Reclaiming Migrant Women’s Narratives: A Feminist Participatory Action Research project on ‘Safe and Fair’ Migration in Asia
The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women carried out a Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) on Safe and Fair Migration: A feminist perspective on women’s rights to mobility and work.
In 2018-2019, the International Secretariat of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW-IS), in collaboration with eleven organizations across nine countries in Asia, carried out a Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) on Safe and Fair Migration: A feminist perspective on women’s rights to mobility and work.
The research included community partners from South, Southeast, and West Asia offering perspectives from both countries of origin and destination, as well as on internal migration from rural to urban areas, and focused on the domestic work, garment, and entertainment sectors.
The report argues that in order to make safety and fairness a reality for female migrants, safe and fair migration approaches need to situate women’s experiences beyond migration, anti-trafficking or anti-slavery agendas, and governance mechanisms, and instead need to address working conditions in the labor market as a whole and the root causes of precarious migration and work. Safe and Fair migration cannot happen in a silo – the factors that produce gender-segregated labor markets, industries dependent on flexible, underpaid and overworked migrant labor require a systemic change.
The project sets out that the Feminist Participatory Action Research approach can be distinguished from other forms of research in that it is deliberately women-centered and participant-driven, the knowledge comes from the community and is owned by them and based on their lived experiences, and the research participants propose solutions so the research results become a tool to collectively organize advocacy actions. The Action portion of the research aimed to inspire participants with the sense of a possibility of change to positively impact the situations identified during the research. In discussion groups, research participants could voice collective aspirations and potential actions, and reflect on existing action and mitigation strategies.
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