Achieving the sustainable development goals: surfacing the role for a gender analytic of migration

ABSTRACT

This paper forms the introduction to the Special Issue: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the Gender, Migration and Development Nexus. This article takes a broad look at the changing dynamics of migration and development through the feminisation of globalised labour flows and the gendered experiences of categorisation by states and multilateral bodies, and the gender-specific vulnerabilities and outcomes of human mobility. We illustrate how a more nuanced approach to the SDGs that incorporates gender and migration is needed in order that policy and programming designed to achieve the 2030 Agenda is accurately informed and appropriately framed. In this paper and this Issue, we argue, that it is necessary to confront the SDGs with a deeper understanding of gender, migration and development in order to illuminate the interconnected globalised and transnational realities of gendered labour flows. With this aim in mind, we look to civil society participation and the role of the existing human rights architecture, as the key to ensuring that a deep, wholistic and ultimately universal application of the SDGs can be achieved addressing those populations whose rights to development have been undermined by dint of their migration or flight and applying a gender analysis to our understanding of migration and development.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable Development Goals
• SDGs
• gender
• migration
• global migration governance
• women's labour migration

The potential developmental impacts of migrant remittances drew increasing attention in the late 1990s, as the level of remittances from labour migrants started to exceed Foreign Direct Investment and Overseas Development Assistance to some developing countries (Sharma and Knio 2011). The idea of fostering development through remittance expenditure appealed to donor governments and international development partners. Remittances not only provided developing countries with a source of income but did so through the hands of citizens. In by-passing the state, international actors felt that individuals were better able to influence the development impacts of remittances (Gamlen 2014). The migration development nexus, therefore, focused on the development benefits that remittances delivered through human capital investment, mitigating poverty and stimulating local economic growth.

The migration development nexus established in the development discourse was highly instrumental focusing on the potential of remittances to increase investment in human capital and local development, increase liquidity and capital, and promote entrepreneurial spirit (Terry and Wilson 2005; Ratha 2007). However, the tendency to view migrants as a homogenous group in terms of remittance behaviour and spending decisions has rendered much of the approach gender blind. Indeed, alongside the growth of remittance optimism has come increasing recognition of the feminisation of labour migration (Datta et al. 2010) and its implications. Whereas women had largely been assumed to migrate as dependents of men, the increase in their autonomous migration into feminised sectors of work has drawn attention to the complexity of the supposed migration development nexus. In particular, feminist critiques of the migration development nexus have unpacked assumptions about women’s power and decision-making related to their mobility, remittance expenditure and investment, their access to productive resources, and the development benefits of non-financial remittances (Hennebry, Holliday, and Moniruzzzman 2017).

The feminisation of migration continues to change the dynamic of the migration–development nexus. Gender dynamics influence the experiences of migrants throughout all stages of migration, impacting the trajectories, rates and levels of migration, as well as the flows of remittances and their usage (Benería, Deere, and Kabeer 2012). In the context of changing population and labour force dynamics, migrant women fill care deficits created by insufficient social protection and social care systems, often in response to similar social care gaps in countries of origin (Piper 2013; Michel and Peng 2017; Williams 2017; WHO 2017; Gammage and Stevanovic 2019). Further, many women migrate to sustain families, caring from abroad as expressed in their social and financial remittances. With women migrants concentrated in low skilled, low paid and often informal sectors, migration can have detrimental impacts on development, reaffirm structural barriers and exacerbate or maintain gender inequality. Conversely, migration can also create opportunities for women’s economic empowerment, and women migrants’ leadership can nurture political and social capital and foster social remittances as migrant women become catalysts for change. Yet such positive outcomes for gender equality cannot be realised at a global scale without systemic change in how we conceptualise and govern migration and development – requiring an epistemological change that brings gender to the fore. Here, it is important to hold in mind that we view gender as a social construct that is being reshaped and reconstituted over time in different cultures and epochs (Oakley 1972) and even by and through the migration process itself (Silvey 2006). Gender affects the substantive freedoms that individuals have to be and do what they may wish to do and it may even affect their imagining of what they might be and do (Nussbaum 2003). Gender also affects an individual’s agency, that is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices (Kabeer 1999, 2001; Sen 1999). Consequently, viewing migration through the prism of gender will be essential if we are to understand how being a migrant and a woman can affect your experience and enjoyment of economic and social rights.

