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Resolution 1811 (2011)
Protecting migrant women in the labour market
1. Over half of the world’s 210 million
migrants and three quarters of all refugees are women. According
to United Nations estimates, in 2010 migrant women represented 52.3%
of the 69 million migrants in Europe. Increasingly, women are migrating
in search of economic opportunities – a trend that is not likely
to reverse in the foreseeable future.
2. Migrant women play an essential role in the labour market
and make a valuable contribution to the economies and societies
of host countries. But they also face specific challenges. Women
mainly migrate out of necessity, often having to leave their children
behind in order to find work to support their families. Others migrate
with their families, and bear the double burden of hard work and
care giving at home.
3. Migrant women tend to find work in traditional women’s roles
– domestic work, childminding, health care, hotels and catering,
garment manufacturing, piece work – where they work long hours for
low pay and may be severely exploited since many of them have an
irregular immigration status. Domestic work is particularly problematic
as women are isolated and sometimes abused, with few benefits and
little recourse to justice. This type of occupation is not internationally
recognised as “work”. Migrant women may also face abuse and violence
by employers, law enforcement officials, employment agencies and
spouses. Because of the growing criminalisation of migrants, and
because of their limited knowledge about their rights and where
to turn for help, these women are often unable to seek redress for
such abuse.
4. Significant numbers of women enter host countries as spouses
of migrant workers. Because of their immigration status, many of
these women are not allowed to work for a certain length of time.
This forces them to seek employment in unregulated sectors and in
jobs well below their levels of qualifications. In most countries
they lose their immigration status and right to protection if they
decide to leave their husbands or partners because of domestic violence.
Many married women of certain cultural and ethnic backgrounds are also
discouraged from entering paid employment by their families and
communities. They remain confined to the home, doing housework and
isolated from the local community, without real opportunities to
learn the language of the host country, thus further exacerbating
their isolation and reducing their possibilities to integrate in
their host societies.
5. Women asylum seekers and refugees are a particularly vulnerable
category of women in the labour market. Lengthy asylum procedures
and non-recognition of gender-based asylum claims often push these women
to destitution and domestic servitude. The situation is equally
bad for trafficked women, who not only have to prove that they have
been trafficked into the country, but even if they have been given
the right to stay in the host country on humanitarian grounds, they
find it difficult to obtain gainful employment because of the temporary
nature of their status.
6. The Parliamentary Assembly has repeatedly emphasised the need
to promote the integration of immigrant women in Europe and proposed
measures to this effect (most recently in Resolution 1478 (2006) and Recommendation 1732 (2006)),
and also the need to protect migrant women from domestic violence (Resolution 1697 (2009) and Recommendation 1891 (2009) on
migrant women: at particular risk from domestic violence).
7. In view of the above considerations, the Assembly recognises
the need for host countries to develop and implement measures to
specifically address the protection of migrant women in the labour
market, irrespective of their occupation or immigration status.
