Migration and Citizenship

‘Gender in Migration and Social Policy in the ASEAN Region’

1.      Description

This workshop brings together approximately 20 people (scholars, NGOs and Human Rights workers, policy makers) to share experience and knowledge on gender matters in migration and government responses to them. The main purpose is to co-learn about the effectiveness and shortcomings of policy instruments, institutional arrangements for migrants’ rights protection and the role of civic participation in the shaping of policy.

The workshop adopts the perspective that the violation of migrants’ human rights is not just a question of the individual, but more importantly a systemic process operating at multiple levels. The most visible level is the rationale behind economic polices that are more concerned with efficiency and maintaining regional and international competitiveness – often at the cost ethical concerns for growing social inequality and polarisation. Mobility of finance and people became intertwined, restructuring social relations in fundamental ways and stimulating the formation of complex and evolving migration systems.

Countering violations of human rights in this context must pay attention to particular migration systems and their propensity to enhance migrants’ vulnerability. This requires the capacity of civil society and governments to work with human rights norms from a perspective that see the deficit of rights as caused by structural inequalities permissive of particular predatory behaviour. A two-fold meaning of ‘gender’ will be explored: 1) a structure embedded in migration systems, and 2) a process that shapes the evolving characteristics of such systems. From this angle, the types of vulnerability faced by migrants are seen as arising from their social position in which factors such as age, ethnicity, legal and work status intersect in ways that produce differentiated access to labour markets, human rights protection and social assistance.

The workshop will place migration in the ASEAN region against the background of the current economic downturn, which exacerbates concerns for national security and fuels xenophobic sentiments. These concerns not only override the everyday life security of migrant workers but also seek to ‘flush’ those with ‘irregular’ status out. A balance must be found between the different options available. Comparative perspectives on migration management in other regions, particularly the European Union, with implications for the wellbeing of migrants will be presented to provide a background for participants to reflect on the ASEAN institutional frameworks and learn from similarities and differences in approaches and policy options.

Experiences of civic actors, in their efforts to enhance the social wellbeing of migrants in difficult situations and promote alternative practices of rights protection, will be shared. Selected cases that undermine attempts to connect migration policy with social policy, and/or to bring abusers of migrants’ rights to justice, will be used as sources for discussion on opportunity and challenges to human rights strategy.

The workshop will be participatory and will promote knowledge sharing through face-to face and online means. A web-based platform has been created[1] to share information, documents, resources and links related to the event. Most reading materials will be available through this site to provide participants with timely access prior to face-to-face interaction. Participants can bring to the workshop ideas on strategies they may have and jointly work on a concrete proposal during the workshop.

2.     Learning Objectives

At the end of this workshop, participants are expected to have deepened their knowledge about the current situations of rights denial in sending and receiving countries, relations at the work place and in the family. They will gain new insights on how to apply the rights-based approach to migration that are sensitive to context, to formulate concrete strategies and proposals in order to redress aspects of gender-insensitive policies. They are encouraged to propose new standards of evaluation of human rights protection activities in the field migration.

3.     Methodology

The learning approach is built on the perspective of the role of public knowledge in social change. A link to professor Burawoy’s path-breaking lecture on this topic is loaded on the website. Participants are encouraged to view in advance and grasp the key concepts. Essentially participants should be able to distinguish between technocratic knowledge – instrumental for policy-making, and critical knowledge that queries the ethical-political basis of policy frameworks and decision-making, identifies the rigidity or flexibility within a given framework and decision making process. They will share experience and co-learn on how to bridge knowledge developed within the academic with the realities faced by communities, and how attempts to make policy more inclusive and responsive to marginalized social groups cannot do without critical and constructive dialogues on policy norms. The complex negotiations within, and through, different sets of interests, the choice between a confrontational versus a co-operative style and strategy cannot be separated from a given cultural, economic and political context.

The learning methodology is built on the following premises:

• Co-constructing a humanized approach to migration to counterbalance current securitisation tendency would promote more just and less conflictive social changes
• Participatory and creative group dynamics enhance self- and joint-reflection on institutional challenges
• Creative dialogues can mutually enhance skills and support in lobbying, designing and evaluating policies and programmes.
• Group assignments helps to combine critical readings of the literature with analysis of concrete cases to develop instruments of protection appropriate to the needs of a specific group of migrants, and a build strategy for mobilization of support for right claims using regional and international platforms.
• Interaction between academics and practitioners, disciplines and professional profiles helps create and maintain a new space for a rich dialogue that bringing together the valuable of knowledge acquired from NGOs collective action, government interventions, academic research and theoretical debates.
• Group assignments helps to combine critical readings of the literature with analysis of concrete cases to develop instruments of protection appropriate to the needs of a specific group of migrants, and a build strategy for mobilization of support for right claims using regional and international platforms.
• Interaction through the web platform prior to face-to-face encounter can be helpful to promote knowledge sharing and to sustain further interactions during the workshop
• Post-workshop web-based interaction can mutually enhance skills and support in lobbying, designing and evaluating policies and programmes.