In its second year of implementation, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (commonly referred to as the Sustainable Development Goals or ‘SDGs’) aspires towards an inclusive and fair social and economic future for all. Whereas the preceding Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had sought to tackle the key issues of poverty and hunger in the context of rich countries aiding poor recipients, the SDGs are address a very different world, where inequality is the key development issue and they are taken to be universal and applicable to all nations in the global south and north (Sustainable Development Solutions Network 2015). It is this universality and the exhortation to leave no one behind that renders the SDGs uniquely powerful as a mechanism that enshrines commitments by governments that can enable claims-making by individuals and excluded groups, including migrants and the stateless. In particular, the SDGs have been lauded for their inclusion of a comprehensive standalone goal on gender equality (Goal 5) as well as a proactive approach of mainstreaming gender throughout the other 16 goals (Stuart and Woodruffe 2016). Goal 5 seeks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls and is illustrative of an acceptance that gender equality is key to sustainable, peaceful and inclusive development. Movement of people is also expressly included in the 2030 Agenda, recognising that rights must move with people, through the prevention of trafficking and forced labour, the protection of labour and the facilitation of safe mobility. Through Goal 8.8, the SDGs specifically address the need to protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, in particular women migrants. In addition to Goals 5 and 8, the interaction between women migrant workers and the SDGs can be found in a number of other goals and indicators, as set out in in Table 1. In this regard, the 2030 Agenda can be applied to guide policymakers to mainstream gender into national migration and development policies as well as strengthening policy processes to prevent exploitation and abuse of women migrant workers and to empower them as workers and as women. The SDGs further provide a tool by which women migrants are able to hold policy makers accountable to their labour and human rights.

Table 1. Applying the SDGs to women migrant workers.

SDG	Goal Description	Relevance to WMWs
Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
4.3	Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university.	Address lack of equitable/empowering opportunities for WMWs with structural barriers to education.
4.4	Substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship.	Address lack of recognizable/professionalised skills in feminised sectors.
Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
5.2	Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private sphere, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.	Mitigate vulnerabilities of WMWs to violence in the workplace (such as in Domestic Work) and WMWs in transit to COD.
5.4	Recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.	Recognise the value of global care chains in the countries of origin and destination; Identify the role and costs of transnational mothering; Challenge social constructions that undermine the value of the worker and the person by identifying all women migrants as workers with corresponding rights.
5.5	Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.	Recognise the value and weight of social/political remittances of WMWs.$Incorporate WMW representatives into key migration governance fora and processes (Global Forum on Migration and Development; High Level Political Forum; Global Compact).
5.c	Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.	Mainstream gender and migration in legislative and policy frameworks.
Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
8.5	Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value.	Attention to and regulation of gender pay discrepancies/lack of decent work in feminised formal and informal sectors (entertainment and sex).
8.7	To take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms.	Address the causes, organisations and demands that generate and facilitate forced labour and trafficking of women.
8.8	To protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment.	Protect WMWs’ labour rights for the promotion of decent and dignified work.
Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
10.2	Empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.	Increase legal migration channels and opportunities for WMWs and formalise work that empowers WMWs and values their contributions at home and abroad.
10.4	Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage and social protection policies, and progressively achieve gender equality.	Gender inclusive social protection including transferability of benefits/pension for WMWs.
10.7	To facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.	Gender-responsive labour migration governance that empowers WMWs in decisions affecting their economic future.
10.c	To reduce to less than 3 per cent the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent	Eliminating discrimination against WMWs in relation to costs; Financial inclusion: bring awareness to the role of WMWs as sound agents of economic development.
Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
16.2	End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children.	Address the interaction between labour migration and the exploitation, trafficking and violence against children.
Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
17.18	By 2020, enhance capacity-building support to developing countries, including for least developed countries and small island developing States, to increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts	Increase and improve data disaggregated gender, age and migratory status.

The content in this table builds on that originally featured in the publication cited.

Source: Hennebry, Holliday, and Moniruzzzman (2017).

