Study title

The research sought to contribute to a gender-sensitive understanding of the interaction between economic and socio-cultural drivers of labour migrations in different cities: Erbil in Kurdistan-Iraq; Beirut in Lebanon; Islamabad in Pakistan; and Istanbul in Turkey. While migration remains a key issue globally, relatively little work has been done on gender migrations in the Global South, and what has been done has largely focussed on domestic and care work, without including higher-skilled migrants. The project addresses this gap by interviewing approximately 25 women and NGO workers in each city and was designed to go beyond domestic work by looking at a range of labour sectors where women play active roles. In doing so, this research contributes to a better understanding of, the global circulation of gendered labour that is occurring, the drivers of this movement, women’s rights and agency, and how migrant women use urban spaces, within these contexts. This project was designed with specific attention to researcher power dynamics. It was conducted with (not on) researchers in the Global South, thus aiming to produce knowledge from the South rather than to impose knowledge from the North. The multi-context project design also brings forward a rich comparative analysis of societies in South Asia and the Middle East – going beyond one country and nation-state borders. Key findings of the project are: • Gendered migrations in the Middle East and South Asia are diverse In terms of educational level, occupations, nationalities and rights and include migrant women from the Global South and North. • Discriminatory practices in home countries inform migration. In each of the four countries there were discriminatory practices and patriarchal norms in their home countries that influenced the women’s migration (e.g., sexual violence, domestic violence, discriminatory employment practices because they are women, discrimination against their SOGIE identity, no...