Guidance note: Addressing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women migrant workers

Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2020

This guidance note highlights the emerging impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women migrant workers, focusing on the key challenges and risks they face. It makes recommendations in the context of the economic and social response and recovery packages that governments are putting forward, supported by examples of existing good practices from around the world.

Transnational families, care arrangements and the state in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Date: Thursday, December 5, 2019

This paper concerns the implications of migration within Central America for family life. Focusing on the case of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, it shows how Nicaraguan families develop strategies based on a history of informal and flexible caregiving. While these informal strategies allow families to navigate the challenges migration and family separation entail, they also contribute to continued vulnerability and reinforce the gendered burdens of caregiving within transnational families.

Violence against women migrant workers: Report of the Secretary-General (2019)

Date: Friday, July 26, 2019

This report outlines the current context with respect to the problem of violence against women migrant workers. It provides information on the measures taken by Member States and activities undertaken within the UN system to address this issue and ensure the protection of migrant women’s human rights.

In brief: Policies and practice: A guide for gender-responsive implementation of the Global Compact for Migration

Date: Monday, December 10, 2018

A two-page brief providing an overview of UN Women’s “Policies and practice guide on gender-responsive implementation of the Global Compact for Migration”.

‘Love is not a passport to Sweden’: Intimate partner violence against migrant women and the proliferation of rights’ statuses

Date: Wednesday, September 12, 2018

This paper investigates how women’s right to live free from violence operates in the context of insecure immigration status. It identifies a tension between human rights and immigration control that is present in theory, policy frameworks, and migrant women’s lived experiences. It contends that this tension has led to a proliferation of rights’ statuses for migrant women who are exposed to intimate partner violence.

Neither heroines nor victims: Women migrant workers and changing family and community relations in Nepal

Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2017

This paper examines case studies of returnee women migrant workers in Nepal to look specifically at the narratives emerging from the voices of women migrant workers. It aims to give voice to the subjectivities of migrant women in Nepal, unpacking their reasons for migration and their struggles to secure a livelihood in the context of globalization.

Reconfiguring care relationships: Ethiopian migrants in Australia and Lebanon

Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2017

This paper looks to the impact migrant status has caring for children, how state policies support or obstruct the care of migrants’ children, how migration reshapes the meaning of “family”, and how it reconstitutes gender relationships.

Mis/representations of women migrant workers in the media: A critical analysis

Date: Monday, July 31, 2017

This media study is part of UN Women’s EU-funded project, “Promoting and protecting women migrant workers’ labour and human rights: Engaging with international, national human rights mechanisms to enhance accountability”. It focuses on representations of women migrant workers in sending and receiving countries. Articles from newspapers in Canada, Italy, Mexico, and the Philippines are analysed using a gender perspective. Three dominant representations of WMWs are identified: victims, heroes and threats. The implications of these representations are explored and a woman migrant worker–centred approach is recommended.

Women migrant workers and remittances

Date: Monday, July 31, 2017

Based on research and lessons learned from the joint UN Women–EU-funded global project, “Promoting and protecting women migrant workers’ labour and human rights: Engaging with international, national human rights mechanisms to enhance accountability”, which is piloted in Mexico, Moldova and the Philippines, this Brief considers the different ways that women transfer and spend remittances, and provides recommendations to better understand and maximize these remittances.

Using the international human rights system to protect and promote the rights of women migrant workers

Date: Monday, July 31, 2017

This brief provides an overview of the international human rights system as it applies to the promotion and protection of women migrant workers’ rights. Using examples from the joint UN Women–European Union project, “Promoting and protecting women migrant workers’ labour and human rights”, this brief illustrates how these mechanisms can be used by governments, civil society and development partners to enhance the rights of women migrant workers in law and practice.