Migration seems to offer a chance at better prospects than many women in this region can find at home. However, whatever drives their decision to migrate, women’s options for and experiences of migration are constrained by structural forces such as patriarchy, globalisation, militarism and fundamentalisms, the same forces that exert power over women’s lives and limit the full realisation of their human rights in their countries of origin.
This report describes the Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) carried out by seven organisations from six countries across Asia and the Pacific region (Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong) between 2019 and 2021. The women migrants who partnered with APWLD in this research described how migration was an inevitable response to poor living conditions and prospects that deny their human rights and fundamental freedoms. Their migration is a refusal to accept this, showing initiative and resilience. They brought these characteristics to the FPAR, sharing their experiences and analyses and took on exclusion from legislation or bad laws and policies, exploitative recruitment agencies, abusive employers, and a lack of access to services and to justice.
Researching the most immediate concerns of women migrants from or in those countries, the FPAR findings demonstrate that, at home and abroad, women face systemic marginalisation and discrimination, putting them at a disproportionate risk of human rights abuses throughout the migration cycle. It also demonstrated that women migrants are not prepared to accept this. Building their skills, the FPAR partners have used the research findings as an evidence base for action – through communications and advocacy they have made connections, built alliances and strengthened movements, lobbied governments and raised their issues with UN representatives, and achieved meaningful change for their sisters and communities.
Download the full report here.
