihood, migration and development. The book contextualizes agency and rights in the workers' capability to secure a livelihood in the global political economy and is instrumental in making the problem of migrant women workers' empowerment both a migration and development agenda. The volume is essential reading for social scientists, bureaucrats and non-governmental political activists interested in the protection of the rights and livelihoods of migrants. It will also appeal to migration and feminist scholars who have yet to adopt the contribution of critical development studies in the analysis of low-skilled female labour migration.