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This paper aims to analyse the factors influencing migration, the labour migration process and the status of migrant laborers in the informal sector, particularly those working in brick kiln factories. It will shed light on the precarious nature of their work, often characterized by informal and verbal contracts. The paper examines occupational and environmental health hazards affecting the labourers and their impact on their well-being, the vulnerability of women in the precarious work environment and the associated health risks in brick kiln factories in India.

The study relies primarily on primary data collection, supplemented by secondary literature and documents. Balangir district was chosen as the research region due to its historical deprivation, underdevelopment and the historical prevalence of environmental distress, leading to distress-driven migration. To gather primary data, 40 respondents were selected from five selected blocks in Balangir district, resulting in a total of 200 respondents. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with 35 individuals across the selected blocks, with approximately seven participants from each block. In addition, interviews of 10 kids were taken and around 10 key informants including the trade union leaders, intellectuals and civil society activists.

Migrant labourers, including men, women and children, face significant health issues and are exposed to similar occupational health hazards. Internal migrant women workers are more vulnerable as they face critical health risks during pregnancy in host areas due to unfavourable working conditions and limited access to health-care services. Factors such as strenuous work, long working hours, poor nutrition and inadequate maternal care contribute to adverse outcomes such as spontaneous abortion, premature delivery and abnormal postnatal development.

The brick kiln industry presents a distressing reality for men who are highly vulnerable to occupational accidents, and women workers are exposed to sexual abuse, exploitation and violence. The prevalence of physical harassment, ranging from leering to rape, is alarmingly high among women. These incidents not only inflict physical harm but also cause severe psychological trauma and increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Despite the existence of laws aimed at protecting women’s rights and addressing sexual offences, the workers often remain unaware of their rights. This lack of awareness further compounds the vulnerability of women workers and perpetuates their exploitation in the workplace.

To address health issues comprehensively, interventions should encompass the entire migrant population, including men and children. Strategies should focus on improving access to health-care services, promoting occupational health and safety measures, ensuring proper immunization and nutrition for children and addressing the broader social determinants of health. Empowering women with knowledge about reproductive health and rights, raising awareness about available health-care services and strengthening health-care providers’ capacity to cater to migrant populations are crucial steps towards addressing health disparities.

Urgent interventions and policies are needed to address the health vulnerabilities of internal migrant workers and women workers. It is required to ensure health-care accessibility, improving working conditions, ensuring access to maternal care and essential supplements and providing health-care services for both pregnant women and their children, regardless of migration status.

The study focused on precarious health and occupational hazards and accidents faced by migrant workers. It highlights women migrant labourer’s and children’s vulnerability in the Brick Klin sector, which is a value addition to the existing knowledge in social science.

Purpose – Integrating a gender perspective with a world-system theory, we examine how the recent global economic crisis in China has differential impact on female and male migrant workers. We analyzes how this gendered impact is compounded by intersectionality that results in multiple inequalities shaping their work, identity, power relationship, agency, and family lives.

Method – Our analyses were primarily drawn from 14 surveys of major provinces with higher migration rates, and were supplemented by personal narratives and interviews of migrant workers.

Findings – The political-economic analysis of the world-system demonstrates how the intricate linkages among declines in trade, finance, and production led to the economic crisis in China, with more detrimental effects on women migrant workers than their male counterparts. The intersectionality of gender, class, age/generation, and regional differences has played out in the state-regulated process of migration, configuring and reconfiguring the organization of capital, labor, and production and determining unequal gender relations, class dynamics, citizenship, employment, and family life. Conditioned by complex inequalities, some affected migrant workers, far from being victimized, have demonstrated agency, resilience, and a spirit of resistance.

Research and practical implications – More disaggregated data by gender are needed to understand the full range of differential crisis effects on diverse women and men workers.

Originality/value of the study – This study suggests the importance of considering gender-sensitive policies and a gender mainstreaming approach to addressing gender inequality and improving migrant workers’ lives for their empowerment.

Purpose – The chapter studies gender occupational segregation of rural-urban migrant workers in China based on 2006 survey data from five Chinese cities.

Methodology – The multinomial logit (MNL) model is used to analyze migrant workers' occupational attainment by gender. The Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition method is employed to analyze factors affecting gender occupational segregation, which can be classified into observed factors and unobserved factors, including gender discrimination.