In this Special Issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, the authors explore the need to consider gender and migration together in order to effectively address how these characteristics and identities impact individual well-being and as a result shape individual, collective and global development outcomes as they are enshrined in the SDGs. Using the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda, the Issue comprises a series of papers that illustrate – primarily through an inter-sectoral lens into feminised labour migration – the importance of focusing on the interaction between gender and migration in achieving the 2030 Agenda. In particular, the papers demonstrate how gender norms and gender inequality shape the contours and expressions of labour migration and the systemic and structural exploitation (Zwolinski 2011) of women migrants. The papers demonstrate that gender norms interact with migration, and addressing them must be central to labour migration governance. Ultimately, in order to create gender equitable labour migration governance that supports sustainable development, gender equality itself must be addressed in both sending and receiving countries (Nowacka 2015). This also means that the practices and procedures that categorise women migrants, as dependents, economic migrants, victims of trafficking, wives and mothers, and by default or design define their rights and ability to claim their rights must be considered seriously – not doing so will have negative consequences nationally and globally, in times of crisis and in times of growth, and in all times for women themselves. Notwithstanding this, we argue that proactive strategies to ensure that gender and migration are cohesively and comprehensively addressed throughout the international framework of normative instruments and mechanisms can also be achieved through the lens of the 2030 Agenda, if attention is paid to the need to do so now. Lastly, the role of civil society must be embedded in the work of achieving the 2030 Agenda and is key to the empowerment of migrant women and to holding duty-bearers to account (De Jong 2013; Bissio 2014; Nazneen and Sultan 2014; Sen and Mukherjee 2014; Kabeer 2015).

Through a focus on migration for sex work in Southeast Asia, Elias and Holliday (2019) consider in their paper how the SDGs reflect, but do not attempt to resolve, the dichotomy between women’s labour and work. Sex work is an issue area in which no consensus exists, with sex workers being viewed as both exploited and trafficked, and also empowered labour rights holders. The SDGs mirror this polarised approach by framing sex work as either a labour issue under SDG 8 that requires interventions to support migrant workers to achieve decent work; or as an issue of violence against women and trafficking requiring interventions that prevent the practice and protect the women as victims under SDG5. Drawing upon evidence from Southeast Asia, and Cambodia in particular, the paper examines the ways through which these competing understandings of sex work have permeated national and international policy responses. It argues that, unless this polarised position is addressed in the interpretation and implementation of the SDGs, there is a risk that they will not only be irrelevant to sex workers, but that the lack of consensus will prevent achievement of the goals. In this way, the SDGs simultaneously draw attention to, whilst providing the opportunity to address and resolve, tension as it relates to the rights of women migrant sex workers.

This joint ability of the SDGs to be used as a tool to highlight a tension, as well as provide the framework of opportunity to address this tension, can also be demonstrated in the case of nurse migration. Thompson and Walton Roberts’ (2019) paper illustrates how both Indian and Filipino women are in part pushed into training and then migrating as nurses due to national and regional expectations which frame women as natural caregivers, and portray overseas opportunities as preferential to national employment, and which seek to regulate the bodies and actions of their women migrants. The paper examines nurse migration from India and the Philippines through the lens of the SDGs 4.3 (access to training), 10.7 (orderly and responsible migration), and 3.c (retention of health workers), in particular looking at the national level impact on SDGs of a globally driven feminised labour sector. SDGs are imagined as a national goal, but in the case of education and migration intersections they are shaped by global demands for nurses and discourses about the global professional status of nursing. The ability of states to meet SDGs is curtailed by global operations, human capital deficits and quotidian desires; but nation states do have a role defining and defending migration flows and rights. Indeed, the internationalisation of the labour force demands internationalisation of regulatory frameworks to manage their protection and the protection of health systems. The paper calls for greater attention to the global structuring of feminised migrant mobility in the area of nursing in order to highlight the limited ability of national policies to address SDG goals.

Looking primarily at women in care work, Gammage and Stevanovic’s (2019) paper explores how the SDGs have the potential to both resolve care deficits and protect migrant worker rights in higher income labour importing countries. Highlighting that a failure to recognise and value unpaid care work has created a sustained labour demand for women migrant care workers in many of these labour importing countries, Gammage and Stevanovic argue that the focus of the SDGs should not just be on their relevance to development and foreign aid. Instead this paper advocates for a consistent application of SDG goals 5 and 8 and their linking to existing labour rights norms and conventions, as a means to simultaneously address care deficits in home and host countries and protect the rights of care workers in labour importing countries and ensure that migrant workers are able to claim these rights. In doing so, the paper also notes the need for mechanisms that facilitate civil society oversight and, ultimately, strengthen state accountability to these goals, suggesting that strong links with existing norms and conventions could provide such mechanisms.

