In April, we launched a six-part series titled “Feminist Fridays: Conversations about Labour Migration from a Feminist Lens”, in collaboration with Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), Solidarity Center, and Women in Migration Network (WIMN).
In these sessions, we reflected on how to undertake the complex work of standing in solidarity with migrant workers and celebrating their agency while also highlighting the abuse and exploitation they face. Feminist academics, civil society leaders, and migrant workers themselves discussed how to better understand and represent the lived experiences of migrant workers, especially women, who are overrepresented in low-paid and precarious jobs in the informal sector, and who have absorbed even greater caring responsibilities during the pandemic.
The first session introduced core concepts that underpin a feminist approach to labour migration. Migration scholars emphasised the importance of an intersectional lens in understanding migrant women’s life stories, which means being attentive to how multiple overlapping markers such as gender, class, race, nationality, and migration status shape women’s experiences and contribute to their precarity. The ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers was lauded for its legal and social recognition of the value of care work, which is traditionally marginalised as unskilled, feminised work. Panellists emphasised that women’s aspirations, inner lives, and reflections on their migration journeys may be different from, or exist alongside, more ‘culturally acceptable’ reasons for labour migration, and that allies should listen carefully, deeply, and respectfully to these multi-layered stories. You can watch the entire session here and the highlights here.
The second session focused on feminist participatory action research (FPAR). It challenged the ‘neutrality’ of research and highlighted the power relationships involved in it. Academics and representatives of NGOs shared how they centre the voices of women in their research and how they make research work for social change. For example, they involved migrant workers at every stage of the research process – from crafting data collection methods and conducting peer interviews to developing recommendations and an advocacy agenda based on the needs of migrant workers. They also highlighted the importance of understanding migrant communities – their differences and complexities – and ensuring that these are captured in research. You can watch the entire session here and the highlights here.
The third session focused on migrants’ creative strategies of resistance which express both their vulnerability and agency. Messenger Band in Cambodia, composed of women working in garment factories, the sex industry and agriculture, uses music to draw attention to their struggles in a way that builds an emotional connection with the audience. In their reporting on migration in the Gulf States, Migrant-Rights.org highlights the commonalities in the oppression experienced by both migrant and local women to show that any movement for women’s rights must include advocating for migrants’ rights too. Ethiopian domestic worker Rahel Zegeye and Laure Makarem from Anti-Racism Movement spoke about the former’s film, which exposes the ways the kafala system dehumanises migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. Danish anthropologist and filmmaker Sine Plambech discussed her films about Thai women who migrate to Denmark for marriage and how ethnography can produce deeper narratives of migration. You can watch the entire session here and the highlights here.
The fourth session focused on advocacy strategies for improving labour migration policies on local, national, and global levels. The International Domestic Workers Federation shared how they demanded a central role for domestic workers in decision-making and lobbying for the adoption of the Domestic Workers Convention. Transnational Migrant Platform-Europe and their allies had the Permanent People’s Tribunal hold its 45th session on the violation of the human rights of migrants and refugees within the EU, and the tribunal’s judges upheld the rights of migrants. The International Trade Union Confederation spoke about how they lobby states to ratify and implement ILO Conventions 189 and 190. SITRADOTRAN, a Nicaraguan organisation of trans* domestic workers spoke about building alliances between domestic workers, LGBT+ and women’s rights organisations. All panellists agreed that it was important to link migrant women’s struggles with broader struggles against corporate and extractivist development models, and for climate justice and food sovereignty. You can watch the entire session here and the highlights here.
The fifth session was on labour migration and intersectional feminist organising. Labour leaders and organisers from the United States, Brazil, and Hong Kong spoke about how they create alliances and build solidarity across movements. If you missed the session, you can find it here.
The sixth and final session is titled Envisioning a Feminist Future in Labour Migration and takes place in early August.