In this regard, it calls upon member states of the Council of Europe
to:
7.1. increase legal migration
opportunities for women and adopt immigration policies based on
human rights that are gender sensitive and empowering, and which
prevent irregular migration, exploitation and trafficking. In particular,
member states are called upon to:
7.1.1. improve laws and
policies that regulate recruitment and employment of women migrant workers;
aspire to attain labour migration agreements, including a 50-50
quota for women and men;
7.1.2. provide more legal employment opportunities for migrant
women, in different sectors;
7.1.3. ensure that any studies undertaken to inventory the jobs
that are available to migrants include domestic workers such as
childminders and care workers;
7.1.4. ensure that a balanced proportion of women and men benefit
from “circular migration” programmes;
7.1.5. encourage countries of origin to create a single and effective
system of information on jobs abroad, presenting an equal number
of jobs for migrant women, and strengthen the monitoring of employment
agencies and other agencies providing information abroad;
7.1.6. instruct consulates in countries of origin to provide
information to migrating women on the dangers of human trafficking
and exploitation, including adequate information on their rights and
possibilities of redress and on organisations to contact in case
of urgent need;
7.2. uphold fundamental human rights, in particular by:
7.2.1. granting an individual legal status to migrant women who
join their spouses through family reunion, if possible within one
year of their date of arrival, as recommended in many previous Assembly
resolutions;
7.2.2. ensuring the right to family life and to marriage in line
with Articles 8 and 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights
(ETS No. 5), by refraining from imposing excessive admission criteria,
such as onerous language tests, for spouses in the family reunification procedure;
7.2.3. authorising women who have joined their spouses to seek
employment immediately upon arrival and to take affordable training
and language courses;
7.2.4. granting migrant women in an irregular situation full
access to health care, education and fair working conditions, and
ensuring that they are able to report violence and exploitation without
fear of deportation;
7.2.5. providing suitable assistance, including psychological
and rehabilitation assistance, and other services, such as free
legal aid, interpretation services, housing and childcare facilities,
to victims of domestic violence and violence in the workplace, discrimination,
exploitation and trafficking;
7.2.6. establishing a legal framework guaranteeing migrant women
the right to hold their own passports and residence permits and
making the unofficial confiscation of these documents a criminal
offence;
7.3. promote equal opportunities by:
7.3.1. ensuring
that all migrant women, independent of their legal status, are granted
the same rights as national workers; in particular by guaranteeing
their access to decent working conditions, protection under labour
legislation and access to social security;
7.3.2. introducing procedures for the recognition of degrees,
diplomas and professional qualifications obtained in the country
of origin and providing opportunities for upgrading qualifications
through vocational and lifelong training as well as local language
skills;
7.3.3. advocating entrepreneurship and self-employment among
migrant women, particularly through providing appropriate support
for them to set up or develop businesses;
7.4. prevent and combat exploitative practices in the labour
market by:
7.4.1. promoting decent, humane, dignified and
remunerative employment of women migrant workers;
7.4.2. setting up systems to monitor the situation of migrant
women in the labour market as regards minimum wages, working conditions
and the application of health and safety regulations;
7.4.3. introducing registration and licensing schemes for labour
providers, especially in insufficiently or non-regulated sectors
such as health care and domestic work; imposing dissuasive and proportionate
sanctions both for employment agencies and the companies that use
them in breach of labour regulations;
7.4.4. informing women migrant workers about their rights and
complaint procedures, and giving them contact information for workers’
rights groups;
7.4.5. separating labour inspection from immigration remits and
granting undocumented workers the right to report abuse without
having to fear for their stay in the host country;
7.4.6. granting “protective immigration” status to women migrant
workers who have been victims of abuse or mistreatment.
8. The Assembly urges member states to recognise the important
productive role and the social value of domestic work. To this end,
it encourages member states to:
8.1. recognise
domestic work as work under national labour law;
8.2. support the drafting of a new International Labour Organization
(ILO) convention on domestic workers and the supplementary recommendation
on decent work for domestic workers;
8.3. develop independent visa schemes for migrant domestic
and care workers which would allow legal entry, provide a standardised
working contract, and allow for a change of employer and type of work;
8.4. ensure that visas are not tied to particular employers
and remove or exclude any stipulation that employees must live in
the employer’s home;
8.5. provide migrant domestic workers with labour rights and
protection, especially as regards clearly defined work tasks, daily
hours of work and rest periods, wages (at least the minimum wage
or equivalent) and method of payment, standards of night work and
overtime, leave periods, standards of termination of employment
and social security protection;
8.6. protect migrant domestic workers against all forms of
abuse and harassment, including physical, verbal, sexual and psychological
abuse and harassment, and guarantee their right to seek legal remedies
against employers that mistreat them;
8.7. support the work of non-governmental organisations and
grassroots associations which promote women’s and migrants’ rights;
the prevention of abuse, exploitation and violence against migrant women;
and advocacy for the empowerment of women.