Trafficking of women, chasing away our own demons and women’s rights

By Igor Bosc

 

We have all heard the shocking accounts of women seeking jobs, who are subsequently tricked and trapped into sexual slavery, sweatshops, domestic bondage and other forms of abuse.  While human trafficking is of enormous concern, perhaps, on this day that recognises the rights of women, we need to think about whether the way we are framing the problem of “trafficking in women and girls” fuels further or poses different problems for aspiring female migrants.

Might there be something insidious about what these accounts of trafficking in women say and do not say?

The discourse that warns us about the risks related to trafficking starts at home with stories of the little red riding hood, Sita and the laxman rekha, or women advised to stay at home and avoid engaging with “non muhrams” if they do venture outside. A similar discourse emerges in popular culture. For instance blockbuster movies show villains and creeps kidnapping and abusing women seeking to earn a living. Again the same discourse emerges in media: news services and newspapers routinely feature stories of women who were pimped into prostitution, domestic workers who were beaten, raped or killed. Police and politicians report to the media their latest crack downs on human traffickers. Aid agencies issue press releases highlighting the staggering numbers of women who are regularly trafficked across the globe.

Many narratives about human trafficking have something in common. In a closer reading, a common implicit message appears to be that women who venture out are treading into a dangerous world where they risk violence or sexual abuse. While in some cases, these reports may be true, these tales or the way the issue is framed rarely give a full and complete picture of female migration. For example, the narratives rarely delve into why women might leave their homes (e.g., devastating poverty, hopes for a better future, restrictions or even violence at home). These perspectives seldom explain what motivates middlemen and employers to seek out and employ them. Violence and sex is brought to the fore while making a living and employment are glossed over. Patriarchal archetypes seem to frame many perceptions.    

We may think we’re familiar with hearing about this violence and that we therefore know how to address it, but do we? Violent images and text that we remember from such accounts can have powerful lasting effects on the way we view the world and what we chose to do about it. It stokes visceral fears of what might happen and it fuels search for protection—maybe ‘over-protection’. Accounts of violence shape our feelings, our behaviours and the moral discourse of how to respond to the perceptions of vulnerabilities of women who seek to improve their lives and the lives of their families.

Imagine a different way of framing the discourse: how about approaching trafficking in women by addressing women’s need for employment, focusing on issues such as domestic violence, women’s rights, gender equity, unemployment and under-employment of women in home communities, by looking for solutions to these problems in both source communities as well as destination areas. While such reporting does exist, more of it is necessary.

Unfortunately a lot of the efforts to combat trafficking of women are in fact rooted in deep patriarchal biases. According to research by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Global Alliance against Trafficking of Women (GAATW), bans on women migrating actually make it more difficult for women to seek a living—and do not necessarily reduce their risk of abuse. Governments have used bans on women migrating in the belief that this will protect them and increase their safety. However in a recent policy brief for Governments in South Asia, the ILO in fact recommends measures to uphold the human rights of migrant women, emphasizing women’s right to mobility to reduce their vulnerability to human trafficking. Other policies that restrict women’s mobility include sponsorship policies inciting employers to limit the mobility of migrant domestic workers outside their homes. On this day when we celebrate women, it is important to confront many of the social and gender stereotypes about efforts to combat trafficking of women and reframe these dialogues in terms of women’s rights to gender equitable home lives, mobility and employment.

Women who work with the ILO in the Work in Freedom Programme

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Igor Bosc is Chief Technical Adviser at the International Labour Organization (ILO) working on the Work in Freedom Programme - a UK Aid funded partnership initiative to find effective ways of preventing trafficking of women in South Asia and the Middle East. See also his questions and thoughts on the framing of the human trafficking discourse, Why framing the discourse on human trafficking is important - some thoughts.

The Protection of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East and Asia Pacific

By: Endang Sugiyarto

Millions of labour migrants from developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka try to escape poverty and a lack of job opportunities at home by working abroad. Many end up in Middle Eastern destinations such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Others go to Asia Pacific countries including Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Brunei Darussalam and Japan. In addition to getting jobs for themselves, they send money home to help their families survive day-to-day life, to finance education and healthcare and to invest in a variety of ways. Thus they contribute to the economies of both the destination countries and their countries of origin which benefit from regular inflows of remittances. As a result, migration has become increasingly important to migrants and their families and to sending and host countries.

Many of the migrants work as domestic workers, a sector that is dominated by women due to the nature of the work and by the demands of the receiving countries. Many of them have low educational levels and insufficient skills to carry out the work expected by the employers. The lack of appropriate good quality training makes the matter worse. On top of these they face additional challenges such as different languages, cultures, laws, common practice, and other day-to-day aspects of life in the home of their employers.

