Feminization of Migration: Creating a Website to Raise Awareness about Trafficking of Women and Children

Introduction

You are a part of a global effort to increase access to education and empower students through “open pedagogy.”  Open pedagogy is a “free access” educational practice that places you – the student – at the center of your own learning process in a more engaging, collaborative learning environment.  The ultimate purpose of this effort is to achieve greater social justice in our community in which the work can be freely shared with the broader community.  This is a renewable assignment that is designed to enable you to become an agent of change in your community through the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  For this work, you will integrate the disciplines of Sociology; Anthropology; and Psychology to achieve SDG #10: Reduced Inequalities.   

Learning Objectives

In this learning assignment students will be looking at migration processes with a female focus and looking deeper into poverty, inequality, discrimination, and exploitation.

Purpose/Rationale

Students will choose a country of study and discuss the relevance of the theory of intersectionality in the context of the feminization of migration, particularly the vulnerability of female migrant workers to gender-based violence.

Instructions

This activity is a group activity that consists of 3-5 groups. The task is to develop a web page highlighting an understanding of migration’s feminization. The assignment has a three step process. First, the students watch and discuss the documentary film “Don’t Buy Don’t Sell” (2003), the case study of Indonesia by Gadis Arivia Effendi. Link: https://youtu.be/GSgn5OdIDVs

Then, students learn from a prominent guest lecture, Ms. Shandra Woworuntu, an active activist working in trafficking of women and girls in the US. After watching the documentary film and engaging with a guest lecture, students choose a country of study of female migrant workers (Caribbean, South America, Asia, Africa, US and Europe). Finally, students create a website that contains data from credible sources, labor standards, selective videos, interviews with organizations working on the subject of female migrant workers, and design or plan an awareness campaign on campus. The website should include a reflection page of how the assignment affected the students and what needs to be done to reduce inequality within and among countries.