Women Migrant Workers Research Articles

Indonesian Migrant Worker Policies and the Vulnerability of Women Migrant Workers to Becoming Trafficking Victims: an Overview of Recent Legislation

This study will provide an overview of how migrant worker protection policies should govern all forms of protection for migrant workers, especially women workers who often face violent abuse as overseas domestic workers in receiving countries, and then problems when they return to their villages. It outlines several laws that deal with problems of abuse associated with migration such as the Law Eradication of Trafficking in Person, and other regulation. Indonesia Government has made a good initiative by amending the policies of migrant workers with the aim of prioritizing protection, including how to harmonize other policies. This is a good starting point for implementing all commitments to the extent that commitments to protect migrant workers, especially women migrant workers who are still vulnerable to violence and threats of trafficking.

Contesting Disciplinary Power: Transnational Domestic Labour in the Global South

Using Foucault’s concept of power as a social relation of the unequal, this paper attempts to describe the resistance struggles of non-citizen domestic workers placed in a work environment beyond the reach of their support group. Based on a study conducted between 2001 and 2013 using non-consecutive in-depth interviews and participant observation among Filipino domestics in Kuala Lumpur, the paper’s findings indicate that the “victimisation” issue is not the only prism through which one can view the place of women migrant workers involved in transnational labour migration. The dynamic social interaction and the forging of different levels of social relationships in a strange sociocultural environment could be used to interpret other non-traditional spheres of interaction, such as language, cultural rituals and social labelling.

Improving the living standards and health status of the migrant women workers

Improving the living standards and health status of the migrant women workers

Safeguarding the health and wellbeing of migrant women workers worldwide

Safeguarding the health and wellbeing of migrant women workers worldwide

The Other Side of the Mirror: An Analytic Journalistic Approach to the Subjective Well-Being of Filipino Women Migrant Workers in Japan

In its political structural reform, the Japanese government presents the urgency to consider an increase in labor mobility that includes the issue of immigration to Japan. Women from Southeast Asia represent a large proportion of this immigration. The aim of this case study was to identify factors associated with subjective well-being (SWB) among Filipino women migrant workers in Tokyo, Japan. The study used an analytic journalistic approach. A focus group interview was conducted with three women and the data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Communication, support network, faith, and sense of identity were identified as the main factors contributing to SWB among these women. In conclusion, the feminization of migration will continue; therefore, better understanding about the factors associated to SWB is needed to ease the impact of migration on home and host countries.

Is the State of Indonesia In Charge to Provide Law Protection to the Indonesian Migrant Workers ?

Right to work is assured in the regulation of 1945 Constitution (amendment) Article 28 D Clause (2) mandating that every person deserves to work and in return they get wages, fair and proper treatment in the relation of employment. Working as migrant worker is accessible job opportunity, especially to people who have low education and skill with promising income. Many case facedto the migrant worker. It is necessary to analyze how the state’s position in providing protection to its citizens experiencing problems overseas. Country has the right to protect its citizens overseas and to intervene diplomatically. It cannot provide direct protection because if there is a criminal act committed by Migrant Worker of Indonesia, then the applicable law is the law of country where the Migrant Worker works. The actual protection is to make bilateral agreements with the destination country. Law No 39 Year 2004. Article 77 regulates the right to obtain protection from pre-placement, placement period to post-placement. Employment or the right to work is one of human rights that is the right to social freedom, namely the right to meet the basic needs. Regarding the legal protection for women migrant workers, the relevant human rights theory used is the natural rights theory because the right to work in this case is the right that every human being possesses

Am I allowed to be pregnant? Awareness of pregnancy protection laws among migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong

ABSTRACTIn Hong Kong, pregnancy is not legal grounds for employers to dismiss their migrant domestic workers (MDWs). However a survey of 589 Filipino and Indonesian MDWs in Hong Kong demonstrates that only a third of respondents know their pregnancy rights. Regression analysis of the survey data highlight the statistically significant positive role of being Filipino and length of tenure in Hong Kong in increasing respondents’ rights awareness. Follow-up conversations reveal that workers understand their rights to be contingent upon the presumed morality of their pregnancy (whether they are married, whether their husband is the father) and their employer’s generosity. These findings reveal the influence of the socio-structural frames migrants carry with them from their home countries, and the ones in which they are embedded in their host destinations, in the lack of purchase of a pregnancy rights discourse among MDWs in Hong Kong. Our findings provide new insight into the power of symbolic violence in women migrant workers’ understanding of their rights, and their emphasis on their ‘work ethics’ over their ‘work rights’.

