COVID-19 and women migrant workers in ASEAN

This brief explores the multi-dimensional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women migrant workers in and from the ASEAN region. While women migrant workers in the ASEAN region strive to protect their livelihoods and their health, COVID-19 has presented them with a health crisis, compounded by detrimental impacts on freedom from violence and harassment, employment, income, social protection, access to services, and access to justice. This brief outlines the critical programmatic and policy responses needed. ILO-UN Women Safe and Fair Programme, as part of the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative, is committed to ensuring women migrant workers’ rights are protected and they receive support when and where they need it.

COVID-19: Impact on migrant workers and country response in Myanmar

Country brief prepared by the ILO Liaison Office in Myanmar on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant workers, and country's responses.

COVID-19: Impact on migrant workers and country response in Thailand

Country brief prepared by the ILO’s Country Office for Thailand on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant workers, and country's responses.

COVID-19: Impact on migrant workers and country response in Cambodia

Country brief prepared by the ILO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant workers, and country responses.

Understanding patterns of structural discrimination against migrant and other workers in some countries of South and West Asia

This background paper reviews the literature that sheds light on the structural patterns of discrimination against migrant workers in some countries of South and West Asia. It also articulates recommendations that would help officials in UN agencies, international organizations, constituents and other civil society individuals and groups, while referring to the existing evidence of structural discrimination to support the application of international labour standards.

While references to international non-discrimination standards do occasionally surface in public discourses, this paper reviews evidence that discrimination in the world of work is not only characterized by socially deviant cases of discriminatory abuse, as reported in the media, but is rather intrinsic to the way various market economies and political systems are structured. This is manifested by indicators of privilege for some and indicators of deprivation for those at the bottom of the social and political hierarchies, including the interaction between both.

Experiences of ASEAN migrant workers during COVID-19: Rights at work, migration and quarantine during the pandemic, and re-migration plans

The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting labour migration throughout the ASEAN region and globally. In 2019 there were an estimated 10 million international migrants in ASEAN, of whom nearly 50 per cent were women. The ILO undertook a rapid assessment survey, interviewing ASEAN migrant workers from end-March to end-April 2020 about how COVID-19 has impacted them. This brief summarizes the responses of the 309 women and men migrant workers who participated in the survey.

A very beautiful but heavy jacket: The experiences of migrant workers with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression in South-East Asia

The study reveals migrant workers with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE) in South-East Asia benefit from labour migration, yet experience discrimination.

Among the millions of migrant workers who move between countries in South-East Asia and beyond, little is known about the motivations and experiences of migrant workers who are also people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expression (SOGIE) including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.

This report fills that gap. It draws on surveys and interviews with 147 migrant workers with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions, exploring their experiences across the migrant work journey as they travel from countries of origin such as Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Viet Nam to work in countries of destination in South-East Asia (especially Thailand), East Asia, and beyond.

The report also explores how labour migration policies and practices can acknowledge or address these experiences while protecting and promoting the rights of migrant workers with diverse SOGIE.

The invisible workers: Bangladeshi women in Oman

The purpose of this ethnography is to follow the lives of working women from Bangladesh and document and analyse the diversity of their individual and collective experiences. The findings reveal a reality that contrasts from the usual characterisations of migrant women.

This study explores the work and lives of women from Bangladesh in Oman. It is meant to be an exploratory study about the working and living conditions of women domestic workers from Bangladesh. The study lays out the context of women’s migration from Bangladesh to Oman, it’s relationship with the migration of men, the types of work and living arrangements that were encountered, the social networks of migrant women and other considerations that Bangladeshi women reflected on. This ethnographic study fills a gap on research regarding migrant workers from Bangladesh in Oman.

Migration and gender in Bangladesh: An irregular landscape

This survey is part of a series of studies commissioned by the Work in Freedom Programme of the ILO in order to document the motives and trajectories of migrant women workers. The survey explores the local and regional gendered specificities of migration and work-seeking in selected localities of Bangladesh by collecting gender disaggregated data and analysing contrasting patterns that inform women and men’s migration.

This report presents the result of a survey conducted in five districts of Bangladesh to document international labour migration. The districts were selected for their contrasting features. Two districts, Barguna and Patuakhali, are relatively new to women’s migration, whereas three districts, Manikganj, Narayanganj and Brahmanbaria, have a long history of such movement. The extent of women’s participation in migration was a major criteria for the selection of districts aimed to capture a range of situations. In all, 8,437 migrant workers were recorded in 125 villages. The analysis brings out important consideration that challenge common assumptions on women’s migration. For example, the survey brings out hard evidence that questions policy assumptions that women migrate homogenously from around the country or that their cost of recruitment is high. In that sense, this survey’s findings have important implications on local, national and regional policy making related to safe migration, anti-trafficking and labour policies.