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Global: 48.3% migrant workers are women, facing increased vulnerability and discrimination

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by IDWFED published Mar 16, 2012 12:00 AM
Contributors: Miguel Ángel Malavia/Vida Nueva
Caritas International denounces in a recent report, «The Female Face of Immigration», the difficult life conditions for the 104 million migrant women worldwide (a 48.3% of the total). The ultimate goal of the study is to draw attention on the specific needs of those who are forced to leave their countries in general, and to emphasize the women's situation which is even more burdening than the one of the men.

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Caritas International denounces in a recent report, «The Female Face of Immigration», the difficult life conditions for the 104 million migrant women worldwide (a 48.3% of the total). The ultimate goal of the study is to draw attention on the specific needs of those who are forced to leave their countries in general, and to emphasize the women's situation which is even more burdening than the one of the men.

The study indicates that women are exhibited to a greater vulnerability and discrimination. A lack of protection to which the one is added that happens to every single migrant.

For that reason the Caritas, besides analyzing the different problems, chooses to demand to the concrete political involved authorities for their commitment.

Something that also serves to congratulate oneself for the advances. As in the case of the Convention on the domestic workers, published last year by the International Labor Organization (ILO).

As the study explains, the domestic work “continues being invisible and excluded from the scope of the labor legislation”, giving reason to excesses of any kind.

Clandestine gangs

In the same way, the report warns against “the paternalistic approach” towards the female immigration which occurs in places like Bangladesh, where it is prohibited that women younger than 35 years leave the country for labor reasons. This “is pushing” many women so that they approach clandestine gangs, leaving them easily to fall into the hands of “delinquents who dedicate themselves to treat human beings”.

Something similar occurs when “the governments of several Asian countries assume the necessity that labor migration is controlled through hiring agencies”, which, actually, forces the domestic employees “to pay for being able to find a a job”.

Nevertheless, “these costs do not include protection measures”. Eventually, this represents a paradigm that “the governments worry more about the control than about the protection of migrant workers, because it is a profitable business”.

Read the article in Spanish.

Source: Miguel Ángel Malavia/Vida Nueva

Story Type: News

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