The potential pitfalls of such working arrangements are obvious. It is common for a domestic worker to accidently destroy clothes while doing laundry and/or ironing due to a lack of training. The costs associated with such accidents can be high. If the atmosphere in the house is calm the consequences of mishaps can be minimal. But in a home that is hectic and full of tensions a small accident can easily flare up into an incident of abusive domestic violence. And if such incidents are repeated the situation can turn into one of habitual domestic abuse that is worsened by its location inside the home where there can be no third party and/or community scrutiny.

Moreover, the nature of the work that must be done in the employer’s property and the fact that the domestic worker has to live there too, leads to extended working hours and puts the worker in a very vulnerable situation. It is even worse when incidents happen in large secured houses or private apartments which offer no opportunities for the workers to interact with others. Reports of domestic workers being treated like slaves and suffering physical and sexual abuse sometimes conclude with them suffering permanent injuries, depression and even death.

Newspaper reports of a series of incidents involving Indonesian migrant domestic workers in the Middle East and Asia Pacific give a shocking insight into the severity of some of the abuse:

·         In 2004, Nirmala Bonat, working in Malaysia, suffered burns to her chest and back from a hot iron and was scalded after boiling water was poured over her body;

·         In 2005, Nur Miyati, working in Saudi Arabia, had to undergo the amputation of a body part due to infection caused by physical abuse;

·         In 2007, Ceryati, working in Malaysia, was forced to escape through a window of the 15th floor apartment of her employer because she could no longer tolerate the daily physical abuse she was subjected to. Almost her whole body was injured, in particular her forehead was swollen, and her neck and hands badly injured;

·         In 2009, Siti Hajar, working in Malaysia, endured abuse  in the form of beatings and by having boiling water poured on her. She had been with her employer for 34 months but was unable to seek help from others until her escape from the house;

·         Wasiah binti Toha worked in Abu Dhabi in 2009 but received no salary for 8 months. She decided to return home with neither money nor help from the recruiting agency due to the beatings she had endured from the beginning of her employment;

·         Sumiati had to be hospitalised in Saudi Arabia in November 2010 after her employer cut her top lip because she complained about her workload;

·         Erwiana worked in Hong Kong for 8 months in 2013. She had been made to work for 21 hours per day, was kept hungry, and got beaten with a wooden hanger or anything else within the reach of her employer, who eventually fired her and forced her to return home with injuries to her face, hands and legs.

The above list only highlights those cases exposed by the national and international press. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Many more incidences go hidden or unrecorded.

Many domestic workers suffer verbal and physical abuse combined with poor working conditions. More needs to be done to protect them. Many labour exporting countries have signed agreements with receiving countries to guarantee respect for the rights of the migrant workers, but the implementation details must be worked out.

Domestic workers from Indonesia seem to be particularly vulnerable. The high incidence of abuse has led the Indonesian government to declare a moratorium and there is a plan to stop sending domestic workers by 2017. As part of this plan, the government is going create more job opportunities and to educate and train migrant workers to meet the skills requirements of the jobs, as well as to give them knowledge of law and human rights.

Will this be enough? The answer is of course not. First, there should be a bilateral agreement between the sending and receiving countries to guarantee the rights and protection of migrant workers. Second, there should be a practical framework that adopts a rights-based approach to labour migration, emphasising non-discrimination, gender equality, and equality of opportunity for migrant workers, regardless of their immigration status. Third, not only should the workers receive training to help them adapt to the employer’s culture but the employers also need a basic understanding of the culture of their workers to be able to create a common understanding.

Protection of migrant workers must be comprehensive, beginning in their home country prior to departure, continuing throughout the duration of their work in the destination country, and covering them until they return home. Governments of sending countries need to be pro-active, making regular inspections of workplaces and working conditions to ensure the welfare of their migrant workers. All migrants should be given access to their countries representatives, in particular the labour attaches. The discussion above, however, does not take into account migrants in irregular situations, of whom there is a significant number and on whom the adverse impact is even more severe. For them, a more holistic approach is needed, covering the whole migration system, push and pull factors, and the immigration system. Protection of all migrants must be ensured through formal, transparent, and managed migration.

Endang Sugiyarto is a doctoral candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

The impact of migrating for domestic work: The experience of Hawa and Adiata

By Collins Yeboah

 

In the migration literature, greater attention is paid to migrant workers than to the households they leave behind. I have come to the realisation, however, that to fully comprehend the impact of migrant domestic workers, in addition to understanding the problems associated with their work, it is essential to examine the changes they bring about for their households of origin.

 

I recently conducted field work for the 'Livelihood Strategies and Wellbeing of Migrants in Low-Paid and Insecure Occupations in Urban Ghana' project, part of the Migrating out of Poverty programme in West Africa. The research team tracked the origin households of migrants engaged in domestic and construction work in Accra via an earlier quantitative survey carried out in Tamale in Ghana's Northern Region. A selection was identified for the in-depth follow up discussions of the qualitative research.

 

We carried out the fieldwork during the scorching sun, dry winds, low humidity and dust of the harmattan season, arriving later than promised one night at the home of Hawa (46) in Walewale, a small town on the road between Bolgatanga and Tamale in Ghana’s Northern Region. Hawa sat behind her sewing machine with pieces of cloth she had cut earlier. She had already finished the two school uniforms brought by her customers that morning and looked tired after the day’s work.