Contribution of Indonesian Women Migrant Workers (TKIP) to Child Welfare

<p>This article is part of dissertation research on childcare of Indonesian Women Migrant Workers (TKIP) in pesantren, using a qualitative approach and analysis unit in child and their environment. This study uses the ecological system theory of Bronfenbrenner and the<br />concept of Global Care Chain with the perspective of child protection. The results showed that the children of TKIP who abandoned by their mothers abroad became losing care, disrupted their social welfare psychically and socially; there is interdependence between the child’s of TKIP and his/her family with TKIP abroad; pesantren is an option for TKIP family because there is no professional childcare for the children of TKIP when their mother abandons her/him. Institutionally pesantren has potential to break the Global Care Chain injustice on the care of TKIP children with the support of religious values and traditions of pesantren. However, policy support is needed to ensure the care and social welfare of TKIP’s children that based on community and which integrated comprehensively in<br />blueprint of Indonesian migrant worker policy.</p>

WOMEN MIGRANT WORKERS AND SOCIAL PROTECTION SYSTEMS IN THE PHILIPPINES

Women migrant workers often face a variety of problems in the workplace, for example violence, sexual abuse, rape, extortion, and so on. Social protection systems for women migrant workers in other countries are very important. In the Philippines, there are two social protection systems to improve social welfare for vulnerable populations. Two models of social protection called the health care system and social health insurance. Both social protection systems can be managed, as based on: (1) culture value, (2) to be funded by the financial institutions, (3) implemented freely, (4) the scheme is combined with the national health insurance system, (5) able to create a high quality service. The conditions of women migrant workers are more vulnerable than male workers. So, the social protection for women migrant workers is urgent and need policies to protect them. The Government of the Philippines emphasizes the problems related to the obligation of women migrant workers to have right information and guidance before they leave the country in order to minimize social problems. Finally, social protection, not only in the Philippines, but also cooperation among countries to ptotect women migrant workers by making policy of social protection from local, national, regional, and international level.
 
 Keywords: Migrant Worker, Social Protection in Philippines, Health Care System, Social Health Insurance

The Gender Politics of Human Waste and Human‐as‐Waste: Indonesian Migrant Workers and Elderly Care in Japan

Significant decline in mortality and fertility rates has led to a rapid aging population in many parts of the globe. Coupled with a decrease in caring for one's senior parents at home, this condition creates a crisis in elderly care. Most studies on elderly care in Japan, the country with the highest percentage of senior people in the world, employ theoretical approaches rooted in the fields of aging and migration studies. This article offers a new perspective by not only focusing on the voices of the Indonesian women migrant care workers in Japan by way of in‐depth interviews, but also intersecting feminist and waste studies in its analysis. This different theoretical approach allows this article to argue that the politics of disposability in the ‘global care chains’ is a gendered and ‘affective’ phenomenon. Drawing from Jaggar's ‘emotional hegemony’ and Saraswati's ‘affective structure’, this article shows that emotions matter in constructing the disposability of these migrant workers and elderly people, particularly within the capitalist currents that drive the gendered supply chains.

The Effects of Job Characteristics and Cultural Factor on Job Satisfaction among Marriage Migrant Women Workers

The Effects of Job Characteristics and Cultural Factor on Job Satisfaction among Marriage Migrant Women Workers

The Effects of Job Characteristics and Cultural Factor on Job Satisfaction among Marriage Migrant Women Workers

The Effects of Job Characteristics and Cultural Factor on Job Satisfaction among Marriage Migrant Women Workers

Gendered Technologies of Power: Experiencing and unmaking borderscapes in South Asia

Across South Asia, women migrate for employment within their home countries, within the region, and to more distant destination countries. Despite regular and ongoing transit, they are subject to restrictions on their mobility. How do migrant women workers confront and resist these restrictions? This question calls for an analytical approach that considers both the nature of the restrictive forces they confront and the resistance strategies they bring to bear. Scholarship on governmentality traces how nation states, as sovereigns, deploy a dual system of thought and management to exert control over populations and the nations they inhabit. Gendered migration governance at the legal and policy level maps one of many forces that restrict women’s mobility across the region. Within South Asia, social control over women is informed by not only legal, but also political, cultural, and ideological discourses that are anchored in patriarchal social systems. Women workers migrate through varied “borderscapes,” landscapes traversed by competing discourses and practices that seek to define parameters of mobility (Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2007). Based on fieldwork conducted between October 2015 and July 2016, this paper considers how local, national, and regional networks of migrant women in South Asia circumvent restrictive policies and resist patriarchal binaries. Examining their modes of resistance, this study lends critical insight into how gendered technologies of power are experienced and unmade.

Protecting Indonesia’s women migrant workers from the grassroots: a story of Paguyuban Seruni

ABSTRACTThis paper was written based on a research at the grassroots level which was aimed to look into: (1) the relative position of women vis-a-vis the process of making policies on the protection of women migrant workers; (2) what efforts women have made; (3) what efforts women can potentially make, based on their current positions; and (4) opportunities and challenges that may arise. In arguing for the importance of women’s empowerment in conducting protection efforts for Indonesian women migrant workers, the research made the activities of three women activists from Paguyuban Seruni in Banyumas, Indonesia the object of analysis. The efforts and roles were identified through in-depth interviews and observations. Through self-development, enriching process and optimal achievement, along with access to education and involvement in the democratization process at the grassroots level, the women activists have made a valuable contribution to the efforts of protecting women migrant workers at the grassroots level. There are limitations and problems that these women have to face, but they all become motivations for them to move forward and actually do something through a process where self and community achievement are interrelated. At this stage of the research, this paper is aimed to showcase the lessons learned and best practices identified from the grassroots level, in the search for efforts worth making, developing and duplicating, with the aim of protecting women migrant workers working in the informal sector.