3.1     Modes of Reflection and Action:

The workshop will approach migration policy in the region from the perspectives of facilitation and containment, i.e. facilitating some time of migrations while containing others. Migrants who move within the parameters of state sanctioned schemes (fulfilling labour deficits in particular sectors) may have claims on social protection (such as health care and children’s education), although decision-making on such schemes may be decentralized. Those who migrate through channels that supply informal labour often find themselves without protection and must rely on NGOs, charity and faith-based organisations for assistance.

The distinction between formal and informal is more virtual than real, and is closely related to the formal definition of ‘work’. Migrant workers may well fulfil a labour deficit crucial to the social development of the host society but are not recognized as such. This is clearly expressed in the case of migrant domestic workers, nannies, care providers for old people in countries experiencing a care deficit, due to an assortment of factors: demography, labour market dynamics, decline in social spending and privatisation of social services. Conflict at the work place or in the family often left the migrants (often female) empty handed (without any savings to return home) or injured without compensation, or a stigmatized identity with limited prospects for re-integration in the community of origin.

Building social policy for migrants must take into account the deep roots of gender in the cultural framing of the family, women’s duties and rights. The forms of exclusion experienced by migrant workers are often the outcome of an intersection between different types of vulnerability and disadvantages. Intervention strategies can benefit from a bottom up approach, starting from a specific location, its relations of exclusion and specific aspects of rights denial.  The context of rights denial is important to form a judgement and build a case for appeal using standards human rights norms.

4.     Structure

The workshop will be organised around 5 different types of sessions: theoretical, applied tools, case studies, group work and knowledge sharing. The first three will include a presentation and leave enough time for an exercise (group or individual) that will help participants to understand and experience the different discussed concepts and tools.

There will be resource persons who have worked with migrants in detention who will share migrants’ experiences, voices and specific concerns about their wellbeing and rights, as the migrants see it. This will bring debates on human right norms on institutional constraints closer to their experiential realities in order to discern the dilemmas in need of resolution. The structure of the workshop will facilitate their knowledge sharing role, from both perspectives: how can their practical experiences be brought to bear on current theories of migration and human rights deficits? What lessons can be drawn for organisational strategies?

The workshop will focus on 3 themes:

• Female migration: Transforming gender boundaries (family and work place) without transforming access to rights.
• Models of state migration policy: facilitation and containment.
• Is a trans-local social policy possible? Connecting protection mechanisms at different sites.

4.1     Applied tools

These thematic areas will serve as the theoretical and institutional context to developed applied tools to be used in different contexts.

• Institutional framework (day 1)
• Global and regional policy dialogue (day 2)
• Field trip (day 3)
• Advocacy and networks (day 4)

4.2     Cases

• Philippines: case study of the murder of the social welfare attaché for overseas migrant workers.
• Indonesia: the women’s court in Bali
• Vietnamese female migrants stranded in Taiwan
• Lao migrant workers in Thailand

Participants who work on these cases will be asked to prepare a presentation for the group.

4.3     Group project

Participants will work along the week in developing a concrete project using the concepts, tools, cases and experiences they would have received and their own personal reflection and professional trajectories.

The terms of reference: to be developed with inputs from partners

4.4     Knowledge sharing

The knowledge sharing sessions will be the space provided to participants to present their own experiences, cases and outcomes. These would be more informal and lively sessions where also cultural differences could be approached and experienced.

The agenda is structured through blocks of 90 minutes and every day, except day 3, includes the same kind of sessions.

The agenda is structured through blocks of 90 minutes and every day, except day 3, includes the same kind of sessions.

Time	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5
8.30 – 9.30	Introduction	Models of migration policy: Comparing practices of facilitation and containment	Field trip visit to local NGO, government, migrant association.	Is a trans-local social policy possible?	Group presentations
9.30 – 11.00	Gender in migration
11.20 – 12.50	Applied tools: institutional framework	Applied tools: global and regional policy dialogue		Applied tools: advocacy and networks
14.00 – 15.30	Migration and social policy in ASEANCase: Philippines  migration policy, reflection on the role of social welfare attachés, and the murder of such an official attached to the Philippines Embassy in Kuala Lumpur	Migration and social policy in ASEANCase: Indonesia (Bali Women’s Court: video)  Vietnamese Female migrants in Taiwan (presentation)		Reflection of migration and social policy in the ASEAN region	Final panel: recommendations
16.00 – 17.30	Group work	Group work		Group work
18.00 – 19.00	Knowledge sharing	Knowledge sharing		Knowledge sharing