Gender, migration, and forced labour: understanding migrant women's work and exploitation in the Ghanaian economy

妇女和移徙工人在全球范围内特别容易受到强迫劳动的伤害(劳工组织，2017年；2018年)。在撒哈拉以南非洲，大约有1200万移徙工人，其中360万是妇女(劳工组织，2018：17)。加纳是一个中低收入的非洲国家，与区域和全球供应链和劳动力市场有着重要联系。该国面临着与体面工作、性别不平等和贫困有关的深刻挑战，这为更严重的剥削和虐待形式创造了肥沃的土壤。在发展讨论中，有一种假设认为，妇女的脆弱性根源于不平等的微观权力关系、“非洲父权制”的结构和/或有害的文化习俗。妇女和儿童通常被描绘成极端剥削的被动“受害者”--贩卖人口、性奴役、强迫婚姻--需要“拯救”(McGrath和Watson，2018)。然而，对“受害者”和“救援”的叙述不足以解释妇女劳动不自由的驱动因素和方面，而且还掩盖了全球南方，包括撒哈拉以南非洲地区女工强迫劳动的复杂、不同的现实。该项目将采用政治经济学的方法，提供关于强迫劳动的脆弱性和经历的强有力的社会科学证据，以解决这一问题。该项目的主要目的是深入了解移徙女工中的强迫劳动，特别是加纳。通过对三个部门--家政工作、性工作和可可--进行的多地点案例研究，该研究将产生数据，以分析这些部门中女性移民中强迫劳动的特点和作用；描述脆弱和剥削的驱动因素和机制；并确定解决这一问题的政策和实用工具。选择加纳的单一国家案例研究有两个主要原因：第一，因为这种方法将产生详细的、精细的多部门比较，这将推动对非洲移徙妇女的脆弱性和严重劳工剥削的理解；第二，鉴于我在加纳弱势人口中开展伦理和高影响力研究的丰富经验，我处于开展这一项目的独特地位。混合方法研究设计将提供可靠的、系统收集的数据，这些数据将对政府、政策制定者、国际组织、民间社会行为者和现代奴隶制、体面工作和国际发展领域的活动家特别有价值。就影响而言，该项目的成果将推动对易受强迫劳动的脆弱性的主流理解。具体地说，非学术产出将使三个核心影响受众和政策辩论受益。它们是：1)致力于供应链治理立法和打击强迫劳动的政策倡议的英国和欧洲政策制定者，如英国《现代奴隶法》和英国《结束强迫劳动、现代奴隶制和人口贩运行动呼吁》，它们继续采用以刑事司法为导向的‘奴役和贩运’办法，而不是劳动和体面工作办法。2)联合国会员国，特别是加纳和其他非洲国家，国际劳工组织等国际组织，国际移徙组织等移徙机构，以及致力于安全移徙的政策制定者，即《2018年全球移徙契约》，其目的是“解决国际移徙的方方面面”(UN，3)加纳政策制定者关心解决非正规经济中的性别不平等问题，这是加纳的一个活跃的政策领域，在很大程度上忽视了女工面临的最严重的剥削形式。

Women and migrant workers are disproportionately vulnerable to forced labour globally (ILO, 2017; 2018). In sub-Saharan Africa, there are around 12 million migrant workers, of which 3.6 million are women (ILO, 2018:17). Ghana is a lower-middle-income African country with important connections to regional and global supply chains and labour markets. The country faces profound challenges relating to decent work, gender inequality, and poverty, which creates fertile terrain for more severe forms of exploitation and abuse. In development discourse, there is an assumption that women's vulnerability is rooted in unequal microlevel power relations, structures of "African patriarchy", and/or harmful cultural practices. Women and children are typically portrayed as passive "victims" of extreme exploitation--trafficking, sexual slavery, forced marriage--in need to "rescue" (McGrath and Watson, 2018). However, narratives of "victimhood" and "rescue" are insufficient to explain the drivers and facets of labour unfreedom among women and, moreover, obscure the complex, differentiated realities of forced labour for women workers across the Global South, including sub-Saharan Africa. This project will address this by providing robust social scientific evidence on vulnerability to and experiences of forced labour, using a political economy approach.The principal aim of this project is to generate an in-depth understanding of forced labour among migrant women workers, with a particular focus on Ghana. Through a multi-site case study of three sectors--domestic work, sex work, and cocoa--the study will generate data to: analyse the character and role of forced labour among women migrants in these sectors; to delineate the drivers and mechanisms of vulnerability and exploitation; and to identify policy and practical tools to address this. A single-country case study of Ghana has been selected for two primary reasons: firstly, because this approach will generate a detailed, fine-grained multi-sector comparison, which will move forward understandings of vulnerability and severe labour exploitation among migrant women in Africa; secondly, because I am uniquely positioned to carry out this project, given my extensive experience of conducting ethical and high-impact research amongst vulnerable populations in Ghana.Since this project looks at migration, gender, and forced labour, it has significant capacity for impact, both at a national and international level. The mixed methods research design will deliver reliable, systematically collected data that will be especially valuable to governments, policymakers, international organisations, civil society actors, and activists in the fields of modern slavery, decent work, and international development. In terms of impact, the outcomes of this project will move forward mainstream understandings of vulnerability to forced labour. Specifically, non-academic outputs will benefit three core impact audiences and policy debates. These are: 1) UK and European policymakers working on supply chain governance legislation and policy initiatives to combat forced labour, such as the UK Modern Slavery Act and the UK Call to Action to End Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, which continue to adopt a criminal justice-oriented 'slavery and trafficking' approach, rather than one of labour and decent work 2) UN Member States, particularly Ghana and other African states, international organisations such as the ILO, migration bodies such as the International Organization for Migration, and policymakers working on safe migration, namely the 2018 Global Compact for Migration, which aims to "address all aspects of international migration" (UN, 2018), but pays little attention to internal migration 3) Ghanaian policymakers concerned with addressing gender inequality in the informal economy, a live policy area in Ghana that has largely ignored the most severe forms of exploitation faced by women workers.