Policy Brief: Women’s Mobility and Domestic Work

The ILO estimates that there are 150.3 million migrant workers in the world. Of these 11.5 million are domestic workers (ILO, 2015).

Migrant domestic and garment workers in Jordan: A baseline analysis of trafficking in persons and related laws and policies

This study reviews the legal context of migration and work in Jordan’s garment and domestic work sectors. It describes gaps in law and practice in relation to international labour standards.

No easy exit – Migration bans affecting women from Nepal

The ILO undertook this study with the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW). It explores whether Nepal’s age ban deterred younger women from migrating for domestic work and improved working conditions for women migrant domestic workers over 30 years of age. It also explores to what extent the age ban and other bans have had unintended consequences for women, including an increase in irregular migration and trafficking in persons. Finally, it highlights steps the women themselves propose be taken to improve their migration experiences.

The Labyrinth of justice: Migrant domestic workers before Lebanon’s courts

This study is documentary research of jurisprudence regarding migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. It reviews and identifies the systemic flaws of Lebanon’s judiciary system in delivering justice to migrant domestic workers and explains why migrant women keep a distance from law enforcement processes.

Also available in Arabic. A video of the presentation is available.

Employer practices and perceptions on paid domestic work: Recruitment, employment relationships, and social protection

This study report is an important contribution towards understanding employers’ perceptions, rationale and bases that underlie how employers in urban India engage, value, and perceive domestic work.

To do so, it draws upon data from personal interviews with 403 households in two large metropolitan Indian cities– Bengaluru and Chennai – with variations across socio-economic status, caste, neighborhood type and across households with and without women working for wages. This report is the third of a three-part series, with the first report looking at paid and unpaid hours taken to reproduce a household in urban India, and the second report looking at the quality of employment for paid domestic workers.

Deficits in decent work: Employer perspectives and practices on the quality of employment in domestic work in urban India

This study report contributes towards understanding employers’ perspectives on existing working conditions and practices relating to recruitment, income security, employment security and social security available to domestic workers.

To do so, this report draws upon data from 3,067 households in two large metropolitan Indian cities – Bengaluru and Chennai – with variations across socio-economic status, caste, religion, neighborhood type and across households with and without women working for wages. This report is the second of a three-part series, with the first report looking at the total number of paid and unpaid hours it takes to reproduce a household in urban India, and the third assessing employer motivations, beliefs and perspectives about domestic work and workers.

Media representation of women migrant workers: A critical look

The study reviews how overseas women migrant workers are characterized in print and electronic media in accordance with gender, class and geographic stereotypes. It critically assesses how women's multiple roles as workers, earners, investors, mothers and daughters, etc. are overshadowed by simplistic narratives focusing on exploitation and victimhood.

This study is based on migration-related news published in four widely circulated national English and Bangla dailies and reports aired on three television channels. The study is an in-depth analysis of the news articles and videos published and diffused between 2015 and 2021. Findings depict a majoritarian bias focusing on individual cases illustrating highly abusive women’s labour migration experiences to attract readership and viewership. Yet, reporting on how women’s labour migration also emancipates them in the context of work, family and social lives was found to be rare, thus leaving and cultivating a common perception conflating all women’s migration with abuse. Considering that such narratives reinforce a false perception that the solution to such abuses is to ban women’s migration, the analysis concludes that while human rights violations faced by migrant workers must be addressed, coverage exclusively focusing on abuses is socially dis-empowering to women and more nuanced reporting on women’s labour migration is needed.

Working Paper on Operational Parameters to Assess Fair Recruitment Practices

These parameters list a series of questions and issues that should be looked into in order to assess recruitment practices.

In South Asia, the pathways to jobs in domestic, garment or other similar sectors within the region or to the Middle East are intersected by various agents or contractors in an environment shaped by multiple rules and practices determining the mobility of aspiring workers especially women. The fluidity and segmentation of labour supply chains and labour regimes are such that none of the key stakeholders such as labour recruiters, regulators and even employers can guarante on their own a fair migration outcome for any workers. To do so requires understanding the specificity of recruitment processes from end to end and strong multi-stakeholder cooperation. The purpose of these operational parameters is to identify the main fields that need to be assessed and related questions when analyzing recruitment processes.

Women migrant domestic workers in Lebanon: A gender perspective

This paper illuminates the gender dimensions of women migrant domestic workers’ lived experiences in Lebanon under the kafala system. It examines the circumstances of women migrant domestic workers who live with their employer (live-in workers) and those who do not (live-out workers).