The need to focus on mechanisms that strengthen accountability to the SDGs is addressed in Hennebry, KC and Piper’s (2019) paper, which seeks to provide an analysis of civil society’s role in foregrounding the agenda of women migrants in migration and development fora, and reflects on its role in realising the UN SDG. Using the state-led Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) as the primary example, the paper illustrates how, whilst the efforts of civil society have been crucial in advocating for gender-mainstreaming within the contemporary global migration and development paradigm, the dominant narrative within international fora continues to be a gender-blind migration for development approach. The paper argues that while the SDGs include some significant provisions for women in migration, only critical civil society advocacy and activism networked within grassroots CSOs can address the structural changes necessary (such as a re-articulation of the care economy to value economic contributions of women’s reproductive work) to truly transform and improve the lived realities of women migrant workers and realise the SDGs in a manner that fosters empowerment of women migrant workers specifically. Whilst the GFMD is a forum where the CSOs can engage in SDG governance; without more intricate mechanisms to have CSOs at the table, embedded in the apparatus for implementing and monitoring SDGS, the agenda won’t work for women migrant workers.

Each of the papers recognises the progress and strength of the SDGs in integrating gender as a cross-cutting and important issue and provides insights on enhancing gender-based approaches to implementation of these commitments. These papers are intended to inform part of a growing body of feminist scholarship on how best to practically interpret and implement the SDGs (Esquivel 2016; Razavi 2016). In viewing the SDGs through the lens of gender and migration – an issue that is both contemporaneous, but also which is addressed across multiple goals simultaneously – the papers illustrate strategic approaches that are necessary to achieve the SDGs and enhance the protection of rights of women migrants but also women more broadly. Taken together, these papers provide critical insight into the SDGs, and underscore the importance of going beyond the face of the SDGs in their application and interpretation.

Gender norms and migration

Migration choices, roles and insertion into labour markets are all impacted by the social context in which the migrant or pre-migrant exists, this includes the gendered norms and expectations of that social context (Kanaiaupuni 2000). These manifest as accepted beliefs, behaviours and societal conventions that can influence not only a person’s decision to migrate, but also how they migrate and with whom it is appropriate to migrate (Boyd and Grieco 2003). Such norms can also manifest in state-led policy and governance approaches. In the Philippines, the migration of women is both socially accepted and the basis of government economic policy with the movement of women for work being more commonplace than men (Encinas-Franco 2015). Gendered norms and expectations influence what migration pathways and resources are open to women and men. For men and women from the Global South, particularly those without secure livelihoods or access to education, opportunities are often limited and both are slotted into gendered occupations that are often characterised by low pay and informality. Men into the dirty and dangerous construction industry, for example, and women into the isolating and devalued care sector. For women, however, the opportunities and resources for migration are particularly limited, and feminised labour markets and gender inequality translate to uneven outcomes that disadvantage women specifically.

OECD data underscore this segmentation reporting that 63.5% of women migrant workers are employed as domestic workers, in agriculture and manufacturing and in the low skilled service sector (OECD 2016). Indeed, women migrant workers are commonly employed in low skilled, low paid, and informal sectors (Hennebry, Grass, and McLaughlin 2016; Williams 2017). In the case of labour-intensive and unskilled factory work, women workers frequently predominate as they are perceived to be more ‘nimble’, ‘docile’, accustomed to performing tedious tasks and less likely to demand unionisation (Biemann 2002; Pyle 2001; Wright 1999, in Hennebry, Grass, and McLaughlin 2016). Domestic work is highly racialised and sex segmented as gendered norms construct these tasks as being innately female and drawing on naturalised qualities of caring that women are seen to possess (Folbre 1995, 2012; Williams 2017). Such gendered labour market insertion can be influenced directly and indirectly by state policy. Bilateral agreements and other arrangements tend to be sector specific, meaning that generally speaking where they deal with feminised sectors such as domestic work, they are referring to women. Where the agreement relates to a non-feminised sector of work, for example agriculture or manufacturing, many agreements are gender-blind. Such agreements can indirectly impact a woman’s ability to access this labour market as the pre-requisites for the application may preclude women, or may discriminate against them (Hennebry 2017).

In some cases, women’s migration is a way to circumnavigate the gendered barriers to economic opportunity she faces at home (Vijeyarasa 2012). In Moldova, where women and men have the same levels of education and training, women are disproportionately excluded from the labour market at home and many women migrate in order to seek viable economic opportunities elsewhere (El-Cherkeh et al. 2004). Similarly, whilst encouraged to pursue the feminised labour sector of nursing, Filipino women find that shortages in work, limited ability for professional development and low wages nationally motivate them to migrate internationally (Lorenzo et al. 2007).

