Advocacy for women migrant workers in Malaysia through an intersectionality lens

Abstract

Analysing labour migration through the lens of intersectionality provides valuable insights into the complex identities of women migrant workers and the multiple discriminations they struggle with. Intersectionality advocates argue that only through adopting such an approach can women’s multiple discriminations be challenged. Drawing on a case study of seven non-governmental organisations and one focus group of women migrant workers in a non-Western context, Malaysia, we explore how advocacy organisations understand, interpret and adopt an intersectional approach in advancing the rights of its women migrant workers. We show that there are challenges, specific to the local context, which reduce the likelihood of organisations doing so. The Malaysian experience likely has significance for similar advocacy in other Asian countries.

Keywords

Advocacy developing country intersectionality Malaysia women migrant workers

Introduction

Malaysia remains one of the largest importers of labour in Asia. The pursuit of aggressive export-oriented development policies in the 1980s saw burgeoning numbers of migrant workers entering the country to work. The expansion of its middle class, a rise in educational standards and women’s increasing entry into the labour force have triggered further demands for migrant workers (Piper, 2006). Migrants from Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan, Myanmar, India and Sri Lanka come to work in construction, manufacturing and services, on plantations and in households, and carry out low-skilled and low-paid work. They constitute 20–30% of Malaysia’s workforce today (International Labour Organization (ILO), 2016a). It is estimated that there are approximately 2 million legal migrants in Malaysia, while a further 2 million are irregular and undocumented (Kong, 2017).

Women constitute a significant portion of the migrant workforce. Like their male counterparts, they engage in low-waged, low-skilled work and are a super-exploited workforce. Their status as non-citizens deprives them of many legal rights that citizens enjoy. Additionally they face gender-related discrimination, further disadvantaging them. The question of how the multilayered difficulties faced by this group of marginalised peoples can be remedied has attracted much attention over the years.

This article uses intersectionality as a lens through which to investigate ways in which advocacy organisations deal with the dimensions of difference among these workers, to identify barriers to adopting an intersectionality approach and to understand how these are overcome. Although intersectionality has been utilised to analyse workers' migration experience in European contexts (e.g. Bastia, 2014; Lutz et al., 2011), its application in non-Western contexts is under-researched (Lee and Piper, 2013). Shin (2009), Lee and Piper (2013) and Ogawa (2017) all use the concept to explore how the intersections of identities of women migrant workers in Asia give rise to the discriminations and marginalisation they suffer. It follows that we need to consider intersectional status positions when developing advocacy strategies on behalf of these women. This article does so, using Malaysia as a case study. The country offers a unique site for the application of an intersectionality lens to advance the position of women migrant workers, first due to a combination of features that are relevant to their identities. Second, its economy has averaged an annual growth of 5.4% since 2010 (The World Bank, 2018). Given this optimistic outlook, the country will increase, rather than reduce, its reliance on migrant labour in realising its 2020 vision of becoming a highly developed economy. This makes studies that investigate how the rights of its migrant workforce can be advanced ever more important. Third, as its policies and practices towards migrant labour share similarities with those in other migrant labour-dependent Asian countries (see e.g. Kaur, 2010), findings from this study can inform research on migrant labour advocacy in these countries.

The article proceeds as follows. The next section outlines the migration regime in Malaysia and the lived realities of its women migrant workers. The second section discusses intersectionality theory, following which the method is explained. Next, the findings of interviews with seven non-governmental organisations (NGOs) advocating on behalf of women migrant workers, and a focus group discussion held with a small number of these women, are presented. Finally, we discuss the implications of the findings and conclude.

Labour migration regime in Malaysia: The lived realities of women migrant workers

Malaysia operates a highly inequitable labour migration system. Migration policies vacillate between ensuring a continual supply of cheap labour and instigating crackdowns on undesirable migrants (Kaur, 2014), leading to criticisms that migration policies are framed as a security concern rather than regarding migrants as major economic contributors (ILO, 2016a: 23; Woo, 2016). The government’s approach towards regulating migrants is instrumental; migrant workers are truly only a means to an end (ILO, 2016a: 2). There is a ‘hierarchy of rights’ for migrant workers in Malaysia, depending on their potential economic contributions (Nah, 2012). Unskilled migrants, on the lowest rung, are strictly kept out unless needed. The position of irregular or undocumented migrants is very precarious. Exploited for their labour, they are often rounded up by the authorities and detained in overcrowded facilities, where conditions are poor. Migrant regulation revolves around visa and immigration issues but seldom clarifies the employment rights of migrant workers (Piper, 2006: 364). Even worse, inefficient management of migration has resulted in huge influxes of unskilled migrant workers and their exploitation (Devadason and Chan, 2014; Woo, 2016).

Approximately 300,000 migrant workers are employed in Malaysia’s important electronics sector, of which 80% are women (Ramchandani, 2018; War on Want, 2012). The combination of the identities of this group of women (e.g. young, single women, low socio-economic status, foreign citizen) gives rise to specific types of discriminations. Often originating from rural areas where education is not a priority, they do not know their rights under the law. Being young and female, they are vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse by their supervisors (Crinis, 2014). They are also subject to severe movement restrictions, often transported from factory to living quarters to factory in company-owned buses. If they become disabled (e.g. through workplace injury), they acquire a further identity (disabled). Here, the chances of future income generation are significantly reduced, raising the possibility that they will agree to debt bondage.

Another 300,000–400,000 women migrants work as domestic maids (ILO, 2016b). The combination of their identities (e.g. domestic worker, woman, foreign citizen) renders them vulnerable to other kinds of injustices. Domestic work is not regarded as ‘real’ work and reinforces existing ideas that domestic work is a ‘natural’ task for women. These workers are employed under an abusive and highly exploitative system, and are denied social status, economic resources and political voice (Joseph, 2013). Domestic workers are often also identified as sexually promiscuous women, husband stealers and an extension of female employers, contributing to their abuse. Due to the nature of the work, they are less likely to establish connections with other workers or access critical support services. Given their forced hiddenness, uncovering their abuse becomes problematical (Huling, 2012).

