Promoting Decent Employment for Migrant Women and Improved Welfare for Their Families in Nicaragua

Series on Gender in the Life Cycle:
Household Study of Nicaraguan Women Who Have Emigrated to Costa Rica Seeking Employment

Today, more then ever, international labour migration has come to the forefront of the international debate. Its cause-effect relations and links with the globalisation process and with development issues and strategies; its inevitable economic, social, cultural and political impacts on countries of destination, transit or origin; the increasing vulnerability of migrant workers to, inter alia, labour exploitation, forced labour, social exclusion, trafficking and denial of other basic human rights, are just some of its contemporary features. The increasingly high proportion and vulnerability to abuse, exploitation and discrimination of women involved in autonomous international regular or irregular labour migration is of special concern.

Evidence shows that the determinants of female labour migration and the impact of this phenomenon at the global, national, local and even household level are likely to differ from those relating to male labour migration. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants pointed out in her 1999 Report that little attention has been paid so far “to the gender distribution in the various categories of migrants and its consequences for the families and communities in their place of origin”. Understanding the consequences and dynamics is therefore essential to consistently address this multi-faceted issue at its different levels and from a “Decent Work” perspective.

It is within this framework and with a broader objective of promoting women’s economic and social empowerment throughout all stages of the life-cycle that the Gender Promotion Programme of the ILO launched two major interventions that address the issue of female labour migration.

The first project is the production of an Information Guide to assist and enhance the efforts of governments and the social partners to protect migrant women from exploitation and abuse in the migration process in employment in the host countries and in communities in both countries of origin and destination. The Information Guide is based on research on the situation of migrant women and on policies, programmes and good practices in different parts of the world. Case studies conducted in Nicaragua and Costa Rica provided invaluable background material for the information guide.

The second activity is an action programme aimed at the promotion of decent employment for migrant women workers and improved welfare for their families, especially their children, in four out-migration communities of Nicaragua. The study presented here is the result of joint activities in these projects. It has benefited from the collaboration and input of researcher and practitioners.

This report should be seen both as a base line and as a step forward. Far from being exhaustive, it is a base line study on out migration communities that advances knowledge on how female labour migration may change roles and responsibilities within households, on how individuals deal with the control of resources and how the decision making power is redistributed and adapted in out-migration situations. Particularly significant is the added responsibilities of older women and child-adolescent girls who are left behind to take care of the family.

But it is also hoped that this report will promote discussion on issues that are often still marginalized in national debate, as was demonstrated at the National Workshop on Migrant Women held in Managua in November 2001, and where this report was first presented. We hope it will be a useful instrument for raising awareness in Nicaragua and the sub region on the gender implications of labour migration, as well as provide examples of practical interventions at the community level to promote sustainable alternatives to migration or better prepare those who still decide to leave.