 

Hawa used to be opposed to female migration because of its association with a high level of unwanted pregnancies. But her husband’s death left her alone with six children, in a region with few employment opportunities, so she had to allow her primary school educated daughter Adiata (24) to go to Accra to look for work. The decision to migrate was taken by both Hawa and her daughter. As Hawa noted: “We all decided one evening that she should go to Accra and look for job so she can support the rest of us here.”

 

Studies indicate that women migrant workers often remit a greater proportion of their earnings than low skilled men migrant workers and are often more stable and consistent remitters. Since leaving Walewale Adiata has remitted at least GHc 120 ($34.85) a month to her mother. Hawa said that her daughter sometimes also sends the family clothes and foodstuffs via friends travelling to Walewale. Hawa appears to be doing better than her neighbours. She and her children live in her late husband’s house. Its three rooms are roofed with zinc while the other homes in the neighbourhood are thatched. 

 

“Look at my roof… Hawa said, proudly pointing to her house...she continued “It was thatched previously before by husband died. The little money I receive from Adiata, my daughter in Accra was used to roof it. She has helped a lot. I want to build one house over there from the money she sends before she returns” (Hawa, Walewale).

 

Adiata is one of the many domestic workers in Ghana. Estimates from Ghana’s 2010 Population and Census data indicate that about 66,570 Ghanaians between the ages of 15-64 years are employed in this sector. They work in private homes outside their places of habitual residence. Often referred to as modern day slavery, their duties include cleaning, cooking, looking after children, trimming lawns, and driving cars. They usually lack familiar or community support mechanisms and are often exposed to poor wages, delayed or non-payment of wages, very long hours of work, and no break periods or rest days.

 

However, Adiata is one of the few domestic workers employed under better conditions. When she first arrived in Accra she had a difficult time and slept in a slum shack in Agbogloshi shared with four other female migrants. She became a Kayeyei - a form of manual employment carried out almost exclusively by females in Ghana involving the transportation of goods on their heads to and from markets - in Agbogloshie market. While in this role she met a woman who first became one of her regular customers, buying food stuffs from Adiata in the market. She later employed Adiata in her home as a domestic worker and Adiata now lives in her home. For Adiata, employment as a domestic worker is far better than the situation she found herself in when she first arrived in Accra.

 

Many studies portray the kind of work done by domestic workers as demeaning, dirty and exploitative. Yet as I listened to Hawa and other mothers like her, I realised that the story of Adiata, the domestic worker, provides a powerful illustration of migration as a means of moving out of poverty. Adiata has contributed to the upgrading of her family’s home and money she sends every month is used by her mother to cater for the needs of her other children. It is evident that migration has been pivotal in shaping the family’s lives. Like Adiata, most of the domestic workers from this region have become the breadwinners of their families left behind.

 

Collins Yeboah is Communications Officer at the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana

Indonesian migrant women: Present 'here' and 'there' via ICTs

By Lucia Zerna


Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Xyza Cruz Bacani 

In the image above, the boy on the right has his faced pressed against the glass. While we see his face clearly, the face of the photographer is hidden by the camera. Who is she?

Xyza Cruz Bacani is a Filipina domestic worker in Hong Kong whose passion for photography inspired her to buy a digital single reflex (DSLR) camera and photograph everyday life in the city. Since posting her black and white images online on Facebook, Bacani has gained international recognition. She currently has more than 7,000 likes on her page. Furthermore, she has recently secured a 2015 fellowship on the Magnum Foundation’s prestigious Human Rights programme, under which she will receive a scholarship that will strengthen her skills in visually documenting human rights. Bacani’s success exemplifies the ways in which migrant domestic workers utilize technology in order to pursue aspirations and connect with the outside world. While the majority of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in Southeast Asia do not achieve such visibility, many are just as active in using various types of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), such as cellphones.

From the results of the recently completed Migrating out of Poverty study on the ICT use of domestic workers in Singapore, it is apparent that use of such technologies form an integral aspect of the workers’ everyday lives. Handheld computing devices, particularly smartphones, are used by FDWs to establish a presence of both ‘here’ and ‘there’ through phone calls and short message services (SMS) to family members back home. The research found that eighty per cent of respondents in the study relied on SMS and regular phone calls to make contact with their family and friends in Indonesia.

Despite having to care for another woman’s children, FDWs also act as transnational mothers, keeping up with their own children’s wellbeing and education via ICTs. Furthermore, having a sustained line of communication is vital for preserving their mental health in environments that can be exploitive and isolating. As Rosita notes, “if I miss them I can SMS [or] Facebook. I feel happy and in high spirits.”

Additionally, the study shows that through ICTs Indonesian migrant women are able to access information on the global web. For example, Hera, a domestic worker living in Singapore, says: “[I] know more about life here… [About] Indonesian maids or the problems they have. They always upload stuff on Facebook.”

