The legal protection of women migrant domestic workers from the Philippines and Sri Lanka: an intersectional rights-based approach

Abstract

Women migrants’ position in the global labour market is constrained by gender and racial divisions of labour, and the work they are offered is often insecure, low-paid and concentrated in feminised sectors of the economy, such as domestic work. It is not only women who predominantly perform domestic work, but also women of a certain race, ethnicity, socio-economic class and nationality. This article adopts an intersectional rights-based lens to examine how selected policies and regulations in the Philippines and Sri Lanka are discriminating against, and creating conditions for the systematic exploitation of, women migrant domestic workers positioned at the intersection of multiple converging identities.

“Who is not an agent here?”: The Collateral Damage of Anti‐Trafficking in Nepal

“…The government of Nepal maintains that “these restrictions were imposed with the intention of protecting women from perceived dangerous and exploitative working conditions abroad, especially for domestic workers” (ILO 2015:5). Several migration scholars have highlighted the unintended consequences of these gendered migration bans in migrant‐sending countries like the Philippines (Henderson 2021), Sri Lanka (Gamburd 2000), Ethiopia (Fernandez 2013), Malaysia (Killias 2010), and Nepal (Shivakoti 2020). These bans are complexly entwined with discourses of gender, religion, race, class, morality, security, exploitation, diplomacy, and national development (Bhagat 2022a; Killias 2010; Platt et al.…”

Representation of Migrant Women Workers and their Negotiations with the Nation: A Study of Selected Sri Lankan English Fiction

“…These women are the main income generators of their families and they contribute to the Sri Lankan economy as a vital part of the labour force as low-skilled workers. Their reasons for migrating, the violation of their rights in foreign countries, the legal protection that they are offered and the negative impact of the absence of women from their own households have been heavily debated and assessed issues in previous research (Jayasuriya & Opeskin, 2015;Mahanama & Thennakoon, 2012;Tidball, 2011;Henderson, 2021;Kottegoda et al, 2013).…”

“…I perceive that analyzing and examining the representations of these women in literary work is vital as they are mass-cultural productions which provide an outlook or media through which these identities communicate. Further, the available research on Sri Lankan migrant women workers is within the parameters of empirical research comprised of both qualitative and quantitative studies (Jayasuriya & Opeskin, 2015;Mahanama & Thennakoon, 2012;Tidball, 2011;Henderson, 2021;Kottegoda et al, 2013).…”