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Journal article

Gender and migration policies in Southeast and East Asia: Legal protection and sociocultural empowerment of unskilled migrant women

Date

2004

Authors

N. Piper

Abstract

This paper is concerned with how existing migration policies affect individual migrant women's choices, in particular, with the advancement, or consolidation, of a migrants' rights perspective. The focus is thereby on those migrants classified as unskilled, who constitute the largest and most vulnerable category among migrants. The analysis of migration policies has conventionally been approached from a state/government-centred viewpoint that sees states as the key actors. This paper, however, emphasises a larger number of actors-governmental and non-governmental-as well as the power relations among them to argue that protection through "legal regulation" in the absence of actual implementation is an incomplete solution to alleviate unfair labour conditions that migrants in general, and migrant women specifically, experience. Measures designed to "protect" migrants must be accompanied by measures that empower them, a role that has largely been taken on by existing migrant worker non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Focussing on intra-Asian migration flows in which Southeast Asia is the main labour sender and East Asia the receiver of Southeast Asian migrants, the paper explores the nexus between law and civic activism in the specific subject area of international labour migration and its gender implications. [References: 61]

Journal title

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography

Volume

25

Issue

2

Page numbers

216-231

Links

Economic sectors

Occupations in services - Domestic work, Other, and General relevance - all sectors

Content types

Statistics on work and life conditions

Target groups

Researchers

Geographical focuses

Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, and Malaysia

Spheres of activity

Gender and sexuality studies and Law

Languages

English