The use of ICTs is one lens through which we can see how power relations are shaped and renegotiated between the employer and domestic worker. As the study found, while ICTs help facilitate vital modes of communication for domestic workers, such devices are not readily accessible to all. Directly related to access are issues of trust, usage restrictions, and surveillance. Many domestic workers only receive a handheld device from their employer after a few years of service. Even then, FDWs are very aware of when and where they use their phones.

Yani, a 42 year-old divorcee, explains: “I know the limitation[s], I know when is the working hours and when is the time to rest. When I am eating or resting, I will call.”

Employers also monitor and curtail FDWs’ access to communication devices. Within the household they hold the password to the Wi-Fi network and may not share it with their FDW. Additionally, FDWs who do not have a phone are dependent on their employer’s devices to contact family back home. In such instances the FDW might limit herself to calling family on specific days and talking for a certain length of time.

It is clear from the research that access to and use of ICTs influence the daily routines of FDWs in Singapore in multifaceted ways. ICTs facilitate new transnational spaces where FDWs can maintain relationships with family back home. Smartphones and similar devices have become vital resources that sustain personal relationships and, in the case of Xyza Cruz Bacani, have been used as platforms for creativity and public recognition. ICTs have provided a site for her and other domestic workers to shape new trajectories and go beyond a singularizing identity of FDW. 

Lucia Zerner is currently an undergraduate spending her spring semester studying abroad in Singapore. She is particularly interested in topics related to labour migration and has most recently conducted an independent study on returned Tamil migrant workers to Madurai, India. 

Why framing the discourse on human trafficking is important - some thoughts

By Igor Bosc

 

When media and experts talk about human trafficking, attention immediately zooms in on what happens to people when and after they leave their homes. You have heard variations of the stories in the media: it’s usually about women or children and occasionally men in sweat shops. They are tricked and trapped, sent abroad, sexually exploited or sold into slavery. These are tragic stories. But have you ever heard about the stories of those very men, women and children before they left their homes? What happened to them? Why were they willing to leave their homes often knowing about the perils ahead? That’s something we don’t hear about but does need equal attention. Here’s why:

1. A narrow focus on human trafficking can mislead policy makers and activists into believing that tackling human traffickers and protecting migrants will root out the problem. The crude reality is that as long as wages are higher in some places and lower in areas afflicted by poverty, conflict or disasters, people will migrate. The more wages differ between source and destination areas, the more migration will occur and increase incidences of human trafficking. In other words, to understand human trafficking one has to look into labour market dynamics and the social, economic and gender factors that are prompting people to go on the move.
 
2. Another reason why a holistic understanding of human trafficking is necessary is that media portrayals are almost never based on factually verifiable trends. They tend to be based on specific events. The media has its own incentives to broadcast information that grabs attention. Law enforcement have their own incentives to report the latest police raids or border patrols. And aid agencies have their accountability incentives to report on the work they do to tackle human trafficking. Unbalanced media information on human trafficking can easily mislead audiences into perceptions of the problem that are inaccurate.
 
3. The third reason why a holistic understanding of human trafficking is necessary, is that a narrow understanding of human trafficking can legitimise policies and practices that actually harm migrants. Social and gender stereotypes employed by individuals and institutions that work to combat trafficking can lead to the isolation of women and children in shelters and the abuse of migrants particularly from the poorest sections of society, including those who are women, children and discriminated minorities. 

So the next time you hear about a human trafficking story, ask yourself the questions that are usually not asked about the people in those stories. What about making ends meet when others in the family can’t? What about the miserably low income opportunities in rural areas as compared to the promise of cities? What about the patriarchal behaviour and domestic violence that pushes women out of their homes?

Answering those questions, in addition to the ones usually raised, is important. It will help identifying more effective ways of preventing human trafficking. I hope that these questions will help to stimulate further thoughts and discussions. 

 

Igor Bosc is Chief Technical Adviser at the International Labour Organization (ILO) working on the Work in Freedom Programme - a UK Aid funded partnership initiative to find effective ways of preventing trafficking of women in South Asia and the Middle East. His questions and thoughts on the framing of the human trafficking discourse are outlined here as a contribution to the  Migrating out of Poverty International Women's Day panel debate Labour trafficking? Understanding the use of brokers in women's and girls' labour migration in the global South on 6 March 2015. 

 

'Labour trafficking' – What's behind the term?

By Dorte Thorsen

 

A new term - labour trafficking – has crept into the vocabulary surrounding migration facilitated by agents and other intermediaries. It is a timely attempt to shift attention onto the nexus between trafficking and labour migration and to move away from a narrow focus on migrant sex workers as the victims of trafficking. But is labour trafficking a good term? And does it have the same connotations for female and male migrants, and for younger and older migrants?

