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ABSTRACT
Recent research on child migration has largely departed from the early trafficking narrative and has tended to highlight young people’s agency and the ways in which children’s migration can play a key role in their ‘future-seeking’. While we acknowledge that Ethiopian girls migrating to the Middle East in order to undertake domestic work primarily move voluntarily for economic reasons, our research – which used a multi-layered, qualitative research approach with girls and their families in the West Gojjam and North Wollo Zones of the Amhara National Regional State – found that the financial, physical, and psychological costs of such migration can far outweigh the benefits. Indeed, we conclude that the earlier trafficking narrative may, in this case, represent the most appropriate lens through which to view girls’ choices and experiences.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Kebeles are the most local unit of administration in Ethiopia. They are part of woredas, zones, and then regions.
2. While it is certain that the 2013 ban – and the laws subsequently passed in 2015 and 2016 – have reduced migration considerably, we have no way to estimate the magnitude of the ban's effects on adolescent girls. Anecdotal evidence, collected during the course of other research projects, suggests that illegal migration remains quite common. Indeed, the coordinator of the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, which monitors migration trends in the Horn of Africa, reported that of the nearly 100,000 African migrants who left through Yemen for the Middle East last year, 80 to 85 per cent were Ethiopian (see: http://www.thenational.ae/world/ethiopian-migrants-brave-yemen-war-for-dream-of-saudi-jobs).