The need to escape gender-based violence can also impact women’s migration choices. In the Philippines, migration has been described as an alternative for women who are unable to leave abusive husbands because of restrictive legal and cultural norms (Parreñas 2001). Where the nature of migration is rooted in the need to escape, however, there may be an impact on the level of precarity in the migration choices available to the woman, or the choices she is prepared to make.

Whether migrating through regular or irregular channels, women migrants can face the risk of violence and abuse from intermediaries and employers, as well as from partners and others, with little access to legal protection or justice and VAW protection services (UN Women 2016). Many women migrant workers work in occupations in the informal sector in the host country or in occupations that are excluded from important protections afforded under the regulations concerning labour law standards. This applies especially to domestic and care workers, agricultural workers and sometimes to workers in small firms.

Domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, violence, forced labour and trafficking (Boris and Fish 2014; Farsight 2016; van Walsum 2016). Many trafficked women are forced into commercial sexual services while many are also victims of domestic servitude (European Parliamentary Research Service 2016).

Concerns about trafficking and anti-migrant rhetoric, have led to stricter border policy and entry barriers. Such bordering practices again manifest as restrictions to movement and encourage intensification of clandestine movement. Often with explicit reference to trafficking, the use of deployment bans by countries of origin in the face of exploitation of women migrant workers abroad, are generally only imposed on women, are meant to serve as ‘protective policies’, and directly curtail women’s mobility rights (Carling 2005; Hennebry 2017). The use of migration bans to prevent women’s movement remains a practice undertaken with the intention of protecting women against exploitative migration. Such bans may restrict women’s migration into specific sectors or countries or restrict their movement by age. These have largely been seen, however, to result in an equally gendered outcome by increasing the potential for forced labour or trafficking as well as reducing women’s access to assistance (ILO and UN Women 2017). For example, in response to several highly documented cases of exploitation and trafficking of Nepali women migrant workers over the last decades the Nepali state has periodically deployed at least 10 travel bans that deny exit permits to women migrant workers between 1997 and 2008 (Grossman-Thompson 2016). In such circumstances, informal routes to sectors such as domestic and entertainment work are the only viable options for women, frequently used temporarily and as an entry point until there is opportunity to seek an alternative. The role of such bordering practices is commonly concealed under accepted rhetoric of ‘protection’ of vulnerable migrants on the women hand (see Anderson 2012) and securitisation in the face of ‘criminal’ trafficking enterprises where ‘nasty individuals force vulnerable people into servitude’ (De Noronha 2015). Yet these same practices can exacerbate the criminalisation of migration and drive migrants to traffickers and unscrupulous intermediaries (Bastia 2006; Beutin 2012), and into precarious employment and migration status. For example, as estimated by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, there were roughly 500,000 undocumented Indonesian domestic workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a result of a deployment ban by Indonesia (Alston 2017).

The impact of gendered norms on migration and vice versa (Curran and Saguy 2013) can be seen clearly in the domestic work and care sector. Domestic and care work as reproductive labour is traditionally provided by unpaid women and not considered as adding value in any market sense of the term (Duffy 2007; Yeates 2011). Permeated by gendered norms, the work is considered to be women’s work and, when purchased, has traditionally been stratified along gender and racial lines (Parrenas 2000). The growth in migration for domestic and care work has also been the product of changing gendered norms that has seen the rise of dual breadwinners where both men and women in a family unit engage in remunerated work. Or has shifted male caring roles as women out-migrate (Gallo and Scrinzi 2016). Women entering the labour market have, however, found that they often face a double burden of productive and reproductive labour (Bauer and Osterle 2013). Female migrant workers become pivotal in relieving this burden for other households, in doing so reaffirming the gender and racial lines of care labour (Parrenas 2000). In this instance, gendered norms impact the labour market insertion of the migrant woman, the level of skill (and therefore pay) associated with the migrant labour, whilst enabling other women to overcome gender norms that prevent their entering the workforce. The chains of privilege and care intersect to mitigate care and work burdens for some and exacerbate them for others (Yeates 2009).