The definition of trafficking set out in the Palermo Protocol  makes it clear that for migration to be legally defined as trafficking, the migrant must have been recruited, transported or accommodated by another person. This person must have used force, violence, deceit, abuse of power or of the migrant’s vulnerable position and he/she must have been intend to exploit the migrant upon arrival to his or her own ends. As the Protocol is an instrument used by states to combat organised crime, state measures to combat trafficking focus primarily on preventing the movement of persons perceived to be at risk of being exploited and abused for the benefit of the trafficker and on prosecuting people perceived to broker the movement of others to their own financial benefit.This focus tends to blur the distinction between trafficking and smuggling – the illegal transportation of goods or people - especially at a time when global mobility regimes have made it more difficult for many people in the global South to migrate legally.

The tightening of border control, not just in the global North but across the world, has opened a space for migration brokers, who set up business to help potential migrants to go abroad. Brokers come in many shades and do not necessarily operate in a way that is illegal. Some provide guidance on form filling, the safest way to travel, and how to find work at the destination; others travel with the migrant workers they have recruited and facilitate employment for these workers at the destination; others again help procure fraudulent papers and air tickets to expedite the visa application process. Some enrich themselves on the back of migrants, sometimes being unscrupulous about the risks they impose on them; others become brokers just to scrape by or to consolidate their social status. The processes of facilitating migration, smuggling and trafficking people thus overlap in the early stages of migration.

While brokering businesses have proliferated alongside tighter border control, the use of intermediaries is not a new phenomenon, nor is it tied to international migration. It is the commodification that is new, for in many places it is considered strange and, indeed, risky to travel alone, especially for women and girls. Apart from the very real risk of sexual abuse, their respectability may be undermined by suspicion and scurrilous rumours about intimate relationships if travelling by themselves.

On this point local ideas of appropriate behaviour for women of different ages converge with one of the main concerns that has shaped the anti-trafficking discourse, especially in the beginning: the persistent myth that the destination of trafficking is sex work, and that sex workers are women and that these women are trafficked. The overlap is not about appropriate behaviour but about women’s perceived inability to fend for themselves and make good – read sensible and well-considered – migration decisions. Over time, trafficking has come to include a much broader range of concerns - including child labour, domestic servitude, forced labour, forced marriage and child soldiering - and it has become as much of an issue for internal migration as for international migration.

 

This brings us to the question of how to distinguish between trafficking, smuggling and the facilitation of migration and migrants’ insertion into the labour market at the destination. In principle, the relationship between the migrant and the smuggler ends once the migrant arrives at the destination, while the relationship with the trafficker continues. Reality is, of course, much more complex for the migrants and for authorities dealing with them. The distinction is shaped by moral, economic and political concerns.

 

When the focus is on migration management – whether international or internal – the division of migrants into ‘innocent, possibly passive, victims of trafficking’ and ‘irregular or unruly, street-living migrants’ is also a distinction between those, who deserve help because they are perceived as victims, and those who don’t, because they have gotten themselves into trouble through risky behaviour. From this perspective, migrants are seen either as having no choice or as having had near-to-full information about all risks involved in migration and to have ignored them. Only, women and children are rarely seen to have such a high level of information.

 

As a matter of fact, very little empirical evidence exists on the recruitment processes and the continuation of relationships between brokers and migrants at the destination. While some women are forced into sex work, others choose this occupation because they can earn more and can control when to work and when to rest. If they are all treated as victims of trafficking, important questions about unequal labour markets and gender inequity are overlooked.

 

Similarly, when the focus is on child migrants moral concerns about the right kind of childhood is at its heart of the discussion. Images of lost childhood, unhappy children, very heavy work and, in case of adolescent girls, sexual abuse, are invoked in the name of trafficking and the worst forms of child labour. The youngest children are foregrounded despite the fact that the majority of children migrating in their own right are teenagers over the minimum age for taking employment. For them, migration is a rational strategy to earn money and acquire skills. That they are frequently exploited and deceived by employers is not evidence of trafficking but rather of generic problems in the labour market.

 

Currently there is a push to work on regularising certain migrant workers and the labour market for migrants to minimise exploitation and unfree conditions. Our panel debate Labour Trafficking? Understanding the use of brokers in women’s and girls’ labour migration in the global South on Friday 6 March in Jubilee 144 at the University of Sussex contributes to the discussion. We outline the realities for women and girls of using brokers and intermediaries in their migration; examine how anti-trafficking interventions have affected female migrants; and explain why these interventions have changed over time. See http://migratingoutofpoverty.dfid.gov.uk/newsandevents/events?id=29299 for full details.

 

 

Dr Dorte Thorsen is the Gender Theme Leader for the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium. She also teaches Anthropology at the University of Sussex.

 

This blog was originally published as 'Labour Trafficking' - What is behind the term? at http://sussexglobal.org/blog/labour-trafficking-what-is-behind-the-term/.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Female migrant domestic workers and the families they leave behind

By Julie Litchfield

Female domestic workers are an important part of the story of the feminisation of migration, particularly in Asia. It is well documented that large numbers of women working outside their own countries are employed in domestic work and that Asian countries contribute large numbers of  female domestic workers (FDWs) both within the region, to the Middle East and to Europe and North America.

