Pakistan

Migration and displacement

Labour and migrant workers
There are nearly 8.5 million migrant workers working across different regions of Pakistan, which include both internal and foreign migrant workers. Forty-five per cent of these workers are engaged in informal activities including day labourers, construction workers, domestic helpers, factory workers, informal restaurants, and beauty salons.

For this research 22 semi-structured interviews were conducted, predominantly in Islamabad, with adult migrant women with different skill levels, nationalities, and migration experiences.

What we found

Diversity
The majority of participants consisted of highly skilled and educated migrant women of diverse nationalities who migrated from the Philippines, Canada, China-Korea, Uganda, Germany, Egypt, and Somalia. They worked in formal sectors, i.e., teaching and as development professionals in international NGOs/UN agencies. They came to Pakistan for different reasons: family reunification, marriage, independent work and for education and professional opportunities. A significant proportion, mainly from the Philippines, worked as live ins in the domestic care sector.  Afghan participants worked in the semi-skilled sector as self-employed workers in the service industry, such as beauty salons and carpet-weaving. A few research participants work independently as business owners or in service industries.

Challenges
Gender-based discrimination in Pakistan was not openly reported by the migrant women workers who participated in this study, despite those who are married to a Pakistani reporting instances of clashing gender norms. Nearly all describe their living and working conditions in positive terms.

However, lack of official documents created daily challenges. Many migrant workers detail instances of obstacles that they encountered in their daily life because they are not in possession of the national ID card.

The women have relatively high levels of mobility. Despite the diversity of life and work experiences, including the type of accommodation and living arrangements, most women said that they move around the city freely, using cars or taxis, that they go to restaurants, malls, and markets. For migrant domestic workers their process of acquainting with the host country and ‘going out’ to public spaces is filtered by the family they live with, and, to a certain extent, necessarily hampered by their home-based work.

Their coping strategies consisted of making choices, taking actions, and creating narratives that mitigated the hardships of their situation in different realms, from the domestic to the workplace.

Culture and conflict
This research investigated the value of culture to women in conflict settings, seeking to understand gendered economic exclusion and its relationship to peacebuilding, economic agency and empowerment. It used a cultural mapping methodology to explore how communities of women rely on coded and tacit knowledge to rebuild their lives and to understand how cultural practices continue to exist and resist in these challenging contexts.

What we found

Autonomy and independence
The ability to generate an income through crafts gave the women greater autonomy in decision making, particularly in relation to marriage. Generating a sustainable livelihood is a short way of pushing back against early marriage. For some of the women who were already married it led to a greater respect from their spouse in their marriage.

Income generated from commercialising research gives them a much-needed financial boost to invest in raw material and build their craft businesses independently, pushing back on marriage through the argument for an economic independence.

Feminist movements
Feminist movements in Pakistan which support women’s ambitions to work and build incomes and careers have engaged with this project. Some of them are part of the focus groups and have cascaded this craft-based approach to sustainable incomes, through discussion groups and training, widely in their region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa allowing for wider outreach and impact footprint of the project.

Reaching the marginalised
Women from hard to access remoter regions must be included in an equitable manner in research. This includes funding their travel in safe and appropriate manner, which is agreeable with them and their family members. Provision of childcare of work settings in which young children are welcome and catered to is important.

Protecting heritage
Craft making, and practices which are embedded within community structures should be valued and supported to enhance value to makers and their families. There is very limited documentation or literature of cultural practices in this context and a real risk that some knowledge may be lost. The documentation of such cultural practices through processes led by the communities themselves should be prioritised.  Limitations of access to materials and spaces should be clearly built into policy and programming for economic development.

Concepts of heritage that are linked to ecologies of making and landscapes of production must feature in cultural development. Long standing histories of making, the made, the maker, the language, the environment, and patterns of making across seasons intersects with project design and methodology and research outcomes. Longevity of practices which are resilient, and their nuances are worthy of mapping and for learning from.