One problem resulting from women migrant workers’ identities as poor, foreign and often irregular peoples is that they are often prevented from accessing sexual and reproductive health rights (Lasimbang et al., 2016). Many cannot afford medical services, reducing the chances of early detection of diseases or illnesses. Contracts that prohibit pregnancies continue to be forced on these women. Pregnancies result in cancellation of work permits and repatriation. Fearing that they will lose their jobs, many women endanger their lives by resorting to illegal abortions.

Finally, these women’s identities as non-citizens, of a particular nationality or ethnicity, or irregular or undocumented peoples render them liable to ill treatment by society. Anti-immigrant sentiment runs deep in Malaysia, with migrant workers being associated with crime, disease and terrorism, and sexual and moral problems (Hamidi, 2016; Loh, 2016; Tunon and Baruah, 2012). The migrant population has been missing from discussions of national identity (Aw, 2016). Worryingly, intolerance and xenophobia have contributed to growing violence against women migrant workers (Zahiid, 2016). Women who are victims of violence are often unable to call the authorities if they have undocumented status.

Nonetheless, women migrant workers have allies. Crinis and Ngoc Tran (2017), for example, describe in rich detail how NGOs and Christian-based organisations in Malaysia have reached out to migrant workers (pp. 87–91). While NGOs have focused on holding the government responsible for its migration policies, church groups have taken up welfare service provision and the creation of worker support networks (p. 81). The latter have enabled migrant workers to reach other workers from the same ethnicity and form their own migrant worker associations in order to look out for each other and to protect their interests at work (pp. 92–93). However, it is not clear from the evidence whether these groups take an explicit intersectional approach or focus on multiple sources of discrimination. Their approach appears non-confrontational and does not challenge the power structures that marginalise working migrant women. We explore, in this article, the extent to which the organisations in our study meet women migrant workers’ complex intersecting needs.

Theory

Intersectionality is a feminist theory that recognises that gender-based inequalities intersect with other sources of oppression. The term, initially developed in the West, was coined by Crenshaw (1989, 1991) to capture the experiences of women of colour in the United States, although the concept was even then not a novel one (Nash, 2008: 3). Its starting premise is that people possess multiple and layered identities, determined by their history, geographical locations and social relations. These identities may be based on race, class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, caste, religion and migration status. These aspects of identity are not ‘unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather … reciprocally constructing phenomena’ (Collins, 2015: 2). Each aspect is linked to the others to create the whole person and his/her experience (McCall, 2005; Valentine, 2007). Further, the effects of multiple identities are not additive or cumulative; rather, they produce substantively distinct experiences.

Proponents of an intersectional approach argue that advocacy along single identity dimensions (gender, or class, or migrant status) is blinkered. Single ground advocacy neither recognises the multiple identities of disadvantaged peoples nor reflects a complete picture of their experience. Instead, it is only through understanding the intersection of vulnerable people’s multiple identities, and the structures of oppression which result, that advocates can respond fully to their difficulties (Squires, 2008). Matsuda (1991) argues that an intersectional approach encourages us to ask ‘other’ questions to reveal discriminations that are less visible in order to understand the totality of an individual’s experience: ‘When I see something that looks racist, I ask “where is the patriarchy in this?” When I see something that looks sexist, I ask “where is the heterosexism in this ”’ (p. 1189).

Bastia (2014) argues that there is a need for intersectionality to be grounded in, and complemented with, a historical approach that includes an in-depth understanding of the contexts in which women live (p. 242). Differences such as class, race or ethnicity, associated in intersectionality studies with gender, have very different meanings and uses in different contexts. Applications of intersectionality thus cannot be transferred from one environment to another, disregarding context-specific meanings (p. 246). How social structures interact to create particular injustices and problems for intersectionally disadvantaged peoples in different contexts is an important question (Weldon, 2006: 246), yet there is little basis for understanding what that term means outside of European and US contexts (Townsend-Bell, 2011: 189).

Operationalising intersectionality remains a challenging task. First, organisations tend to focus advocacy around limited sets of issues or identities. Research from the West, where the concept has strongly influenced social movements, is a starting point. In studying US advocacy groups, Strolovich (2006) argues that the typical political response to challenging discrimination is to organise interest groups around single axes of oppression (gender or race or poverty, as opposed to gender and race and poverty). But doing so also means that ‘common interests’ tend to be those which affect the more privileged members, as are the policy issues addressed by these organisations (p. 896). In the UK, Rubery and Hebson (2018) urge the integration of a gender perspective in employment relations practice and research. Many of the core challenges of employment relations, such as renewing the organisational base, addressing the growth of precarious work and challenging the marketisation of the employment relationship, are all inextricably linked with gender and gender inequality, not just class (p. 430). Ignoring the gender dimension will likely lead to missed opportunities for renewal and further deterioration of employment relations. Marchetti (2014) shows, again in the context of the US, how organisations disproportionately advocate on behalf of some intersectional identities (e.g. class) over others (e.g. gender), even when representing intersectionally marginalised segments of their constituencies. This ‘identities hierarchy’ within advocacy is liable to (re)produce bias in public policy recommendations and implementation (p. 105; see also p. 115). At times, rules, procedures or the legal environment may hinder organisations’ embrace of intersectionality. Beckwith (2014) describes how the organisational rules of the United Mine Workers of America, shaped by labour law, established who did and did not have political standing within a social movement campaign. These had strongly gendered consequences in a male-dominated industry, rendering working-class women invisible as women and excluding female activists’ formal voice in its 1989–1990 strike against Pittston Coal Group.

Second, intersectional activism must go further than simply looking at organisations’ ability to represent the intersecting needs of their members. It is also critical to question their capacity to challenge interlocking systems of power or the social structures that interact to create particular injustices for particular intersectionally disadvantaged peoples (Tungohan, 2016; Weldon, 2006). Many organisations rectify these inequalities through engaging in ‘rights-based’ campaigns. Yet as Spade (2013) so painstakingly demonstrates, strategies based on ‘legal equality’ or ‘rights’ do not necessarily meet the needs of peoples facing intersectional harm (those harms made invisible when one does not use an intersectionality lens). These strategies do not necessarily challenge the structures that are responsible for the injustices and problems; the strategies take place within these structures, contributing to and collaborating with them (pp. 1049–1051).