In the Migrating Out Of Poverty research programme consortium we are looking at gendered patterns of internal and regional migration and how these manifest themselves in poverty outcomes.  So far we have conducted three surveys of over 1000 households each in Asia and Africa, and we will add to this in 2014. Preliminary analysis of the data collected in 2013 by our partners in Singapore reveals that female migrants in Indonesia are overwhelmingly FDWs: 75% of all female migrants are domestic workers. We don’t see any such concentration of occupation amongst male workers:  the largest single category is construction with around a quarter of male migrants, the rest being spread across other activities including farming and manufacturing. We also see very different destinations for FDWs: almost 70% of FDWs are regional migrants, migrating to countries such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Among other female migrants, the vast majority remain in Indonesia as internal migrants and among male migrants, over half stay in Indonesia.

This pattern of regional migration is reflected in how people actually migrate. An issue that is commonly raised in the context of international migration is the cost associated with finding work at the destination, not just the travel costs but the so-called “placement fees” which are often charged to find employment for the migrant, usually deducted directly from pay, and that can be several multiples of the average annual income a person might expect to earn if they stayed at home. Indeed, the UN Women 2013 report on international migrant domestic workers highlights this as a particularly exploitative feature of FDW migration: data from Taiwan suggests that FDWs from Indonesia are charged on average US$3500 as a placement fee. Among our sample of Indonesian female migrants, over half used a recruitment agent to help secure employment at their destination, whereas less than a third of men did so.  FDWs were however much more likely than other female migrants to report that this involved a cost, with almost half of them stating that they had borrowed from the agent to finance their migration. Only 10% of other female migrants had to do so, most likely using family and friends to help find employment. Male migrants appear to rely much more heavily on formal loans from banks when they migrate regionally.

What are the consequences for families left behind? Parreñas (2000), in her study of Filipina FDWs working in Los Angeles and Rome, writes extensively about the international division of reproductive labour and transmission of care-taking of children and elderly. Her study reveals a pattern of predominantly married women working in richer countries as domestic workers or care-givers, with their own children living in the Philippines, employing women back home to look after their own children. The Filipina FDWs tend to be relatively better educated than the women they employ back home, thus suggesting a three-tiered division of reproductive labour. The UN Women report goes further, arguing that that the increase in FDWs has led to a “care crisis at home” with concerns about the health, educational and social development of children left behind.

However, little is known about the experience of poverty of FDWs, or their households, relative to other families with migrants in other occupations, or for that matter, other households with women who work. Our preliminary analysis has not revealed such a care crisis in Indonesia, at least no more or less so for households with FDWs compared to other households.  Two-thirds of households with female migrants say that daily life is easier for them now compared to before their member left. Furthermore we observe little difference in the perceptions of poverty, as reported by the households themselves, either between households with FDWs and other female migrants, or between households with female and male migrants. One explanation for the difference in our preliminary findings and those of Parreñas is that female migrants from Indonesia may be different from those who migrate from the Philippines. Our data from Indonesia suggests FDWs are younger than other migrant women and non-migrant women, and are less likely to be married or to have children than women who don’t migrate. This is very different from the portrait of FDWs provided by Parreñas.  We also see little migration of Indonesian FDWs to very rich countries in the West.

That doesn’t mean to say that the experience of poverty among Indonesian households with migrants or with FDWs is not different and that there aren’t more nuanced differences still to be uncovered. Whether or not women migrants leave children behind, the age of the children, who they are left behind with, and to what extent they are able to send money home, might also be important differentiating features.   In the next phase of our work, we will be exploiting the rich data in our surveys on how life has changed for the households left behind in our attempts to unravel how migration shapes poverty experiences.

 

 

Julie Litchfield is the Theme Leader for Quantitative Research for the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

 

 

Women on the Move: Migrating for liberation and empowerment

By Endang Sugiyarto

One of the key trends in international migration today is the growing feminization of migration flows. More and more women have been migrating abroad and the latest estimate shows that women migrants already number about a half of all migrants, indicating that the migrant stock is already gender balanced (see World Bank and UN data on this).[1] A similar feminization trend is also observed for internal migration (Deshingkar and Grimm, 2005).

Women used to be in the latter category of ‘the migrant and their families’, migrating mainly as following mothers, daughters or other relatives. But now one can witness increasing flows of ‘single’ women migrating abroad as independent labourers in search of better lives for themselves and ‘their’ families. The significant increase in their number has been accompanied by a rise in their economic contributions to their host and home countries, as well as to their families. The rise in these last two has occurred despite the fact that they tend to earn less than their male counterparts, since they compensate by sending relatively more remittances, and doing so more regularly and consistently. Women also tend to spend more remittances on family oriented expenditures therefore it makes sense to expect remittances to have an increased development impact as a result of the increased participation of women participation in international migration.

