ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the case study of Nepal to examine the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pertaining to women migrants and explores three dimensions of the issue in question. First, the inclusion of migration, and particularly that of women migrants, in the SDGs – despite the absence of a single SDG entirely focused on migration – fills the void in global migration governance and thus carries important normative significance, particularly in the context of poor countries such as Nepal, where migration provides survival strategies for many women in the face of various intersecting local and trans-local oppressive systems. Second, the SDGs nonetheless conceive women’s migration through a depoliticized lens, although migration is a highly gendered and political process, and such a depoliticized stance raises questions as to whether the SDGs address the gender inequalities deeply embedded in socio-economic-political structures and governance instruments in both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries and provide the necessary tools to address those systemic oppressive systems and practices at their roots. Finally, the chapter – since women’s labour migration is strongly intertwined with sustainable human development – provides suggestions on addressing the challenges of implementing the SDGs to empower women migrants and achieve substantive gender equality as envisaged in the SDGs.
