Regulation through responsibilisation: Gendered exit policies and precarious migration from India and Sri Lanka

Abstract

Gendered migration governance has emerged as a key modality through which South Asian countries mobilise and manage women migrant workers. This involves complex policy articulations encompassing the restriction, protection and promotion of migration. Through analysis of state discourse and stakeholder responses in India and Sri Lanka, we examine how policies of labour-sending states co-produce and compound migrant vulnerability by displacing responsibility for risk-management onto individual migrants and intermediaries. We suggest that institutional constraints on women's exit coalesce with structural inequalities at the regional level to exacerbate precarity during the course of migration, reducing potential economic gains from migration while heightening individual risk. The paper concludes by identifying the need for gender-responsive, evidence-based policy frameworks to promote safe migration and provide inclusive local employment alternatives.