 On the theoretical side, the idea that the migrant is only motivated to move due to the significant differences in wage levels and expected income between origin and destination is out of date, for it ignores the interplay of a range of dynamics, some of which are gender specific and particularly relevant to women. Moreover, economic factors do not have a gender-neutral impact; economic development may change male and female roles, and the demand for international migrants can also be gender specific. Therefore, the explicit consideration of gender in the study of migration and remittances is long overdue.

The nature of work-based contracts, which tend to be temporary in the first instance, and the immigration policies which prevent workers from taking their families with them when they move, demonstrate the sentiment that the workers are wanted but their families are not. These features have the impact of further strengthening the flows of single women. These women have been migrating for various reasons, many of which can be classified as liberating and empowering. In addition to the economic freedom of better pay and income at their destination, many single women go abroad due to family dissolution, lack of choice and direction in their home country, and to escape from ‘domestic constraints’ resulting from personal and other circumstances including bad or failed marriages, traditional communities, and limited local opportunities in general. For them, migration is a symbolic act to end suffering and to move on to a new life. Not all of them succeed, unfortunately, as many become victims of abuse and exploitations of different forms.

It is interesting to look empirically at where these women come from, the nature of the sending households, and their occupation abroad. A case study on Indonesia, using Susenas data, shows that around 60 per cent of Indonesian migrants are women. I also found strong push factors within their household conditions and the characteristics attributed to the places they live that encourage some of them to create networks and diaspora that further ease the migration process, resulting in migrant pockets. The phenomenon of migrant pockets is not unique to Indonesia as they can also be observed in countries such as Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan (Skeldon, 2008), and others. As we all know, migration takes place not only because of need and ability, but also opportunity that is strengthened by the development and availability of networks, not necessarily only by migrants themselves, but also by recruiting agencies and markets as migration can be a lucrative business.

Moreover, the women mostly come from poorer, less educated and agriculture based family backgrounds. Most – 68 per cent - work as domestic workers, which is arguably the easiest occupation for them to access. The National Account concept of their pre-migration activities is of ‘unpaid domestic work’. However after migration they enter the international sphere as paid domestic workers, part of the ‘global nanny chain’ or ‘the international division of reproductive labour’ whereby a person – usually a woman - leaves their home to take up a paid caring role abroad, resulting in the caring role within their own family being delegated to another person. At the national level there have been calls for men not to marry their domestic workers in order to create an illusion of increasing national product (gross domestic product - GDP) by ensuring that salaried work does not become unpaid domestic work.

All this highlights the phenomenon of migration out of necessity and demands better facilitation and protection. More needs to be done to transform the increase in women’s international migration into a new force for women’s liberation and empowerment!

Endang Sugiyarto is a doctoral candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

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[1] The DEMIG project argues that the absence of women in historic migration data is due more to the invisibility of women in research before the 1980s rather than being an indication that women were not migrating. The gender aspect of migration was under-researched and what has happened since has in fact been a feminization of scientific interest rather than a feminization of migration flows (see http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/research-projects/demig for more information).

Women migrants working in construction: shaking the foundations of the way they are socially constructed

By Benjamin Zeitlyn

The Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium (RPC) is conducting research on internal and regional migration in Africa and Asia. As part of our qualitative research we focus upon three areas of employment that attract a lot of migrant workers in several different countries. These are domestic work, construction work and manufacturing. The assumption many of us made when we began to think about these categories is that men work in construction and women in domestic work.

A conspicuous aspect of many cities in rapidly urbanising and developing countries is a vibrant construction sector and the rapid emergence of new buildings. Millions of workers work on construction projects large and small in cities across the developing world. Often a very high proportion of these workers are internal and regional migrants.

Along with my colleagues Priya Deshingkar and Bridget Holtom, I reviewed the literature on internal and regional migration for construction work to survey the current state of the evidence and identify themes and gaps in the literature. The review will soon be published by the RPC, here I report some of the results of this review of the literature for International Women’s Day.

One of the first things that struck me was that among the studies we found about internal and regional migration for construction work in developing countries, very few explicitly look at gender relations and/or the role of women. Those that do exist tend to be based in India and Bangladesh. We speculate that this is because it is common to have women working in construction in South Asia, but not in other parts of the world, our research in African countries aims to see if this is true.

Research in India and Bangladesh on women working on construction sites reveals interesting gendered divisions of labour and inequalities in wages on construction sites as well as gendered patterns of remittance sending. Many migrant women working in construction in Bangladesh had migrated with their husbands or families, but a significant proportion migrated alone or headed their household. They were mostly young (25-35), poor and from rural areas. Women workers earned less than their male counterparts and if they were alone had to pay more for their accommodation (Ahsan, 1997). Higher status and skilled jobs (which offer the most potential for genuinely transformational earning) are dominated by men (Pattenden 2012).

