Irregular migration has always been a characteristic of Central American countries. Peasants and laborers mobilize to escape violence, dispossession, and poverty created by capitalism in the region. Migration trends, however, have undergone significant changes, especially in the movement of women and children. By 2020, almost 49% of the 16.2 million migrants going to the U.S. from Central America and Mexico were women (United Nations, 2020). The migratory experiences of men and women differ due to gender-related issues, and, as a result, women not only suffer from unequal conditions but will also be prone to suffer gender-based violence and vulnerability to trafficking and kidnapping. This situation is substantial because it means capitalism finds in migration the perfect opportunity to benefit from the transgressions suffered by these women. The paper aims to characterize gender-based aspects of irregular migration from Central America to the U.S., and discuss from a theoretical standpoint the scale by which capitalism benefits from women's labor, bodies and identities. It analyses the multiple challenges of women throughout their journey, and explores from a Marxist standpoint the implications of their exploitation and oppresion.

This paper focuses on the historical analysis of discourses on “trafficking” for the purposes of prostitution between the 1960s and the 1980s. Based on archival research of NGOs, the United Nations and governments (USA, UK, France, and Germany) it will trace and analyze the resurgence of the discourse of “white slavery” in the 1960s and follow its shift to its replacement by a re-framing of “trafficking” as “sexual slavery” in the 1980s. Discourses on “human trafficking” are highly gendered and sexualized discourses embedded in practices and politics regulating “othered” female bodies in the realm of migration, sexuality, and labor. But “gender” as an analytical category will not alone do justice to the analysis. Anti-trafficking narratives and the social and governmental regulations that it engenders are racialized and classed in their construction of trafficking victims as well as perpetrators as either “white” and on the move to Non-Western countries or as “brown” and on the move towards Western countries. My analysis shows that the shift from one racialized construction of victimhood (and perpetrator) to the other in the late 1970s and 1980s must be situated against a context of increased post-colonial migration to Western countries and the incipient process of European integration, with internal borders opening and rising external borders. Additionally, the renewed concern of feminist movements with commercial sex and sexuality, along with the heightened visibility of the sex industry, plays a central role in the re-conceptualization of trafficking. The re-framing of trafficking as well as sexual labor (prostitution) itself as “sexual slavery” by Kathleen Barry in 1979 embodies this shift. Rather than offering answers to the question about whether these discourses “empowered” or “victimized”, this paper seeks to center the contested nature of discourses, political demands and framings of sexual labour in trafficking discourses.

This paper analyzes the intersectionality of labor, forced migration, gender, racism, and violence and how these intersections impact the labor processes of the Syrian women living in suburban neighborhoods of Gaziantep (southeastern Turkey). It examines the everyday life intersectionality of the socio-economic, socio-political, socio-cultural, and class-based processes in which Syrian women are embedded and how those processes are articulated with each other by focusing on the daily labor processes of Syrian women involved in the informal home-based piecework labor market of Gaziantep (based on fieldwork conducted in November 2018). This research also reveals that racism, social oppression, and violence against women in the name of honor have increased. As all these processes push women into the home, this paper aims to make women's subjectivities and agencies visible against the approaches and methods in a struggle to define Syrian women as "victims" chronically "suffering." Being inside (home) emerges as one of the tactics of lower-class Syrian women who are formally recognized under temporary protection status but live the refugee experience to protect themselves and survive.

Migration in India is mostly influenced by social structures and patterns of development. The development policies of all the governments since independence have accelerated the process of migration. The landless poor, who mostly belong to lower castes, indigenous communities, and economically backward regions, constitute the majority of migrants. (B.K .Sahu). According to research, a significant population of migrant workers come from historically underrepresented social groups, particularly Dalits and Adivasis, and are likely to face systemic discrimination and human rights violations both at work and in their native regions of residence. Many of these migrants are unable to access their benefits, and the majority of them have been driven farther into debt and despair as a result. (Naik & D’Souza, 2021) The current caste structures are a primary cause of labour migration to susceptible occupations. Capitalists frequently use migrant labour to undercut the salaries of local workers. Most frequently, these migrants are a mix of informal and agricultural labourers. A new class of contractors from the dominant castes has emerged as a result of the new production relations, which mainly rely on migrant labour. India is one of the largest producers of sugar, accounting for approximately 20% of the world's total sugar. The state of Maharashtra ranks number one in sugar production in the country, though Uttar Pradesh tops in area. Recently, a strange phenomenon has emerged among the female sugarcane workers from the Beed district in India. In the last few years, Maharashtra has witnessed one out of every three female agricultural workers being subjected to a loss of their uterus. It was reported that the cane cutting contractors are unwilling to hire female menstruating labourers. The belief that menstruation and pregnancy are roadblocks in the everyday labour process, and hinder the physical capacity of female labourers to carry out daily wage work, drives this unwillingness. (SPRF 2019) The paper will explore the rise of a corrupted health industry built around the exploitation of poor female migrant labourers working in the sugarcane farming industry of India. It will try to understand the vicious cycle of debt that the sugarcane workers become a part of as a consequence of the "modern-day" slavery experienced by them at the hands of the politically influential and financially well-off individuals within the community.