In addition to providing material and emotional support to their families from afar, migrant women will often purchase in care services for their families back home. This may be in the form of a woman from a rural community providing domestic services. In turn, that woman’s family may be being looked after by an older daughter or grand-mother in an international transfer of caretaking that has been described by Parrenas and Hochschild as the ‘global care chain’ and ‘nanny chain’ respectively (Parrenas 2000; Hochschild 2000). The global care chain sets up a series of links between people (women) on a global scale who are connected by paid and unpaid reproductive work which is ultimately facilitating the ability of women to enter productive work at the top of the chain (Ribas-Mateos in Kofman 2004; Parrenas 2000).

Migration for domestic and care work illustrates the tensions between both positive and negative impacts that gendered norms can have on migration but also the positive and negative impacts of migration on the construction of gender. Indeed, whereas on a global level, the feminisation of migration has arguably channelled women into a small array of gendered labour markets, which may fundamentally restrict gender equality in structural terms (Ehrenreich and Hochschild in Datta et al. 2010, 99), the very endeavour of undertaking autonomous migration presents an opportunity for women to leave and weaken the gendered nature of their place in their home family and society (Yeoh et al. 2005). A woman’s new earning capacity can, for example, have the effect of elevating her status in her family and/or community, increasing her influence over the way that money is spent as well as on other significant decisions that she might previously have been excluded from Temin et al. (2013).

Women’s engagement in the political sphere has also been argued by some to be positively impacted by migration. A correlation has been seen, for example, between women’s political participation in countries of origin, and the number of women migrants abroad (Lodigiani and Salomone 2012). Indeed, migration can serve to enhance the political engagement and awareness of women, particularly where migration affords migrants access to a more progressive social context in relation to women’s substantive freedoms and political engagement.

Feminised migration through the lens of the SDGs

By looking at women migrant workers through the lens of the SDGs, we find that the SDGs do not address the deeper, structural tensions that drive feminised migration, feminised labour or, indeed, gender norms (Nowacka 2015). We contend, therefore, that the overriding aim of the SDGs will not be achieved unless and until such structural tensions are addressed. We further contend that, in interrogating the relationship between the SDGs and the feminised migrant labour sectors of nursing, care and sex, we are able to open up conversations that reveal critical intersections that drive prevailing inequalities that will impede our ability to meet the goals and targets of the SDGs. Moreover, without addressing the interaction between (1) gender equality, (2) rights-based labour migration and (3) sustainable development the commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ appears to be highly selective. Not one of these three objectives can be achieved in isolation. The status quo in relation to gender norms must be challenged in order that labour migration governance can foster positive gender equitable migration outcomes (in both economic and human development terms), eliminating exploitative and precarious labour and migration practices. Such gender equitable outcomes are critical for development and achievement of the SDGs, through the elimination of violence against women, improved health and education and increased empowerment. As demonstrated in Elias and Holliday’s (2019) paper, for example, gendered norms and expectations around women’s sexual activity must be addressed, in order that labour migration governance can respond to the labour and human rights of migrant women undertaking sex work. With clarity on the human and labour rights of sex workers will come a better ability to eliminate exploitation and abuse, and maximise the development benefits for these women, contributing directly to the SDGs.

As discussed in this Issue, there is a need also to take a global approach to the global drivers and outcomes of women’s labour migration. In Gammage and Stevanovic’s (2019) paper this need manifests in the need to understand how gendered notions of unpaid care work are impacting countries of origin and destination, with care burdens being discharged between women – commonly migrant workers – rather than the gender equitable distribution of care being addressed. Thus, care is now a globalised feminised sector, which will have transnational economic and labour impacts if resolved by states in isolation. The globalised impacts of migration outcomes are also explored by Thompson and Walton-Roberts in their paper (2019), which, in considering how international migration of nurses from the Philippines and India creates distortions in education and health systems that undermine the ability of these nations to achieve SDGs 4.3 (access to training), 10.7 (orderly and responsible migration) and 3.c (retention of health workers); identifies that the case of nurse emigration illustrates the profound limitations of national policy systems being able to influence inherently global practices and processes. This finding echoes analysis emerging in the recent WHO (2017) report which sees women migrant workers as responding to the demand for care in care deficit countries and contributing more broadly to care systems and health care systems while frequently experiencing a collapse in their entitlement to care and more specifically their rights to health care in many host countries. The failure to develop transnational health care systems and rights and guarantee universal rights to care adds to the burdens born across global care chains.