Poor health for women migrants and their families working on construction sites are a major concern in the literature. Conditions on many construction sites in developing countries are incredibly dangerous and social protection is often minimal. Poor health can lead to increased indebtedness and so reduce the positive outcomes of migration. Interestingly, Jatrana and Sangwan, (2004) find that women construction workers in North India perceive their own health to be better after migration, although poor health was a constant aspect of their lives. For these women construction workers, being relieved of water and firewood collection duties and having a constant supply of food made them feel healthier. The costs of accessing high quality medical attention were still prohibitive for them; so improved access to healthcare was not the deciding factor. Jatrana and Sangwan attribute the improved perception of health to urban lifestyles and social network support that the migrants come into contact with in cities. 

Emerging findings from our research in Ethiopia support this interesting observation. While conditions for women migrant workers in the cities of Ethiopia are hard at best and border on modern day slavery at worst, the conditions, which many women and girls have migrated to leave behind, are even worse. As Naila Kabeer (2000) described in her book on the garments industry in Bangladesh, the options available for many poor women and girls other than the exploitative conditions of work in the garments industry are very grim indeed.

Research on female migrants tends to portray them as victims, to highlight their health problems and the exploitation they suffer, without paying much attention to the exploitative or abusive conditions that they have left behind and the contributions they make to their families’ and nations’ development. Migrant women working in the construction industries of developing countries shake the foundations of the way women migrants are socially constructed.

 

Benjamin Zeitlyn is the Theme Leader for Qualitative Research within the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

 

 

Capturing the potential of migration for women’s empowerment and poverty reduction

by Rosemary Vargas-Lundius, David Suttie and Anja Lund

 

Increased flows of information and the falling cost of transportation make migration increasingly viable for rural women and men today. Most of the rural people who decide to migrate arrive in larger towns and cities within their own country. In fact, the majority of global migration occurs within countries, with conservative estimates placing the number of internal migrants globally at 740 million, compared to 200 million international migrants.

One of the most significant changes in migration is that today more women are migrating than ever before. Women now constitute half the international migrant population, and trends seem to be similar for internal migration too, though data is scarce. In many countries the majority of migrants are now women. For example, in Sri Lanka and in the Philippines, female migrants are about 74 percent and 55 percent of total outflows respectively.

These trends are creating important opportunities for poverty reduction and women’s empowerment. The poverty reducing benefits of migration broadly are well documented. So too is the role that migration and remittances play in improving food security and alleviating poverty among poor rural households.

The benefits of migration apply also to migrants’ destination communities. In Brazil higher rates of internal migration are associated with reductions in poverty in destination cities (among both the local population and migrants) and increased access to infrastructure services. Far from placing additional pressure on urban labour markets as is sometimes feared, local households have been shown to benefit from complementarities of locals and migrants in productive tasks.

Migration offers opportunities for the empowerment of women in terms of access to paid employment outside the family, access to services and relaxation of the rigid gender norms which prevail throughout many rural societies. In cases where the migrating family member has been male, this has often enabled women to take on greater decision-making and management responsibilities on family farms, with remittances sometimes allowing them to hire labour to reduce their own workloads.

But what about the challenges? Migrating women are likely to continue experiencing forms of gender discrimination and are not always well placed to benefit from the prosperity of their destination towns and cities. According to UN-HABITAT, “gender gaps in labour and employment, decent work, pay, tenure rights, access to and accumulation of assets, personal security and safety, and representation in formal structures of urban governance, show that women are often the last to benefit from the prosperity of cities.”

Women and girls are the most affected by many governments’ struggles to maintain services and infrastructure. Expensive public transport systems hinder women’s mobility, and many are forced to live in poor housing in the face of escalating living costs. Migrant women living in poor urban neighbourhoods often have to compensate for a lack of services and infrastructure by working longer hours, caring for children who are frequently ill as a result of inadequate water and sanitation. Urban crime can also be a serious problem for migrant women. In addition, social relations can be more fragmented and despite urban areas having better equipped health clinics and more doctors, residence related access and the expense of such healthcare often puts it out of the reach of migrant women.

So, how can policy-makers support migrating women in light of these realities? Broadly, more attention is needed on promoting mobility. This should include removing disincentives such as residency based social protection (as is often the case with health and education schemes) and urban housing policies that are biased against migrants. But equally important will be addressing the gender dimensions of migration.

Introducing gender sensitive labour and migration legislation that enshrines international standards for the legal protection of migrants and promoting women’s groups and migrant associations are key aspects of this. So is including women in discussions between governments, employers, trade unions, civil society and migrant communities to ensure the contribution of migrants is recognized and their rights are protected. Initiatives to improve the safety of migrants, especially women, during their journeys as well as in their destinations are also needed. Only by empowering and supporting the role of women in migration can its potential poverty reducing impact be realized.

 Rosemary Vargas-Lundius, David Suttie and Anja Lund work for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Rosemary is also a member of Migrating out of Poverty's Consortium Advisory Group.