Essay · 2019
Female Migration and Exploitation
Women and girls now account for roughly half of all international migrants, yet their journeys remain shaped by gendered vulnerability. This essay examines how female migrants from developing countries are drawn into oppressive and exploitative conditions in wealthier host states, often through informal, unprotected work as domestic labourers, care workers and, in some cases, victims of trafficking. Drawing on case studies of the United Arab Emirates, where restrictive labour policies trap migrant women with abusive employers, and Italy, where Nigerian women navigate hardened borders and coerced sex work, it argues that restrictive migration regimes, poverty and structural gender inequality, rather than mobility itself, produce the abuse. It closes by weighing legal protections against the gap in enforcement.
By Yemisi Johnson · Essay · PDF
Summary
Women and girls now account for roughly half of all international migrants, yet their journeys remain shaped by gendered vulnerability. This essay examines how female migrants from developing countries are drawn into oppressive and exploitative conditions in wealthier host states, often through informal, unprotected work as domestic labourers, care workers and, in some cases, victims of trafficking. Drawing on case studies of the United Arab Emirates, where restrictive labour policies trap migrant women with abusive employers, and Italy, where Nigerian women navigate hardened borders and coerced sex work, it argues that restrictive migration regimes, poverty and structural gender inequality, rather than mobility itself, produce the abuse. It closes by weighing legal protections against the gap in enforcement.
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