Third, an important theme in intersectional research is coalition building that breaks down interlocking structures of oppression. Chun et al. (2013) and Tungohan (2016) provide rich accounts of how immigrant women’s organisations in the US and Canada linked with, for example, anti-racist, feminist and labour groups to challenge multiple discriminations. Yet it is not easy to integrate coalition building with principles of intersectionality. Townsend-Bell (2011) asks how coalition members decide which ‘axes of differences’ are relevant, that is, which social divisions or categories of difference should underpin their campaigns. As member groups are driven by their own motivations or ideologies, can the coalition deal with such nuanced issues, and is there a risk that certain categories of difference may be missed out altogether (p. 196)? Meanwhile, relations between social groups are diverse, ranging from being characterised by competition, to alliance, to coalition or network. How can the diverse relations between these groups (and their projects) be resolved – which ones should have hierarchy or hegemony over the others (Walby et al., 2012: 233–234)? Vierloo (2013) points out (citing Adler-Hellman, 1987) that alliances between social groups are rooted in the sharing of ideas. The way in which a movement defines a problem, how it came into being and how it may be resolved is a crucial element in the formation or obstruction of alliances (p. 907). But divergent framing can obstruct and break down alliances (Cooper, 2004).

Finally, intersectional activism requires an understanding of the specific needs of those who experience discrimination. Alberti et al. (2013) argue that UK unions tended to regard migrants primarily as workers, rather than as migrant workers with particular and overlapping forms of oppression. As a result, unions constructed a dichotomy between workplace and migration issues, impeding the effective involvement of diverse and marginalised workers into unions (for a contrasting case see Tapia et al., 2017, in the US). There is also a distinction between advocacy for and about marginalised peoples; the former necessitates the meaningful participation of these peoples, rather than advocates making general assumptions about them (Simpson, 2009: 10, 18–24). Using intersectionality thus entails valuing a ‘bottom-up’ approach to research, analysis and planning, where marginalised peoples can articulate how they live their lives.

We now turn to address our research question: ‘To what extent do advocacy organisations in Malaysia deal with the intersecting dimensions of difference among women migrant workers?’

Method

There is no clear methodology for operationalising intersectionality (see McCall, 2005, for discussion). We select an ‘intra-categorical’ intersectional framework, which focuses on the neglected points of intersection of any particular social group, to reveal the complexity of lived experience within such groups (McCall, 2005: 1774). We seek to understand the extent to which NGOs in Malaysia take account of the multiple identities of its women migrant workers, whose experiences are shaped by a combination of political, social and economic discriminations.

The research began by locating relevant organisations that helped women migrant workers. Two of the authors live in Malaysia and have deep knowledge of the local advocacy context. We focused on NGOs in Penang and Kuala Lumpur, two well-known sites for migrant labour activism.

There is no single organisation in Malaysia dedicated to promoting the rights of women migrant workers. There are, however, several organisations that work with these women, as part of their client base. Their work (singly and with each other) is useful in explaining the kind of advocacy that exists on behalf of these women. We contacted a range of women’s organisations, trade unions, social justice organisations, religious organisations and pro-migrant workers’ organisations. The Malaysian authors have previously conducted research in some of these organisations. Their personal contacts put them in touch with others. We also conducted a web search to maximise opportunities to locate the most appropriate organisations. We selected our participants based on the following criteria:

their emphasis that women migrant workers were deserving people;

their belief that they had a responsibility towards these women;

their experience of working with women migrant workers.

Seven organisations agreed to speak with us regarding their work with women migrant workers (see Table 1). We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews (face to face, Skype, telephone) with their senior representatives. These organisations’ involvement with women migrant workers varied: some worked extensively with a range of women migrant workers, while others had less regular contact with them. However, they all believed that their advocacy was important as a means of improving these women’s positions. Some of these organisations have worked with each other for many years and know each other well. An interview schedule, informed by the relevant literature, was developed to investigate the research question (identified on page 8) in three stages:

To what extent do NGOs take into account the different identity dimensions of women migrant workers?

What are the barriers to an intersectional approach, in practice, in the Malaysian context?

How do NGOs navigate these barriers?

Table 1.

Participants Interviewed and Interview Dates.

NGO1X (6 April 2017)	Women’s rights organisation, championing gender equality, located in Penang
NGO2U (11 April 2017; 6 June 2017)	Trade union in the electronics sector, which works with a large group of migrants, located in Penang
NGO3Y (7 April 2017)	Religious women’s organisation, promoting gender equality and justice within religion, located in Kuala Lumpur
NGO4Z (23 February 2017)	Human rights organisation working with vulnerable peoples, including women migrant workers, located in Kuala Lumpur
NGO5K (11 March 2017)	Social justice organisation representing poor and marginalised peoples, located in Kuala Lumpur
NGO6B (26 May 2017)	Social movement group championing political, economic and social reform; greater governmental accountability, respect for human rights, fairer socio-economic policies, located in Penang
NGO7H (8 June 2017)	Human rights organisation, working with migrant and refugee populations, located in Penang

NGO: non-governmental organisation.

To generate migrants’ perspectives, we organised one focus group meeting with eight women migrant workers, with the help of one of the organisations we interviewed. While women migrant workers include domestic workers, in this study we focused on workers from the electronics sector, as we had easier access to them. We invited them to discuss their personal and work lives, and to provide accounts of ways in which NGOs have reached out to them to meet their intersecting needs.

To avoid linguistic barriers precluding a direct translation of what intersectionality meant in the Malaysian context, we clarified its meaning with each of our participants. Some were already familiar with the term and used it confidently. For those who did not, we translated the term into the local language in terms of multiple identities and disadvantage, provided examples of what it meant and explained what intersectional advocacy might entail.

We focused our investigation on advocacy along three primary identities of women migrant workers, namely as workers, as women and as migrants. Our questions thus encouraged participants to tell us the extent to which their advocacy on behalf of these women encompassed all three dimensions: ‘To what extent do you advocate for these women as women, as migrants and as workers?’ We recognise the many other identity dimensions of these women (e.g. nationality, socio-economic backgrounds, religion, ethnicity, documented or undocumented), but resource constraints did not allow us to pursue these lines of investigation.

A total of 10 interviews were conducted with NGOs. All NGO interviews were recorded and transcribed and data were analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), identifying themes relating to the research questions. The focus group discussion was not recorded out of respect for the privacy of the women migrant workers who wanted to preclude any possibility of their identities being revealed. Detailed notes were taken, however. All interviews were conducted between February 2017 and July 2017.