Domestic Work and Welfare Values of Migrant Women in Modern Greece: The Juncture of a Dual Process of Exclusion

Based on survey data from extensive field work in Greece, we argue that migrant women workers in the domestic sector now face greater difficulties in accessing the social protection of the state than they did before the recession. Interviews conducted with these women demonstrate that they live in a new environment that leads them away from formal mechanisms of social protection, compelling them instead to adopt more individualized strategies in their work and life choices as a whole. This failure of the social state is due to a dual process of exclusion that arises from both the discriminatory practices that marginalize these women and a dramatic shift in how they themselves see the expensive and inefficient social protection offered to them. We conclude that this new environment has in fact intensified their social and welfare marginalization, dissociating them from communal and family-based support networks.

Justice for Migrant Women Workers: An Exploration from Electronics Manufacturing Sector

Justice for Migrant Women Workers: An Exploration from Electronics Manufacturing Sector

Becoming siap mental: education for transnational labour migration

ABSTRACTDisparate groups with dissimilar agendas, ranging from the Indonesian government to grassroots education collectives, agree that training and education play an important role in preparing women for safe labour migration. However, perspectives on precisely how this training and education should be structured and what information should be included vary widely. This article, which is based on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia, explores the range of perspectives on what it means to become educated about migration for domestic labour. Particular attention is given to migrant women’s emphasis on the idea of being siap mental (mentally ready) for migration. This research sheds light on the challenges to developing education programmes for migrant women workers and contributes empirical evidence on the role that nonformal or out-of-school education can play in shaping values and social norms.

REGIONAL COOPERATION AND LEGAL PROTECTION TO INDONESIAN WOMEN MIGRANT WORKER

The increasing number of Indonesian women migrant workers (IWMWs) started since 1997, and remain high after the global financial crisis in 2008. The impact for Indonesian economy is quite significant in terms of social and economy. Unemployment rate increased significantly as well as number of people living below poverty line. Social and family relations changed as women forced to work in public sectors to support family economy. Domestic job scarcity turned thousands of Indonesian women as family bread winner by working overseas. The above push factors are combines by increasing demands of IWMWs in the newly industrialized countries in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore and Malaysia. Geographic and cultural proximity also become reasons both countries are favorite destination to IMWs. As IMWs are mostly uneducated, so they left with no or little choices rather than working as domestic servant or other low income jobs known as 4D’s jobs (dirty, dangerous, difficult, demeaning) under poor working conditions. These marginal conditions were the result of weak bargaining position especially compared to other nationality, such as the Filipinos. Marginality also led to the emergence of the issue related to the violation of human and worker rights. To solve the problems, ASEAN countries need to cooperate and to build a solid legal system to protect IWMWs. The conflicting interests within ASEAN member countries between the receiving (Singapore, Malaysia) and sending (Indonesia, The Philippines, Thailand) have prevented the regional organization to produce binding legal products to protect its migrant workers. This research will answer questions: “what are solutions to increase IWMWs bargaining position in regional work force?” Other question would be: “How ASEAN solve regional news related migration issue”.

Her voice in the making: ICTs and the empowerment of migrant women in Pearl River Delta, China

Various studies have shown that the use of social media via mobile devices is ubiquitous among the new generation of migrant workers in China. However, for young female migrant workers, aged between 18 and 35 years, despite the significant increase in their access to information technology, very few web-based contents are targeted at them or address the issues they face. In terms of social media participation, it is still quite difficult for them to express their views online. While Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can be largely used to overcome the gender digital divide among less privileged populations, discussion on such practices and their impact has been inconclusive so far. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the Pearl River Delta in China, this paper reveals that government-implemented and market-driven internal migration presents a tangible opportunity to tackle longstanding challenges of the gender digital divide amongst female workers. This paper also outlines the possibilities for innovative and strategic use of ICTs to technologically empower women migrant workers in China.

The Art of the Possible: Making films on sex work migration and human trafficking

Fiction films and documentaries increasingly bring the themes of sex work migration and human trafficking to the big screen. The films often focus on women who have experienced a range of abusive conditions within the sex industry, experiences which in the films typically are all labelled ‘trafficking’ and narrated through the capture of innocents and their rescue. Images of ‘sex slaves’ have thus entered the film scene as iconic figures of pain and suffering, and ‘traffickers’ have emerged as icons of human evil. Building upon the substantial scholarly critique of such films and representations, this article discusses the possibilities of making films about migrant sex workers (some of whom may be trafficked) that do not fall into misleading and sensationalised representations. I draw upon two films about women migrant sex workers that I have worked on as an anthropologist and filmmaker—Trafficking (2010) and Becky’s Journey (2014). The point of departure is that there are a range of other aspects that can influence the filmmaking process rather than merely a one-dimensional perspective on sex work and trafficking. While analysing the making of these two films I look at the reasons—both theoretical and practical—for certain production decisions and the ways in which films in the context of multiple challenges are often the result of the art of the possible.