Women migrant workers are on the increase in Southern Africa
By Charlotte Sutherland(1)
The numbers of women who undertake migrant labour in Southern Africa have been increasing significantly over the past decade. The migrant labour endeavour is a double-edged sword for women. On the one hand, becoming a migrant labourer can mean the acquisition of new skills and uplifting one’s family and community financially, but on the other, women migrant workers expose themselves to several risks during this process. The United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), recently released a study titled “Gender, Migration and Remittances in Selected SADC Countries: Preliminary Findings” that focuses on women’s migration labour from and between six countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. This month’s newsletter touches on the surface of the complexities that underlie the gendered phenomenon of migrant labour in Southern Africa (2).
A COMPLEX MATTER: THE GLOBAL AND LOCAL CONNECTIONS
Migrant labour used to be a male dominated domain, but several large-scale changes, on the African continent and globally, have restructured the face of migrant labour. A conundrum of elements contributes to the fact that women now make up almost 50% of migrants in the SADC region. Globalisation has opened up markets for skilled workers and the decrease in mining activity has provided new insertion points into economies, for example in the service sector. Women also increasingly participate in the informal sector and cross-border trade. This said, the globalisation of labour is also characterised by job losses adding to the impoverishment of unskilled workers. Globalisation thus plays a paradoxical role in the state of labour in that tensions exist between the opportunities and constraints imposed on people by the process.
The factors that push women to leave their countries are multiple and the complexity of their intersections goes beyond the scope of this newsletter. Combinations of poverty, gender discrimination, abuse, armed conflict, HIV & AIDS and climate change push women to seek employment in other countries. South Africa hosts many more migrant labourers than other SADC countries, but migration from and to all SADC countries are common. It is estimated that one in ten Africans will live and work outside their country of origin by 2025 (2).
Increasingly, women migrant labourers are primary economic providers and heads of households. They often travel alone and need to return to migrant occupations repeatedly. They usually find employment as domestic workers or entertainers, or other fields that are not regulated by labour laws. The agricultural sector absorbs a large amount of migrant workers, but its seasonal nature does not make for a stable year-round income. Thus a combination of elements, such as local conflicts and global restructuring of work, result in an array of migration patterns in Southern Africa.
WOMEN MIGRANT WORKERS CONTRIBUTE TO DEVELOPMENT
Some women acquire new skills through their migrant occupations, which they use to contribute to both the host and their own countries’ economies. The sending and receiving countries benefit from the remittances women send and the productive investments they are able to make with their earned income. Poverty reduction could be aided by these remittances and investments, which are usually geared to improve families’ living conditions by serving needs such as food, clothing, education, health and savings. Community development can experience a significant boost when several community members inject capital into the community through the remittances they send home. These benefits include improved local physical infrastructure, growth of local commodity markets, development of new services, changes to cultural practices that harm girl children and generation of local employment opportunities (3).
VULNERABILITIES AND EXPLOITATION
Brokers, recruiters, employers and migration officials can all exploit women migrant workers, especially those who are unskilled. Many female migrants are illiterate and unskilled and often have limited knowledge about and access to information regarding their rights. Hence, women migrant workers are vulnerable as women, as foreigners and as unskilled labourers, and are exposed to possible abuse and exploitation such as physical and social isolation, sexual harassment and sexual and physical violence. Often, women who set out to undertake migrant labour end up being trafficked, and this severely compromises their dignity and the empowerment potential of the migration labour endeavour. Receiving countries may also resent women migrant workers when these countries have to pay for medical and legal services required by the women (4). The women may furthermore be exposed to even more harm and rights violations when bans and restrictions on labour migration cause them to migrate illegally. Data on irregular migration is hard to qualify and quantify, but men are thought to dominate these flows and subject the women who resort to irregular migration to sexual ‘favours’ (5).
HOW CAN WOMEN MIGRANT WORKERS BE PROTECTED?
The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has prioritised several areas that need policy action by governments, civil society and the private sector (6). These include reforming laws and policies to measure up to international standards set by actors such as the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), regulating recruitment, providing multi-sectoral training and services, empowering women to productively invest and save their earnings, supporting their reintegration to avoid stigma and alienation, raising awareness and focusing on gaining more knowledge on the numbers of migrants in each country as well as their experiences.
The challenges that exist around the protection of vulnerable women migrant workers exist on local and global levels, as well as on governmental and civil society levels. Xenophobia could counteract awareness raising initiatives, and a lack of ground level implementation of regulations will leave vulnerable women no more protected than before. Governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations will have to cooperate and channel resources towards the protection of vulnerable groups in a much more systematic and large-scale fashion, if they are to protect the increasing numbers of migrant workers. Until then, these people remain vulnerable not only to global forces like restructuring and climate change, that cause unemployment and decreasing resources, but also to ground level vultures who prey on the powerless.
(1) Charlotte Sutherland is Gender Specialist: Gender Issues in Africa, at Consultancy Africa Intelligence (officesa@consultancyafrica.com)
(2) This month’s newsletter draws on the UN-INSTRAW report, which can be downloaded at http://www.un-instraw.org/en/downloads/gender-remittances-and-developmen...
(3) Gender, Migration and Remittances in Selected SADC Countries: Preliminary Findings” 2007. By the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).
(4) UNIFEM, 2006. “Empowering Women Migrant Workers” available on http://www.unifem.org
(5) “Gender, Migration and Remittances in Selected SADC Countries: Preliminary Findings” 2007. By the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).
(6) UNIFEM, 2006. “Empowering Women Migrant Workers” available on http://www.unifem.org
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