Findings

To what extent do NGOs take into account the different identity dimensions of women migrant workers (as women, as migrants and as workers)?

Almost all of the participants recognised the multiple discriminations against women migrant workers, because of their multiple identities. Intersectionality was not a foreign concept to many of them. Three NGOs (NGO1X, NGO4Z, NGO6B) regarded intersectionality as crucial to their work. The representative from NGO1X remarked: ‘I think all women’s groups use intersectionality. It’s a very common phrase now for all women’s groups … We all do intersectionality approach, all the time in our work.’

However, there were variations in participants’ understanding and interpretation of intersectionality in their activism in general, and specifically in relation to women migrant workers. NGO1X regarded understanding intersectionality as being able to address heterogeneity among their client groups:

Intersectionality just basically means that a person does not exist in a single dimension … so a victim of violence when she comes to us, she maybe poverty ridden, beaten, she may not have a place to stay, maybe experiencing violence, or she may not have a legal work permit, but she has turned up at our doorstep …

Others saw intersectionality as meaning inclusiveness. NGO3Y, a religious women’s organisation, explained that adopting intersectionality meant that it did not differentiate between women of different religions when seeking justice under religious laws. In providing an example of a non-Muslim husband converting to Islam, what rights would the non-Muslim wife, who did not choose to convert, have? NGO3Y said ‘this is the intersection that we see; we not just dealing with Muslim women, when we talk about Islam, when we talk about injustice … justice has to be for all Muslim and non-Muslim women’.

NGO5K, an organisation representing poor and marginalised peoples, did not use the word intersectionality when describing its work, but intersectionality in terms of inclusivity was part of its advocacy. Thus, its work included campaigning for the rights of both local and migrant workers:

[Intersectionality] is a new terminology for me … But I think indirectly, we are already implementing that because when we analyse the issue, we analyse from different perspectives, who they are, how we want to work with them … who are the other partners who can come together to help in this particular case, it’s the nature of our target people, and how we can provide a better service, so when you look at so many angles.

Some participants did not recognise the concept at all. NGO2U, a trade union, was an organisation which had daily contact with women migrant workers. Yet it was not at all familiar with intersectionality, asking ‘is that intersex?’ It perceived women migrant workers strictly as workers, and its involvement with them in their other identity dimensions (especially gender) was very limited:

[W]e only handle the case related with the employment act, e.g. wages, safety and abuse, other than that [referring to pregnancies], we consider it as personal problem and will not interfere … . we cannot force these women not to have affairs with local people … it is their freedom and choice … we don’t get involved, except taking the necessary steps when these women are deported by the employer.

What are the barriers to an intersectional approach, in practice, in the Malaysian context?

Despite many participants being familiar with the concept of intersectionality, and their emphasis that their approaches were intersectional, it quickly became apparent that in practice, this was not always the case. Despite these organisations’ commitment to supporting women migrant workers, they could not always include these women in their advocacy (inclusivity), or work with their intersecting oppressions (heterogeneity). Three major interrelated barriers to advocacy, based on the intersectionality of worker, gender and migrant status, were cited. These were resource issues, political and legal context, and (in)visibility constraints.

Resource issues

Many participants mentioned resources as a barrier to tackling multiple discriminations (heterogeneity), or when including working migrant women in their advocacy work (inclusivity). The response of NGO7H, a refugee organisation, was typical: ‘[we do] a lot of building with the community, but we would love to do that also with migrant workers, but we don’t have the resources. We don’t have the people and we don’t have the capacity’.

Specialisation

Limited resources resulted in participants having to specialise and prioritise. Participants talked about having to focus their work on specific groups of migrant workers. Specialisation is reinforced by funding mechanisms, which acted as a constraint to adopting intersectionality. NGO4Z, an organisation that works daily with women migrant workers, found it difficult to expand its advocacy to include women migrant domestic workers:

It depends on the donors. This is a challenge – what exactly your donor or funder is giving you the money for … sometimes when we talk to other organisations, can we include domestic workers in this project? And their answer is, ‘we have to think about it’. We have to go back to the donor to check if we can include these people.

Prioritisation of local women over migrants

NGO3Y was also explicit about specialisation, on this occasion in relation to local rather than migrant women:

No migrant workers [amongst our clientele], because we don’t do that outreach. We have to keep our work focus on Islamic family law … that is the niche that we have and that is the capacity that we have. Given the challenge in advocacy, we are not able to do everything.

But this participant acknowledged that the lack of outreach resulted in the exclusion of Muslim women migrant workers (a significant proportion, given the numbers of women migrant workers from Indonesia). In fact, we identified a preference on the part of most of the participants to prioritise local people’s issues, in the resource-limited contexts. NGO4Z felt this very acutely, when trying to advance their cause:

… NGOs want to solely focus on local issues. They still see that nothing is effective in terms of women’s issues in Malaysia – lack of women’s participation in Parliament, in terms of labour and employment still low number, women are not sitting in the top management … people are still struggling with these issues … see these as an urgent need to be addressed, rather than migrant women who come here … who get pregnant … who get sacked … who get raped … whose employers do not pay wages … doesn’t seem very important! Because they are not Malaysians! That kind of a perspective is not there …

Despite being concerned about women migrant workers’ vulnerability to abuse and exploitation in the workplace, NGO5K acknowledged that ‘When you talk about foreign workers, we are not the right one to talk with. Because we do very little work with migrant workers. Our focus still, is to the local workers’.

Legal and political barriers

Inequalities embedded in the political-legal context in Malaysia are a major factor restricting NGOs’ capacity to tackle the multiple oppressions faced by women migrant workers. Some of the participants talked about ‘legal prejudice’ against the migrant workforce, which meant that they were not able to help them. For example, NGO7H clarified that the legal system did not make it worthwhile for migrants to complain: ‘a migrant worker complains that she is not receiving wages, but she is arrested because she has no documents, they are firstly victims, then they are made criminals, how can you have redress when you are criminalised?’.

NGO2U explained that the government would not allow migrants to form their own union, immediately also limiting ways in which unions can help migrants:

We are trying hard to set up a migrant workers’ union, but this has been rejected by the government. Malaysia has not ratified ILO Convention 97 which recognises freedom of association. Once it has been ratified, then it is all open for grabs.

