Experiences of ASEAN migrant workers during COVID-19: Rights at work, migration and quarantine during the pandemic, and re-migration plans

The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting labour migration throughout the ASEAN region and globally. In 2019 there were an estimated 10 million international migrants in ASEAN, of whom nearly 50 per cent were women. The ILO undertook a rapid assessment survey, interviewing ASEAN migrant workers from end-March to end-April 2020 about how COVID-19 has impacted them. This brief summarizes the responses of the 309 women and men migrant workers who participated in the survey.

Gender sensitivity in labour migration agreements and MOUs

Global Action Programme on Migrant Domestic Workers - Research series in support of June 2016 project report release.

A very beautiful but heavy jacket: The experiences of migrant workers with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression in South-East Asia

The study reveals migrant workers with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE) in South-East Asia benefit from labour migration, yet experience discrimination.

Among the millions of migrant workers who move between countries in South-East Asia and beyond, little is known about the motivations and experiences of migrant workers who are also people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expression (SOGIE) including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.

This report fills that gap. It draws on surveys and interviews with 147 migrant workers with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions, exploring their experiences across the migrant work journey as they travel from countries of origin such as Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Viet Nam to work in countries of destination in South-East Asia (especially Thailand), East Asia, and beyond.

The report also explores how labour migration policies and practices can acknowledge or address these experiences while protecting and promoting the rights of migrant workers with diverse SOGIE.

A comprehensive analysis of policies and frameworks governing foreign employment for Nepali women migrant workers and migrant domestic workers. Exploring the migration policymaking process with a specific focus on bans and restrictions on foreign employme

One of the principal causes and risk factors for forced labour and trafficking, identified by past research led by the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s Work in Freedom (WiF) Programme, is restrictive and gender-insensitive migration policies. These include restrictions on movement in the form of bans and restrictions on the departure of women migrant workers and migrant domestic workers from origin countries to seek foreign employment.

In the ILO’s efforts to support the construction of regular migration pathways for women migrant workers and migrant domestic workers which respect their safety, dignity, wellbeing and human and labour rights and which allow them to enrich their own lives, the lives of their families and communities back home, the Work in Freedom Programme of ILO Country Office for Nepal commissioned this present review between February and June 2020 as a comprehensive analysis of legal and policy frameworks governing foreign employment for women migrant workers and migrant domestic workers. This review is an update of ILO’s previous study of migration bans, 'No Easy Exit: Migration Bans Affecting Women from Nepal' published in 2015, but fills an important research gap by focusing on the policy formulation phase itself. The findings identify and characterize the ways in which stakeholders (governmental and otherwise) formulate policy narratives, negotiate policies and regulations and invoke knowledge claims in order to justify regulatory and policy interventions related to women migrant workers, migrant domestic workers and associated thematic areas – including anti-trafficking frameworks, frameworks combatting forced labour, domestic work and more.

The invisible workers: Bangladeshi women in Oman

The purpose of this ethnography is to follow the lives of working women from Bangladesh and document and analyse the diversity of their individual and collective experiences. The findings reveal a reality that contrasts from the usual characterisations of migrant women.

This study explores the work and lives of women from Bangladesh in Oman. It is meant to be an exploratory study about the working and living conditions of women domestic workers from Bangladesh. The study lays out the context of women’s migration from Bangladesh to Oman, it’s relationship with the migration of men, the types of work and living arrangements that were encountered, the social networks of migrant women and other considerations that Bangladeshi women reflected on. This ethnographic study fills a gap on research regarding migrant workers from Bangladesh in Oman.

Migration and gender in Bangladesh: An irregular landscape

This survey is part of a series of studies commissioned by the Work in Freedom Programme of the ILO in order to document the motives and trajectories of migrant women workers. The survey explores the local and regional gendered specificities of migration and work-seeking in selected localities of Bangladesh by collecting gender disaggregated data and analysing contrasting patterns that inform women and men’s migration.

This report presents the result of a survey conducted in five districts of Bangladesh to document international labour migration. The districts were selected for their contrasting features. Two districts, Barguna and Patuakhali, are relatively new to women’s migration, whereas three districts, Manikganj, Narayanganj and Brahmanbaria, have a long history of such movement. The extent of women’s participation in migration was a major criteria for the selection of districts aimed to capture a range of situations. In all, 8,437 migrant workers were recorded in 125 villages. The analysis brings out important consideration that challenge common assumptions on women’s migration. For example, the survey brings out hard evidence that questions policy assumptions that women migrate homogenously from around the country or that their cost of recruitment is high. In that sense, this survey’s findings have important implications on local, national and regional policy making related to safe migration, anti-trafficking and labour policies.