Women Migrants Fight Capitalist Exploitation, Forced Migration and All Forms of Violence

Statement of the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) in commemoration of the International Womens Day
8 March 2020
 
 As we commemorate International Womens Day, the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) raises grave concern over the worsening conditions faced by women migrants around the world. With forced migration intensifying and migrant workers continually commodified, women migrants become more vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and all forms of violence wherever they are at.
 
These vulnerabilities are highlighted with the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
 
Migrants in general have not figured in policies, programs and mechanisms designed by national governments to address the crisis and panic brought about by the COVID-19. The absence of government attention has put migrants, especially women migrants namely, domestic workers, factory workers, marriage migrants, refugees, and undocumented migrants at greater risk of not only contracting the virus but falling victim to racism, ostracism and exploitation.
 
Cases of discrimination, abuse and neglect of women migrant domestic workers (WMDWs) have increased with the worsening of the contagion. Many of them have reported not being provided surgical masks or other protective material by their employers; made to clean the house, especially the toilet, more than once with cleaning agents containing strong, harmful chemicals; and being refused to take their rest days even if they are made to go out on errands during their workdays. 
 
Some governments have taken actions that placed women migrants in greater insecurity and at threat of job loss. The Hong Kong Labour Departments public discouragement of WMDWs to go out on their rest days has a racial undertone (projecting the latter as careless, irresponsible individuals and hence with higher probability of getting infected) while the Philippine governments sudden imposition of a travel ban to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau have endangered the jobs and livelihood of its nationals with jobs there.
 
The health crisis situation has magnified the worsening state by which migrant domestic workers live. With domestic work not recognized as work, migrant domestic workers will remain as modern-day slaves, cheap, subservient and disposable. 
 
The current global capitalist system has only intensified the commodification of migrants, many of whom are women (pegged at 68 million, or 41.5% of the total migrant labor force). Neoliberal impositions have only pummeled the already bankrupt economies of developing and underdeveloped countries impoverishing and displacing more women, especially women workers and peasant women. Wars of aggression and proxy wars have forced millions of people including women and children out of their homelands to become refugees. The suffering women, and men, have become a rich source of cheap labor to be exported and exploited whilst falsely presenting the current migration model as a means to development.
 
The COVID-19 has likewise exposed the growing xenophobia targeting migrants of Asian descent. Racial slurs flooding social media, direct physical and verbal assaults, and other discriminatory actions have been documented. More threatening is the rise of right-wing and tyrannical regimes in both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries that crack down on anyone migrants, refugees and even local people who are openly critical. Indeed, we are not only vulnerable to the COVID-19 but to the virus that is fascism. 
 
With an exploitative, divisive and oppressive system, women migrants have no other choice but to fight back. Many women migrants now discuss the problems confronting them, join or form unions, and lead campaigns to defend rights, demand justice and fight systemic violence. While social media is a tool we can use, it is only in our direct and painstaking organizing, mobilizing and launching campaigns have we gained victories. 
 
On this International Womens Day, we call on all our sisters to remain vigilant, steadfastly organize themselves and endeavour to build womens organizations and movements that will champion the struggle against patriarchy, violence against women and other issues that are linked to the fundamental issues of forced migration, labor export and commodification.
 
For a world without forced migration, exploitation and violence, let us all continue to fight.

--
Eni Lestari
chairperson