Even where there were laws offering protection to workers, these were often not implemented or enforced in relation to migrants. NGO5K explained that non-enforcement of the law by the government created a confidence among employers that migrants did not matter: ‘The employers are so keen to take the migrant workers because they can pay low.’ Here, the fact of non-enforcement reinforced a view that migrants were undeserving of protection, and directly impacted on NGOs’ work to defend the rights of these women.

Mutual invisibility of women migrant workers and NGOs

The intersecting oppressions facing women migrant workers were sometimes invisible to NGOs. At the same time, NGOs were themselves invisible to women migrant workers. This mutual invisibility undermines opportunities for advocacy based around intersectionality, to take account of these women’s multiple and intersecting identities.

Participants relayed difficulty in establishing relationships with women migrant workers. Few women approached them. This was explained in terms of these women’s lack of awareness of their rights, or of what help could be available (NGO6B), but also because of the isolation, fear and lack of trust on the part of women migrant workers. NGO5K explained:

[I]t is not easy to organise the women migrant workers … they are very scared to go and join and listen to anyone. Second thing, being a migrant worker, you don’t want to do anything aggressive because you are scared of the immigration, police, authorities. The third thing, they feel they don’t have any support here. So, you must get the trust first–because not everybody is comfortable to talk to you, so you must create that trust first, then only they will open up to you …

The focus group participants confirmed these difficulties from their own perspectives. It was clear that the NGOs were also invisible to the women. One worker explained that in her 10 years working in Malaysia’s electronic sector she had never heard of any particular NGO, although she was familiar with the concept of one. This was reiterated by the other women. Some said they would not know how to get in touch with NGOs and others doubted that they would have the time to liaise with NGOs, given their workday (7.05 a.m. to 6.55 p.m.).

While there was some synergy between the perspectives of the NGOs and the women migrant workers, there was also some divergence. The focus group participants did not articulate intersectional needs, but primarily identified themselves as workers. For example, they saw sexual harassment purely as a workplace rather than a gender-related issue: ‘I am abused not as a woman, but as a worker.’

Even when they discussed sexual and reproductive health problems, for example period pains, they did not elaborate on this as a women’s issue, they couched these as work-based problems. On period pains, one participant remarked: ‘I dare not go to the toilet or sit down to rest or get medical certificate to excuse myself from work, I must continue to work otherwise I am penalised.’

On unwanted pregnancies, another said: ‘I would be violating the contract if I got pregnant and I will need to compensate my employer.’

These women’s daily regime revolved around meeting targets on the production line. They came to view their identities narrowly–that of workers, but not of women or migrants, minimising the significance of other identity dimensions and their sense of what was just and fair. Finally, they spoke of the desire to take charge of their own lives, irrespective of the fact that no organisation helped them. They saw the potential for freedom, agency and empowerment through the friendships they had built: ‘I am a big sister to others’, ‘we are a family who takes care of everyone’.

This was a highly select group of women migrant workers who may not represent the experiences of all women migrant workers in Malaysia. More in-depth and wide-ranging future research exploring the experiences, expectations and needs of diverse groups of women migrant workers in Malaysia (and other developing country contexts) may provide useful understanding for NGOs who seek to support them. Nevertheless, the findings illustrate how the inaccessibility and invisibility of these women to NGOs reduced opportunities for NGOs to understand their needs and requirements, which are essential for advocacy grounded in intersectionality.

How do NGOs navigate these barriers? Doing intersectionality in a Malaysian context.

If individually, participants could not meet the multiple needs of women migrant workers, how did they overcome this? The most common strategies for dealing with interrelating discriminations affecting these women were through referrals and coalitions. Most of the participants were comfortable and confident working with each other to help women migrant workers.

Referrals

A practice of referrals enabled NGOs to address clients’ multiple intersecting issues while focusing limited resources on areas where they can help. Many participants explained that they often referred these women elsewhere.

For example, C, who was involved in two NGOs (NGO1X, NGO6B), explained:

[W]ith NGO6B, if someone calls the office and says that a migrant a worker was raped, then a reference is made to NGO1X if it is a sexual assault case and if there are labour issues to NGO4Z which looks at the labour issues … we always work together, and we will always refer cases …

NGO1X emphasised that it did not abandon clients (including women migrant workers) after referring them, and that it would do its best to see that all of the needs of the clients were met as far as possible. In emphasising referrals as an effective method via which the multiple needs of women migrant workers (as women, as migrants and as workers) can be met, NGO3Y remarked:

We have to learn how to work with each other and cooperate and basically tap on the expertise that we have. So … if there was a migrant worker's issues that came to us, definitely we would have to directed her to NGO4Z and would call NGO4Z to say ‘I am referring a client to you’.

Coalition building: Working together or apart

Participants also talked about coalitions, which have more potential to shift focus onto the whole person. Coalitions were crucial to their work, something every participant was explicit about. Like referrals, participants viewed coalitions as an effective solution that compensated for their individual inability to address the multiple discriminations suffered by women migrant workers.

NGO3Y described coalitions as enabling it to endorse work with women migrant workers without directly working with these women themselves. The coalitions, however, tended to be ‘loose’, with different NGOs taking the lead on different issues, including those faced by women migrant workers:

[W]e are part of coalition, Joint Action Group, which started during the 1980s to talk about how to enact the domestic violence bill. So, it’s kind of decided already, in the sense of which group takes the lead in which kind of issues, but when it comes to the endorsement of statement, then we have an understanding that we support one another …

Nevertheless, hurdles to strong coalition building soon became apparent. For example, relations within coalitions tended to be informal, with no expectation on the part of members to commit to particular causes:

[W]e do so according to our capacity. There is no force in doing such thing, it is very fluid. We work with each other, long enough to know and understand, if you don’t have the capacity, then it is alright. (NGO3Y)

Meanwhile, NGO7H was vocal about NGOs’ general unwillingness to put the collective above themselves:

… in Malaysia, it is actually quite hard to keep people working together … It is mainly due to different politics, different egos, different ideas and territories … every single group I have been involved, we looked for collective campaigns and strategies … but there is always something that stops others from putting higher, the collective … it is very hard to get people involved in a campaign, in the end, they wouldn’t agree with a lot of things.