Building upon the recognition of the globalised nature of the drivers and outcomes of women’s labour migration, across numerous papers is the shared concern that whilst the SDGs ostensibly align with, and support, the international human rights normative framework, they are not expressly linked to it – with the exception of Goal 8, which expressly refers to the ILO’s instruments and initiatives. This absence of an expressed connection with the international human rights framework is notable in relation to Goal 5, which seeks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, but is not expressly linked to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Ratified by 189 states parties, CEDAW has one of the highest ratification rates for a human rights treaty, second only to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. By expressly linking the SDGs and Goal 5 to CEDAW, there was an opportunity to strengthen and consolidate efforts towards gender equality and women’s empowerment. In the absence of a strong connection to the international human rights framework, and in particular CEDAW, the voluntary nature of the SDG implementation and reporting is exacerbated, with states able to choose where to focus their attention (Gammage and Stevanovic, 2019). This risks the SDGs being interpreted narrowly through individual indicators and their achievement documented in national averages, reducing the likelihood of deeper level interpretation and application that considers the interaction of the goals and targets. It is left, therefore, to advocates, academics and activists to highlight the links between the SDGs and states’ commitments under the international human rights framework, to try to ensure states take a comprehensive approach to SDG implementation (Hennebry et al, 2019).

Indeed, Razavi (2016, 28) takes this challenge on in her analysis of the connections that the SDGs have to the existing human rights processes and architecture. She states:

The SDGs bring back human rights into the global development agenda, marking a departure from the narrower frame of the MDGs on some key measurable facets of poverty and deprivation. The Declaration states in no uncertain terms that the new agenda is “grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, and the international human rights treaties. (p 10)

Yet the failure to link the oversight and accountability mechanisms to treaty bodies and conventions may make this linking difficult to operationalise and enforce.

Enabling migrant workers as protagonists to engage with other migration governance mechanisms may prove to be more tractable as a strategy to ensure their voice and support their agency (De Jong 2015; Kabeer 2015). At the international level, however, high-level fora hosted to address migration and the SDGs, are driven by and for member states. While civil society organisations (CSOs) have made considerable strides in claiming space for their participation (as shown in Hennebry et al. 2019), they are most certainly not on equal footing with states, highlighting that holding duty bearers to account under the SDGs will be challenging. This is particularly so for migrants and stateless persons who may not have the status or access necessary to be able to advocate directly with policy makers. This not only impacts the ability to hold policy makers to account for national level initiatives, but also limits the effectiveness of advocacy that seeks to take a global approach to the structuring of women’s labour migration, in particular in relation to feminised sectors including sex work, nurse migration and migration for care work. Further, CSOs can be valuable allies on the ground, ensuring implementation reflects and responds to local contexts and realities with appropriate infrastructure, and with strategies that can ensure long-term success.

There remains an opportunity to strengthen the application of the SDGs and duty bearers’ accountability to them through the reaffirmation and better use of existing human rights treaty bodies and instruments. In particular, through the Universal Periodic Review and Treaty Body Review processes, questions can be raised on gender, migration and development in ways that link international law to the SDG commitments. Treaty Bodies can embed the SDGs as markers for progress in their reviews, thereby increasing state accountability to specific issues. Enhanced communication across Treaty Bodies can also ensure gaps between frameworks are addressed, including using the List of Issues Prior to Reporting (LOIPR) mechanism to refer to one another, or to incorporate reference to the SDGs. Incorporating the SDGs into the review and reports of international human rights infrastructure, also provides a gateway for stronger civil society input on progress, through the shadow reporting system. Finally, addressing systemic gender inequality worldwide requires better knowledge and data on gender and migration, through improving gender disaggregated and gender-responsive data collection and categorisation, so that policies and programmes can better respond to the realities of women in migration.

The papers in this issue each contend that addressing the SDGs through the lens of gender, migration and development provides the opportunity to illuminate both the challenges facing the achievement of the SDGs, and also the strategies that can address these challenges. The SDGs are global goals for a globalised world, and recognising how gender, migration and development are intertwined provides a gateway through which the interrelated global and transnational issues of gender and labour need to be viewed. In order to effectively move forward, however, civil society participation must be made central to decision-making, and the existing human rights infrastructure and mechanisms must be harnessed.

Acknowledgements

The joint editors would like to extend thanks to the reviewers of the papers in this Special Issue for their time and dedication. Sarah Gammage, Jenna Hennebry and Jenna Holliday are joint editors of this Special Issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.