GAATW carried out a study on women’s mobility and reproductive health in Thailand in 2002-2005 to understand low-wage migrant women workers’ knowledge about their bodies, the impact of their work on their health and wellbeing and their access to health care in public hospitals. This resulted in the formation of a community drop-in centre led by migrant women in Northern Thailand, and a publication which explored the leadership-building work of self-led organisations of women migrants and trafficked persons. Alongside this research we also deepened our engagement with migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong and Indonesia, before expanding to several other countries from 2011 onwards.
By 2005, GAATW was focusing more proactively on strengthening our approach to migration and labour rights through collective advocacy, research, and inter-movement dialogues, alongside our cirtical engagement with anti-trafficking policies and practices.
The following years, GAATW sought to explore how macro issues impact the conditions of migrant workers through a country study on female temporary migration programmes within the agriculture sector in Huelva, Spain, and a series of working papers on intersectionality within gender, labour, migration and development frameworks. This work reemphasised the interconnected nature of human trafficking with unfair labour migration regimes, weakening of labour rights protection and impacts of globalisation was published.
To highlight the issue of access to justice, GAATW also engaged in research with Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand to examine the gap between available options in the legal system and workers’ reluctance or inability to access it. In another research, we highlighted the barriers experienced by partner organisations when supporting migrant workers to access justice.
In 2018-2019, GAATW with eleven organisations across nine countries in Asia, carried out an FPAR on women’s rights to mobility and work from a feminist perspective. The report challenges prevailing ideas about what defines safe and fair migration, and to reclaim the public narratives surrounding labour migration to ensure that it is safe and fair for women workers, especially those in the informal economy.
GAATW also collaborated with the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) in 2019 to listen to and to collectively analyse the lived experiences of African women migrant domestic workers in the Middle East. In Latin America, GAATW conducted joint research on the violence and harassment faced by women migrant workers in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. It showed how experiences of violence are interconnected to patriarchal societies and families, racism, xenophobia, and a deeply rooted neoliberal capitalist economy. In Asia, a report highlighting women's perspectives on the return and reintegration of migrant women workers from the Philippines revealed important factors related to savings, family well-being, expectations, and success that influence post-migration experiences.
Post COVID-19 pandemic, the global crisis starkly magnified the vulnerabilities and precarious nature of employment faced by many migrants, especially those operating within the informal sector. In 2022, we launched a report exploring what sustainable reintegration would mean for women migrant workers within South Asia and the Middle East Corridor. The accompaniment policy brief underscored the huge gaps between the idea of orderly return and reintegration envisioned in migration policies and the harsh realities faced by migrants in real life.
In Canada we also examined inclusion and integration with our member , SWAN, Vancouver, in research into the significance of social and economic inclusion of migrant women in finding stable employment and accessing the labour market. The report revealed that migrant workers experience multiple forms of racism and discrimination, often leading them to depend solely on fellow nationals for work, housing, and socialisation. In another research project in Latin America, members highlighted that social inclusion and access to the labour markets are shaped by migrants’ gender, ethnicity, and migration status. Then, in a more recent FPAR on the inclusive re/integration of Southeast Asian migrants in Europe, findings showed that while support and protection for migrants and trafficked persons exist to some extent, the execution of services and programmes still fall short in providing adequate socio-economic opportunities and conditions.
Finally, within the judicial system, we recently explored how migrant and trafficked women’s experiences of discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudices by decision-makers affect their ability to access justice.