Finally, NGO4Z commented on how long it would take intersectionality to become embedded in local thinking, with implications for effective coalition building: ‘Introducing the theory of intersectionality at this point in time, is a biggest challenge. People still do not have the kind of perspective yet!’

Discussion and conclusion

The principal contribution of this article has been to extend research on intersectionality in NGO advocacy to an Asian context. We investigated the utility of intersectionality as a strategy for NGOs to advance the position of women migrant workers in Malaysia. Here, gender intersects with other identities (migrant, worker) in a non-Western context, where the legal, political and social contexts are anti-migrant (Weldon, 2006). The subsequent unique set of experiences for women creates a specific set of challenges for advocates.

Intersectionality in the Malaysian context is understood and interpreted in different ways. The barriers and challenges hindering individual organisations from adopting intersectionality led to them developing specific mechanisms to address women migrant workers’ intersecting needs. There are limitations to our study, however, confining investigation to one specific Asian country, and to one specific group of women migrant workers. Future research on domestic migrant workers and women migrant workers in other Asian countries, for example, would increase our understanding of how advocates address the multiple needs of women in other contexts.

Our findings make the following contributions to research on women migrant worker advocacy, at least, for Malaysia. First, the NGOs showed that despite being familiar with the concept of intersectionality, and despite their commitment to helping women migrant workers, their individual advocacy did not address these women’s identity dimensions simultaneously (gender, migrant, worker). That these workers had intersecting needs was acknowledged by all participants. Yet participants faced many legal, political and social barriers, which meant that they either excluded women migrant workers as a client group or could only partially meet intersectional needs (Alberti et al., 2013; Rubery and Hebson, 2018; Strolovich, 2006). The barriers made it very difficult for NGOs to ask the ‘other’ questions required for an intersectional approach (Matsuda, 1991), for example to address both migrant status as a source of disadvantage and also gender discrimination. Findings also showed that some identity dimensions were so powerful that they minimised the effect of other identities (being a worker was much more powerful than being a foreign national or a woman). This was particularly so with the union respondent and the women themselves, who did not view their situations from an intersectional perspective. The weak labour law framework (due to poor enforcement of laws) suppressed advocacy around certain identities of these women migrant workers (i.e. as workers), because it legitimised the exploitation of these women as workers and reinforced beliefs that it was acceptable for employers to abuse them (c.f. Beckwith, 2014). Meanwhile, the priority given to addressing the oppressions facing local women resulted in an ‘identity hierarchy’ within advocacy (Marchetti, 2014) with migrant status being the least likely to be addressed by many of the NGOs. These partly explain the slow progress to improve the rights of women migrant workers in Malaysia.

It is important to consider the structures that constrain what NGOs can, in practice, achieve in a developing country context. The lack of resources, donor requirements as to how funds can be spent, and difficulties in overcoming political and legal barriers frustrated many participants, yet all had a direct impact on the extent to which they could integrate intersectionality in their advocacy. This limited the scope of what they could achieve for women migrant workers. They are survivalist organisations, a stark contrast to the more well-resourced and more autonomous counterparts in the West (Farouk, 2011; Farouk and Husin, 2015). Thus, while it is important for intersectionally minded advocates to challenge the wider structures that create particular injustices and problems for women migrant workers (Tungohan, 2016), it is equally important to understand that these same structures often simultaneously constrict the actions and choices of these advocates.

Second, we saw how individual participants compensated for their limited ability to address these women’s multiple needs through referrals and working in coalitions. While there was a measure of success with referrals meeting the intersecting needs of women migrant workers, some issues emerged from the interviews which cast doubt on the ability of existing coalitions to do so. Intersectional activism is about organisations’ capacity to challenge interlocking systems of power that are responsible for the injustices experienced by marginalised peoples (Spade, 2013; Tungohan, 2016). Yet the loose nature of coalitions and the strong territorial attitudes among individual NGOs made it difficult to be certain that existing coalitions can, in fact, do so. In a coalition where ‘there is no force in doing such thing … if you don’t have the capacity, then it is alright’ (NGO3Y), how would ‘axes of differences’, that is, the social divisions or categories of difference that underpin its campaign, be chosen and acted upon and how would this impact on women migrant workers (Townsend-Bell, 2011)? Where NGOs are strongly territorial and where ‘there is always something that stops others from putting higher, the collective’ (NGO7H), how can agreement among NGOs be reached, or differences be resolved (Walby et al., 2012)? If NGOs work in silo, each with its own views about the priority to be given to women migrant workers, how can a coherent framing of the intersecting discriminations faced by these women take place (Cooper, 2004; Vierloo, 2013)? The divergent framing of what ‘justice’ meant for women migrant workers by NGO2U is a case in point. Its narrow view of women migrant workers’ identities, namely only as workers, presents challenges to coalition building that can advance the intersecting needs of these women. If coalitions can break down interlocking structures of power that oppress women migrant workers, then it is likely that the frail nature of coalitions demonstrated in this article explains why there has been limited progress over the years.

Third, intersectionality implicitly requires advocates to understand the lived realities of women migrant workers. Here, women migrant workers themselves are the most reliable and most valuable sources of information. The feminist literature argues that strategies to mobilise for change need to be informed by marginalised peoples themselves, for it is they who understand their situation most fully and can develop the most effective solutions (e.g. Kabeer, 1994). There is a compelling case to allow women migrant workers to articulate their problems and to include them in developing solutions to tackle the multiple discriminations that constrain their lives (Simpson, 2009). But as is evident from our findings, if NGOs seldom encounter women migrant workers, can they understand the different discriminations these women face? Without an adequate understanding of interrelating discriminations and the ways these impact on women migrant workers, how can inter-NGO collaborations address these discriminations? Women migrant workers may see themselves as actors, but if they are unaware of their multiple identities, how can they challenge multiple discriminations? This calls into question whether intersectionality can truly be practised in circumstances where there is a disconnect between large groups of marginalised peoples and advocates in hostile and non-supportive contexts.

