Invisiblized Migration, Unaccounted Work: The Governance of Women’s Migration for Paid Domestic Work from Nepal and Sri Lanka to the Gulf

Abstract

Based on a comparative analysis of data and policy attitudes in Nepal and Sri Lanka towards women’s migration for paid domestic work, this chapter delineates how women migrant workers contribute to social reproduction at both source and destination but are not recognized for their labour. While some existing protectionist interventions at source and destination countries aim to safeguard women migrant workers who are vulnerable to being trafficked and abused, I argue that such policy measures have had the opposite effect. In this chapter, I demonstrate that policy measures aimed at ‘protection’ have led to the absence, or ‘invisibilization’, of migrant domestic workers in official data, rendering their contribution to social reproduction unrecognized; thereby further marginalizing them in domestic and bilateral policy discussions, and within traditional migration governance channels altogether.