This article uses migrant precarity as a lens through which to analyse the issue of mobilization for migrants' rights by civil society. Such mobilization efforts are vital in light of the emergence of global migration governance, which tends to actively constrain considerations for migrants' human and labour rights. Asia's temporary migrants have been identified as a particularly precarious group of workers due to their specific position within the international division of labour, one that is defined by poorly-or unregulated work with insecure legal and residential status. Moreover, with local employment in countries of origin often characterized by informal employment, poor working conditions and unsustainable livelihoods, migrant workers are caught within a protracted precarity that spans life at home and abroad. Stronger normative and organizational links between global migration governance and migrant rights movements are needed to advance decent work agendas within countries of destination, as well as in countries of origin.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Domestic worker migration can profoundly reconfigure unpaid care arrangements within migrant households, often exacerbating gendered inequalities in providing and receiving care. While the International Labor Organization has led rights advocacy around migrant domestic work, there remains a dearth of attention to the relationship between feminized migration and unpaid care. In Sri Lanka, this policy space has been occupied by the Family Background Report: a series of regulations that reinforce maternal caregiving by restricting the migration of women with young children. An alternative “decent care” approach, involving investment in local care infrastructure, could yield multiple benefits while promoting a gender-inclusive decent work agenda.

No abstract

Policies banning women domestic workers from migrating overseas have long been imposed by labour-sending states in the Indo-Pacific region. This article presents the complexities surrounding such bans by developing an overarching model of a migration ban policy cycle, which provides a theoretical framework for understanding the circumstances under which migration bans arise and play out. It examines the history of migration bans for four prominent labour-sending states – Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines and Sri Lanka - to assess the causes, outcomes and extent of regional convergence of these policies. In doing so, we uncover two prominent policy narratives. The first involves labour diplomacy, where countries employ bans to negotiate superior working conditions and rights for migrant workers. The second concerns paternalist states as ‘protector’, where states are primarily motivated to reaffirm traditional gender norms. We conclude that migration bans have been most effective, both in curbing departures and achieving desired outcomes, when they are primarily motivated by labour issues and not gender politics. Nevertheless, even when used as a form of diplomatic negotiation, migration bans heighten the vulnerability of domestic workers to exploitation by pushing them into irregular pathways fraught with risk.