These findings affirm that intersectional advocacy, as a concept, has not yet taken root in Malaysia. There have been small signs of change recently, however, which holds promise for advocacy for women migrant workers. In relation to the labour movement, inclusive popular democratising movements have strengthened in recent years, providing a favourable context for greater emphasis on non-ethnic political action by trade unions (Croucher and Miles, 2018). In relation to women’s rights movements, campaigns against gender-based violence have found universal support across ethnic (and by effect, language) and religious divides, given that all women were potential victims of violence (Izharuddin, 2013). There is also now a clear recognition that gender injustice is intersectional in nature, linked as it is to wider cultural and political-economic practices, such as work, employment, family life, national identity and sexuality (Elias, 2015).

There are challenges to operationalising intersectionality in the West. In developing countries such as Malaysia, where migration regulation is super-exploitative and the rule of law weak, where many NGOs are under-resourced, where there is a disconnect between advocates and women migrant workers, and where few organisations and women view themselves from an intersectional perspective, difficulties are magnified. Additionally, intersectionality as a concept is still unfamiliar to many. These difficulties are not easily overcome, leading advocates to look for alternative ways to compensate for their individual inability to meet women migrant workers’ multiple needs. Notably they recognise the value of relying on each other and working together to respond as fully as possible to these women’s multiple needs, even if these strategies are imperfect. Intersectional advocacy in such constrained contexts, mirrored in many other Asian countries, may not fully conform to general expectations of intersectionality in the West. But it is how advocates, circumvented by factors beyond their control, attempt to meet the intersectional needs of their clients. A point that invites reflection is that while intersectional advocacy strives to challenge the structures that perpetuate injustice, it simultaneously is a product of them. How this tension plays out determines outcomes for those whom advocates seek to defend. In contexts such as Malaysia, the odds appear to be against their success.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

We thank Dr Noor Aman A. Hamid, Department of Community Medicine, Universiti Sains Malaysia, for his contribution in the focus group discussion with women migrant workers.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Lilian Miles is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management, Leadership and Organisations at the Middlesex University Business School. Her research interests lie in work and employment, in developing, mainly Asian, countries. She has published widely on these issues and has extensive knowledge of gender and work issues. Her work currently focuses on how the rights and well-being of workers in developing countries can be advanced. She has worked with international development organisations, such as the United Nations Development Fund and the United Nations Gender Theme Group, to build knowledge and enhance research capacity in Malaysia (and other developing countries) to improve the rights and well-being of their workers.

Suzan Lewis is a Professor in the Department of Management, Leadership and Organisations at the Middlesex University Business School. Sue’s research focuses on gender and ‘work–life balance’ issues and change, in diverse national contexts. She has led many research projects on these topics and has worked with employers and policy makers on work–life issues in Europe, Asia and North America. She is the holder of several research grants, for example from the European Union, the International Labour Organization, the Ford Foundation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council. Sue chairs the Richard Benjamin Trust, which supports high-impact organisational and social psychology projects by early career researchers. She was founding co-editor of the journal Community, Work and Family.

Lai W Teng is a Lecturer/Researcher at KANITA (Centre for Research on Women and Gender), Universiti Sains Malaysia. Her areas of interest are gender, livelihood and gender relations. She has fieldwork experience in researching women factory migrant workers, foreign domestic workers and male labourers in the construction and services sectors in Malaysia. Her PhD explored the social and economic realities of women migrant workers in Malaysia. Wan Teng is familiar with the local advocacy context, having worked in the non-governmental sector in Malaysia.

Suziana M Yasin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Development Planning and Management, School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). She received her PhD in Urban and Regional Development (specialising in migrant workers) from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Her research interests include international migration, immigrants’ settlement and mobility patterns, immigration in local development and rural development. She has published widely on these issues. Her latest project explores the impact of refugees on local development in receiving countries. Before Suzie joined the world of academia in 2014, she worked with NGOs as a junior researcher.

References

Adler-Hellman

(1987) Journeys Among Women: Feminism in Five Italian Cities, New York: Oxford University Press.

Alberti

Holgate

Tapia

(2013) Organising migrants as workers or as migrant workers? Intersectionality, trade unions and precarious work. The International Journal of Human Resource Management 24(22): 4132–4148.

Aw T (2016) Malaysia’s immigrant worker debate. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/opinion/malaysias-immigrant-worker-debate.html?_r=0 (accessed 10 May 2018).

Bastia

(2014) Intersectionality, migration and development. Progress in Development Studies 14(3): 237–248.

Beckwith

(2014) Gender, class and the structure of intersectionality: Working class women and the Pittston coal strike. Politics, Groups and Identities 2(1): 17–34.

Braun

Clarke

(2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2): 77–101.

Chun

Lipsitz

Shin

(2013) Intersectionality as a social movement strategy: Asian immigrant women advocates. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38(4): 917–940.

Collins

(2015) Intersectionality’s definitional dilemmas. Annual Review of Sociology 41: 1–20.

Cooper

(2004) Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10.

Crenshaw

(1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1: 139–167.

11.

Crenshaw

(1991) Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241–1299.

12.

Crinis

(2014) Continuities and discontinuities: Malay workers and migrant workers in the manufacturing industries. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 36: 1–10.

13.

Crinis

Ngoc Tran

(2017) Migrant workers in Malaysia: Networking in Christian spaces. In: Crinis

Vickers

(eds) Labour in the Clothing Industry in the Asia Pacific, London: Routledge, pp. 80–96.

14.

Croucher

Miles

(2018) Ethnicity, popular democratic movements and labour in Malaysia. Economic and Industrial Democracy 39(2): 294–311.

15.

Devadason

Chan

(2014) Policies and laws regulating migrant workers in Malaysia: A critical appraisal. Journal of Contemporary Asia 44(1): 19–35.

16.

Elias

(2015) Realising women’s human rights in Malaysia: The EMPOWER report. Asian Studies Review 39(2): 229–246.

17.

Farouk

(2011) The limits of civil society in democratising the state: The Malaysian case. Kajian Malaysia 29(1): 91–109.

18.

Farouk

Husin

(2015) Development and social capital: A case study of selected Malaysian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Kajian Malaysia 33(2): 25–42.

19.

Hamidi

(2016) Indonesian female factory workers: The gendered migration policy in Malaysia. International Journal of Social Sciences 2(1): 643–664.

20.

