According to the Bureau of Foreign Employment, 46,835 women had left the island during the last year to serve as housemaids in the Middle East. The figures for 2015 and 2016 stood at 73,226 and 65,023 respectively. Although the figure has declined in 2017, yet it is still a big number.
What factors lead to so many women leaving their families and homes? The answer is obvious. Women are driven to take jobs as domestic workers overseas in a desperate attempt to escape extreme poverty and provide for their families. The Middle East is popular due to many reasons.
Most of the Sri Lankans employed in the Middle East are house maids. At the end of the contract, most of them return home with no complaints. But, for women who were subjected to exploitative working conditions, sexual violence, and human rights abuses, represented a personal nightmare.
Sometime ago, the Government promised to gradually stop sending maids to the Middle East, but the demand for them in receiving countries is increasing and agencies are doing their best to meet the demand.
The dilemma facing policy makers, to restrict such emigration, is complicated because regulation often drives the process underground.
The effectiveness of measures by Middle East countries is minimal because their legislation on labour standards are poor. As a Sri Lankan labour consultant said, “Once a housemaid reaches a Middle East country for employment, the protection her own government can provide is limited.”
Most receiving countries in the Middle East do not allow the migrant women workers to come with their families, and so the women have to emigrate on their own. The residence permit of these workers is linked to their employment, and therefore, the employer keeps her passport.
The foreign domestic maids in Middle East countries cannot change jobs during the employment contract.
Their independence is severely curtailed. However, our female migrant labour supply has been flexible, relative to the female migrants from other parts of the world. They adapt quickly to changing labour requirements.
Often, they leave their home to become income-earners for their families and foreign exchange contributors for their countries.
In 2016, according to the Sri Lankan Central Bank, the country earned a whopping 949 billion rupees, with the majority of this sum coming from Sri Lankan women working as maids.
Sacrifice
But behind the figures, what sacrifices are made by these women, and the families they leave behind?
The migration of women workers is a family survival strategy in the face of negative effects of the structural adjustment programs in the country.
The perceived social costs of migration of women workers have been part of the reason why Sri Lankan society is uncertain about such overseas employment. Aside from the myriad problems they encounter abroad, concerns over the stability of families left behind have received much attention.
A few decades ago, when male migrants dominated labour migration, the absence of fathers was seen as weakening Sri Lankan families. In the 1980s, women became part of labour migration, which resulted in the anxieties being magnified because mothers who are considered as the “light of the home,” were not around for their families. The economic impacts of migration on families point out that in the short term at least, migration has enabled families to experience economic improvement. Better housing, funds for the education of children, capital to start a business are the usual indicators of migrant families’ material improvement.
A study done in the Philippines on children of migrant women workers offer a clearer picture of the effects of parental absence. The study took account of different forms of parental absence: father-absent, mother-absent and both parents-absent. It also offered a comparison of children from migrant families vis-à-vis children whose parents are non-migrants.
The study confirmed that the children left behind, particularly, by their mothers, experience loneliness and abandonment, and lagged behind in school performance compared to children with both parents present. Children left behind also tended to be less socially adjusted. In all indicators, the mother’s absence was associated with more difficulty for the children left behind.
Survey
Looking at the gravity of the situation isn’t it time the Government undertook a nationwide study on migrant women workers and their left-behind children.
From the findings from this proposed research we can fine-tune programs and services offered to our women-migrants and their families, including children. A better understanding of the needs, vulnerabilities as well as resilience of families in the face of migration will aid in the implementation of more responsive policies and programs.
The specific objectives of such a study should be threefold. (1) To determine children’s conceptions and perceptions of overseas migration, (2) To examine the impacts of the absence of parents on selected aspects of the children’s well-being (physical development, health, academic performance, values, social/emotional well-being, spiritual formation), (3) To identify the factors which help children cope with the difficulties posed by migration.
The results of the study can provide guidelines in the development of policies and programs to strengthen families, and in particular, to provide the much-needed attention and support for the well-being of children.
The study’s findings will also have implications for the work of others such as, teachers, counsellors, social workers and NGOs.
It’s time we question the human cost of sending women to work in the Middle East – with India and the Philippines placing a ban on the employment of women as domestic workers in the Middle East.