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.

Leaving no one behind: Access to social protection for all migrant women

Date: Monday, January 20, 2020

Social protection is a universal human right and a key element of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While this right unequivocally applies to migrants, irrespective of migration status, migrant women in particular often remain excluded. Against this backdrop, this policy brief discusses the barriers that migrant women face in accessing social protection and provides recommendations for States to meet their obligation to overcome these, particularly in relation to health care, maternity protection and essential services for victims and survivors of violence.

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.

Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The gender snapshot 2019

Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Are we on track to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls? This report brings together the latest available evidence on gender equality across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, underscoring the progress made as well as the action still needed to accelerate progress.

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.

Disrupted families: The gendered impacts of family reunification policies on Syrian refugees in Germany

Date: Monday, April 30, 2018

This discussion paper examines the impacts of shifting policies in relation to family reunification and internal dispersal on the experiences of female Syrian asylum seekers in Germany. It sheds light on how female Syrian asylum seekers and recognized refugees have coped with diverse challenges before arriving, during long-lasting separations, after subsequent reunifications in Germany, or after arriving alone.

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.