Huling

(2012) Domestic workers in Malaysia: Hidden victims of abuse and forced labour. International Law and Politics 44: 629–680.

21.

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2016a) Review of labour migration policy in Malaysia. Report. Available at: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—asia/—ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_447687.pdf (accessed 19 October 2017).

22.

International Labour Organization (ILO) (2016b) Briefing note: Malaysia. Available at: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—asia/—ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_531472.pdf (accessed 9 December 2017).

23.

Izharuddin

(2013) The use of English in contemporary Malaysian feminist activism. Analize – Journal of Gender and Feminist Studies 1(15): 1–20.

24.

Joseph

(2013) Globalization, social justice, and migration: Indonesian domestic migrant workers in Malaysia. In: Brickner

(ed) Migration, Globalization and the State. International Political Economy Series. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 39–60.

25.

Kabeer

(1994) Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought, London: Verso.

26.

Kaur

(2010) Labour migration trends and policy challenges in Southeast Asia. Policy and Society 29(4): 385–397.

27.

Kaur

(2014) Managing labour migration in Malaysia: Guest worker programs and the regularisation of irregular labour migrants as a policy instrument. Asian Studies Review 38(3): 345–366.

28.

Kong SH (2017) 60% of foreign workers without permanent employment. Available at: http://www.thesundaily.my/news/2017/07/03/60-illegal-foreign-workers-without-permanent-employment (accessed 10 May 2018).

29.

Lasimbang

Tong

Low

(2016) Migrant workers in Sabah, East Malaysia: The importance of legislation and policy to uphold equity on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Best Practice Research: Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology 32: 113–123.

30.

Lee SH and Piper N (2013) Understanding multiple discrimination against labour migrants in Asia: An intersectional analysis. Available at: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/10073.pdf (accessed 10 August 2017).

31.

Loh S (2016) Uproar over intake of Bangladeshi workers exposes rampant xenophobia in Malaysia. Available at: https://asiancorrespondent.com/2016/02/uproar-over-intake-of-bangladeshi-workers-exposes-xenophobia-in-malaysia/ (accessed 9 March 2018).

32.

Lutz

Herrera Vivar

Supik

(2011) Framing Intersectionality: Debates on a Multi-faceted Concept in Gender Studies, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

33.

McCall

(2005) The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30(3): 1771–1800.

34.

Marchetti

(2014) Crossing the intersection: The representation of disadvantaged identities in advocacy. Politics, Groups, and Identities 2(1): 104–119.

35.

Matsuda

(1991) Beside my sister, facing the enemy: Legal theory out of coalition. Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1183–1192.

36.

Nah

(2012) Globalisation, sovereignty, and immigration control: The hierarchy of rights for migrant workers in Malaysia. Asian Journal of Social Science 40(4): 486–508.

37.

Nash

(2008) Rethinking intersectionality. Feminist Review 89(1): 1–15.

38.

Ogawa

(2017) Intersectionality and differentiated citizenship: Migrant care workers in Japan. Asia Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development 27(3–4): 187–194.

39.

Piper

(2006) Migrant worker activism in Singapore and Malaysia: Freedom of association and the role of the state. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 15(3): 359–380.

40.

Ramchandani A (2018) Forced labour is the backbone of the world’s electronics industry. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/06/malaysia-forced-labor-electronics/563873/ (accessed 30 July 2018).

41.

Rubery

Hebson

(2018) Applying a gender lens to employment relations: Revitalisation, resistance and risks. Journal of Industrial Relations 60(3): 414–436.

42.

Shin

(2009) The gendered and racialised division in the Korean labour market: The case of migrant workers in the catering sector. East Asia: An International Quarterly 26(2): 93–111.

43.

Simpson J (2009) Everyone Belongs: A Toolkit for Applying Intersectionality. Ottawa: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW). Available at: http://www.criaw-icref.ca/sites/criaw/files/Everyone_Belongs_e.pdf (accessed 10 October 2017).

44.

Spade

(2013) Intersectional resistance and law reform. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38(4): 1031–1055.

45.

Squires

(2008) Intersecting inequalities: Reflecting on the subjects and objects of equality. The Political Quarterly 79(1): 53–61.

46.

Strolovich

(2006) Do interest groups represent the disadvantaged? Advocacy at the intersections of race, class and gender. The Journal of Politics 68(4): 894–910.

47.

Tapia

Lee

Filipovitch

(2017) Supra-union and intersectional organizing: An examination of two prominent cases in the low-wage US restaurant industry. Journal of Industrial Relations 59(4): 487–509.

48.

The World Bank (2018) The World Bank in Malaysia. Available at: http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/malaysia/overview (accessed 20 July 2018).

49.

Townsend-Bell

(2011) What is relevance? Defining intersectional praxis in Uruguay. Political Research Quarterly 64(1): 187–199.

50.

Tungohan

(2016) Intersectionality and social justice: Assessing activists’ use of intersectionality through grassroots migrants’ organisations in Canada. Politics, Groups and Identities 4(3): 347–362.

51.

Tunon

Baruah

(2012) Public attitudes towards migrant workers in Asia. Migration and Development 1(1): 149–162.

52.

Valentine

(2007) Theorising and researching intersectionality: A challenge for feminist geography. The Professional Geographer 59(1): 10–21.

53.

Vierloo

(2013) Intersectional and cross-movement politics and policies: Reflections on current practices and debates. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38(4): 893–915.

54.

Walby

Armstrong

Strid

(2012) Intersectionality: Multiple inequalities in social theory. Sociology 46(2): 224–240.

55.

War on Want (2012) Restricted rights, migrant women workers in Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia. Available at: https://waronwant.org/sites/default/files/Restricted%20Rights.pdf (accessed 1 February 2018).

56.

Weldon

(2006) The structure of intersectionality: A comparative politics of gender. Politics & Gender 2(2): 235–248.

57.

Woo J (2016) Malaysia becoming death camp for migrant workers. Available at: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2016/06/24/malaysia-becoming-death-camp-for-migrant-workers/ (accessed 13 October 2017).

58.

Zahiid SJ (2016) Rights group fears for safety of foreign workers after link drawn to terrorism, rape. Available at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/migrant-group-fears-safety-of-foreign-workers-after-link-drawn-to-terrorism#sthash.jTsUOQJX.dpuf (accessed 15 October 2017).