Namrata Daniel

South Asian countries have emerged as one of the significant sources of migrant workers for the countries of West Asia. For many South Asian women, one critical reason to migrate is the everyday violence that they experience in the private and public spheres. Thus, gender inequality in South Asia has to be examined closely, particularly at the intersections of caste, class, religion, and ethnicity. These identities play a significant bearing on the patterns of migration and the risks women migrant workers are willing to take to earn livelihoods. As a result, they are confronted with multiple forms of discrimination, exploitation, and violence in their migration journeys.

With their paid and unpaid labour, women make significant contributions to the economies of both origin and destination countries. Despite this fact, several governments in the region have traditionally imposed various restrictions on women’s mobility. These restrictions force women to migrate under dangerous conditions and exacerbate the risks of exploitation and abuse. 

The recently concluded 13th Global Forum on Migration and Development Summit held on 18-26 January 2021 raised crucial points on safe, fair, and ethical migration for women. The four thematic areas of the summit were Governance of Labour Migration and Skilling of Migrants; Addressing Gaps in Migrant Protection; Irregular Migration; and COVID-19 building back better for Migrants. Closely linked to these themes are the issues and challenges experienced by women migrant workers in the West Asian countries, as outlined below.

Access to Accurate and Timely Information for Safe Migration 

Most women only come to know about the terms of their contracts after reaching the country of destination. The service contract is often in a language they do not understand, leaving them unaware of issues such as salary, working hours, conditions of work, numbers of leave days, benefits such as insurance, health care, housing etc. Therefore, it is necessary to have the service contract in the native language of the workers. Pre-departure training in the origin country is critical in ensuring migrant workers have accurate and reliable information before migrating. 

Labour sending and receiving countries need to improve their coordination in the area of labour migration and build the capacities of the institutions responsible for providing information to migrants and implementing laws and policies for their protection. They also need to work together to ensure that migrant workers’ social security benefits are recognised and easily transferred between the countries. 

Governments must also address issues around stress, anxiety, and mental wellbeing of women migrant workers both as part of pre-departure curricula and as available support services in the destination countries. While stress and anxiety can affect every migrant woman, they have been exacerbated due to the uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regularisation and Legal Pathways for Migrant Workers

In many West Asian countries, the entry, stay and exit of migrant workers is highly dependent on their employers/sponsors. Most migrant workers enter the destination country with proper documents but become undocumented because the employers confiscate their passport or do not complete the residency formalities. Without proper documents, the worker is unable to access health, education, housing, and other services and benefits, along with formal systems of justice; worse, they cannot send remittances to their families back home. Governments are quick to punish undocumented migrant workers but hardly take any actions against the employer. This situation is exacerbated for migrant women and cases in the region reveal that employers who want to exploit them actively prevent them from having the proper documents. The sponsorship system needs to be reformed and migrant workers need to be able to renew their visa on their own. Moreover, the labour law and laws on violence against women in the countries of origin and destination must be in line with the states’ commitments to CEDAW and ILO Conventions such as C189 and C190. These commitments need to be properly enforced and monitored. 

Learning from the Lived Experiences of Women Migrant Workers

The four thematic areas of the GFMD 2020 Summit reflect many of the findings of the GAATW research ‘Learning from the Lived Experiences of Women Migrant Workers’, conducted in 2018. These narratives of women migrant workers tell us that they require adequate support from their embassy in the destination countries. For states without consular services in West Asian countries, the women experienced severe difficulties in completing the paperwork to return home. 

Women also identified the need for a virtual platform (e.g. a mobile app) that they can use to educate themselves about relevant policies/laws, share information, issues and challenges with other migrants, and communicate with family members. Accessible tools that provide information on safe migration can better prepare them to negotiate with employers and agents. Watch this video for more details on our discussions on "safe and fair" migration with women migrant workers in Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), Lebanon and Jordan. 

Our research also revealed the need for a respectful relationship between employers and employees and for employers to recognise migrants as workers. Employers’ attitudes to migrant workers is one of the biggest challenges for tackling cases of abuse and allowing migrant women a dignified return to the home country.

The women who participated in our research also want better implementation of migration laws and policies in both sending and receiving countries (see explainer video below for more details). The countries of origin and destination must open a multilateral dialogue with employers, business partners, civil society organisations, and other stakeholders to ensure that employers adhere to workers’ rights and dignity. There is also an emerging need for more regional dialogues on workers’ rights and entitlements. These must focus on the needs of low-skilled and irregular workers, and more importantly, include women workers' own voices. The frequency of these engagements must increase between the labour sending and receiving countries, and they should also revisit the existing memorandums of understanding on labour mobility to make them simplified, affordable, and less cumbersome for the workers. 

The civil society organisations participating in GFMD 2020 identified four priorities for advocacy: ensuring social protection for migrants regardless of their status, expanding migrants' regularisation and legal migration pathways, fighting xenophobia and discrimination, and providing safe access to services and the judicial systems. Keeping the GFMD 2020 themes in mind, we must remember that the pandemic has only brought to surface the existing issues of precarious working conditions and violence experienced by women migrant workers. It has highlighted the structural inequalities and unbalanced power relationship between employers and workers. In the West Asian countries, these unequal power dynamics are intensified by the sponsorship system and limited social dialogue and protection mechanisms for migrant workers from South Asia. 

COVID-19 has given us an opportunity to build back better working conditions for migrant workers. To “build back better”, the labour sending and receiving countries must observe the principle of shared responsibility and set up stronger cooperation on workers’ rights and entitlements. The temporary measures, instituted because of the pandemic, on social protection and social security for migrant workers must become permanent. For a decent future of work and leaving nobody behind, governments must recognise migrants as essential workers and invest in a people-centred, rights-based labour migration framework.