Page 33 - A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy- Why? and How?

Indian Council
of World Affairs

The dominant discourse on trafficking overlooks the multiple
narratives of negotiations women make while they embark
on migration.

women from exploitation, however in reality it curbs their right to mobility
and pushes women to take ‘irregular’ channels of migration. I find this kind
of protectionism from the state as mere symbolism, a symbolic regulation
under the garb of protectionism. Here we assume that it is protecting women
but it is doing quite the contrary. You can see this regulation on the Ministry
of External Affairs website.

It is important to find newer strategies to combat violence against women,
not by pushing women who are fighting all odds into precarity. As part of
my research, I also attempted to look closely at the history of age ban, and
how did it emerge. It seems that the discourse of trafficking is so strong and
dominant when women attempt to migrate for work and for other reasons.
The dominant discourse on trafficking overlooks the multiple narratives
of negotiations women make while they embark on migration. Most
importantly it doesn’t acknowledge women as rightful migrants and workers
in the global labour market and attempt to see them merely vulnerable
bodies, who can easily be exploited by traffickers.

So what do women do in such precarious conditions? Either they have to wait
until the age of 30 or need to find a way to bypass the state regulation. As
you know many women try to do that as they find the state as not facilitators
of safe migration. As you know there are state and non-state actors who
help women in bypassing this regulation by helping in providing forged
documents or facilitating the travel through ‘pushing’ through the airport.
A system of corrupt officials and a network of middle men benefit from this.
What I emphasize here is the system of conflating women’s migration with
trafficking and considering women migrants as vulnerable victims essentially
push women as only sexualized gendered bodies. In this dominant masculine
narrative of the state we do not see and acknowledge women as workers with
rightful entitlement to travel with dignity.

I also want to add here that when I am talking about gendered migration,
I don’t want to say that women migrate only for livelihood. It is their
aspiration and desire, and they have a rightful entitlement to travel. It can
be for fleeing a situation of domestic violence, as we have seen with Suja,
or it could be in the context of other gender based violence they faced at
home, or it could be a mere aspiration to see a new place. Whatever is the
reason for migration, they are significant agents of the mobility regime in a
globalized world. 33

A GENDER-SENSITIVE INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY Why? and How?