Findings – The index of dissimilarity based on the data shows that gender occupational segregation for migrant workers exists. The result of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition shows that the unobserved effects account for more than three-fourths of the total gender occupational segregation.

Research limitations – The “index problem” and the assumption of the same occupational preference between men and women of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition need to be addressed further.

Social implications – The existing gender equality policies and social protection confined to urban workers should be extended to migrant workers. Increasing training investment in migrant workers is also recommended.

The economic literature on labor migration has incorporated insights from various disciplines with regard to content and method, although the representation of migrants has not fully moved away from the neoliberal, market-dominated framework. This paper addresses the issue of women migrant workers using the particular example of Sri Lankan migrant women workers to the Middle East. It aims to highlight the need for more diversity in economic research without which conceptual representation, as well as empirical reach, is limited.

After a brief overview of the representation of migrants in economic literature, I develop the concept of vulnerability. I refer to qualitative and quantitative analyses on Sri Lankan migrant women workers to the Middle East from a variety of disciplines in order to differentiate the “vulnerable,” that is, the workers in need of protection, from the “vulnerabilities.” The latter concept refers to the debilitating effects on workers, produced by market forces, which are often perpetuated by underlying assumptions, as well as policies. A broader, inter-disciplinary perspective, which considers the agency of women, can go a long way toward removing some of the limitations and preconceptions ingrained in most economic representation. This in turn could help to improve the protection of the vulnerable and empower them to better face market forces.

To discuss the gender dimension of migration and human rights, and to provide an assessment of how to improve human rights protections for migrant women workers in janitorial services and night clubs across registered and unregistered migrant women workers in North Cyprus.

A survey is done to establish the employment conditions of migrant women workers in both sectors. The conditions are evaluated to assess the compliance with North Cyprus labor and immigration legislation and international human rights protocols.

Registered and unregistered segment of the janitorial services and unregistered segment of sex industry are dominated by Turkish migrant women. The registered part of sex industry is dominated by Eastern European migrant women mostly due to the legislative framework within which these two activities operate, primarily with respect to immigration requirements and also as it pertains to the remunerative potential of activity. No evidences of human rights abuses of Turkish immigrants in either segment of the cleaning services sector are founded but lack of knowledge of their conditions in unregistered sex work. Eastern European migrants working in the registered segment of the sex industry suffer human rights and basic migrant rights abuses at the hands of the state and the employer.

Lack of knowledge of Turkish migrant women workers' conditions in unregistered segment of sex work limits the findings of the research. A survey across unregistered Turkish sex workers is suggested for future research.

Legalization of commercial sex among registered konsomatrices would provide an opportunity for labor rights legislation to be fully applied to their primary income‐earning activities. Most of the human and immigrant rights violations are the result of legislation applied to nightclubs and work visas for konsomatrices. Improvements in the legislation and work visas for konsomatrices would guarantee the women to have access to assistance in case of human rights violations.

The paper provides practical suggestion for the improvement of human rights protections for migrant women workers in North Cyprus.

Invisibility and inequality in the subjective experiences of Albanian migrant women in the Greek labor market have not been sufficiently studied. In times of crisis, mechanisms and social processes of marginalization are being strengthened and push women to new roles, expectations, and social positions. This chapter investigates how migrant women understand invisibility within their occupation, to what extent they feel relative deprivation and injustice when comparing their situation with others, and what this means for the reproduction of inequalities and the boundaries of social stratification. Qualitative research is conducted through a case study and 10 work history biographical interviews with Albanian migrant women, living and working in the Artemis community. Findings are analyzed in light of the socio-historical context of invisibility of migrant women workers in Greece, while the statistical analysis of changes in the occupational distribution provides a picture of the social landscape. Findings show evidence of the ethnic and gender segregation of the Greek labor market and a significant increase of informal and temporary work in low-status jobs in services. Invisibility is mainly experienced through the degradation of working conditions, flexibility, insecurity, and the concealed process of alienation. The economic crisis increases the dependencies; meanings and perceptions change towards reduced expectations. Comparisons with reference groups show increasing inequalities within the same social group, but feelings of injustice are felt more due to administrative barriers and discrimination. The chapter offers insights on the process of invisibility of migrant women and its significance for social stratification.

