Prof. Dr. Helen Schwenken, Dr. Lekh Nath Paudel, Homaira Rahnom (IfS/SFB "Production of Migration") : The Infrastructure of Gendered Migration Policies: The case of Nepal
Women from South/Southeast Asia are welcome migrant workers in the healthcare sector or in private households in the “Middle East” and other destinations. In their regions of origin, they contribute to the family income and make a contribution to the economically important remittances celebrated by the state. Their migration is part of everyday life, it is desired. At the same time, there are laws that prohibit women from legally migrating for work to precisely this main migration region (so-called “bans”). In this presentation, we first take stock of the legal, political, economic and organisational infrastructure based on our case study of Nepal. We then ask how the paradoxical simultaneity can be maintained under conditions in which open gender discrimination can no longer be upheld without contradiction.
The presentation is based on empirical work and discussions in the sub-project ‘Gender-differentiating migration policies’ in the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Production of Migration’.