This article addresses contemporary presentations of migrants, particularly women, as dependents and a ‘burden’ on welfare. Focusing mainly on Britain, it shows that, while immigration policies increasingly restrict their access to official welfare, migrants are crucial to the provision of welfare both to their own family and community and in mainstream services, including professional roles as well as in informal employment. Migrants are involved in complex networks of caring relations, often across national boundaries, in which they may provide care to others in order to provide for dependents back home.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the work-life (WL) experiences of live-in women migrant domestic workers (MDWs), who represent a significant proportion of migrant workers globally. MDWs play a key role in enabling the work-life balance (WLB) of others, namely the middle-class households that employ them. Yet, their experiences have largely been invisible in mainstream WL literature. The authors draw on an intersectional approach to frame the WL experiences of this marginalized group of women at the intersection of being secondary labour segment workers, with significant legal and employment restrictions as migrant workers, who work and live in the same place as their employers.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 women MDWs from Indonesia and the Philippines working in Malaysia. The women talked about the meaning of work as MDWs, how they maintain familial connections whilst working abroad, and how they negotiate their WLB as live-in workers. Thematic analysis of the interviews focused on the intersection of the women’s multiple dimensions of disadvantage, including gender, class and temporary migrant-foreigner status, in shaping their accounts of the WL interface.

Three thematic narratives highlight that any semblance of WLB in the MDWs’ lived experience has given way to the needs of their employers and to the imperative to earn an income for their families back home. The themes are: working as MDWs enables the women and their families back home to have a life; the co-existence of WL boundary segmentation and integration in relation to “real” and “temporary” families; and the notion of WLB being centred around the women’s ability to fulfil their multiple duties as MDWs and absent mothers/sisters/daughters.

The study is based on a small sample of live-in women MDWs in Malaysia, intended to promote typically excluded voices and not to provide generalizable findings. Accessing potential participants was a considerable challenge, given the vulnerable positions of women MDWs and the invisible nature of their work.

Future research should adopt a multi-stakeholder approach to studying the WL experiences of women MDWs. In particular, links with non-governmental organizations who work directly with women MDWs should be established as a way of improving future participant access.

The study underscores the existence of policies and regulations that tolerate and uphold social inequalities that benefit primary labour segment workers to the detriment of secondary labour segment workers, including women MDWs.

Extant WL literature is dominated by the experiences of “the ideal work-life balancers”, who tend to be white middle-class women, engaged in professional work. This study offers original contribution by giving voice to a taken-for-granted group of women migrant workers who make other people’s WLB possible. Moreover, the study challenges WL research by underscoring the power inequities that shape the participants’ marginal and disadvantaged lived experience of work, life, family and WLB.

Limited previous studies about Vietnamese returned migrant workers reviewed that a relatively high rate of migrants returned home before their contract ended. This paper aims to explore how the decisions to return were made under social lenses.

This paper analyses data obtained through in-depth interviews of contract workers who had worked in Taiwan with a focus on Phu Tho province in Vietnam.

The authors followed O’Reilly’s (2012) adaption of Practice theory in migration research to examine a group of Vietnamese labour migrants returning from Taiwan. Under this theory, external and internal structures are the two divisions of the social environment. The authors identified external structures that might enable or constraint migrant’s mobility. When negotiating internal structures, Vietnamese women might end their contract early in response to family obligations.

The findings provide insights into how women make their decisions when to return, which may contribute to a better understanding of how to assist women engaged in transnational labour migration.

Adopting a view that migration is an investment, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the risk-adjusted returns that migrant domestic workers from Vietnam to Taiwan can expect to earn.

The study analyses data obtained through interviews of a sample of migrant domestic workers, all from Phu Tho in the north of Vietnam, who had migrated to Taiwan.

The study found that migrants were driven strongly by financial motivations. Analysis of the typical costs of migrating, wages in the host country, average length of stay and especially, uncertainties affecting the length of stay, found that the investment in migration is a highly risky one for migrants. In most cases, migration does not pay.

Estimates of costs and benefits can be improved with larger samples of respondents and data sources that can help validate the interviews.

There is a need to improve financial literacy among migrants to help them better assess their investment in migration.

This paper highlights the inequity in risk allocation in the context of migration.

To the knowledge, there is no research of the financial costs and benefits of migration as domestic workers, especially from Vietnam to Taiwan.