Hari KC, (he/him) is a Post-doctoral Fellow working at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. In this episode, he explains his recently completed PhD research that explored international migration flows, centred on Nepal. His work examines and makes recommendations for changes in international labour migration, through the lens of Nepali women migrant domestic workers. His work details existing gender inequalities in Nepal that are perpetrated by Nepalese migration policies. He is affiliated with the International Migration Research Centre.
This episode features:
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Shawna Reibling 00:04
Welcome to the third season of Research Chat. In this season, graduate students share the challenges of their research work.
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Shawna Reibling 00:22
Sayed Ali Hosseini, who uses pronouns he/him, is a peace and development researcher who is pursuing his PhD in Global Governance at the Ballsillie School of International Affairs, which is a joint program run by the Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Waterloo and the Centre for International Governance Innovation or CIGI. As a specialist in peace, human rights and development, with a focus on the greater Middle East and Northern Africa, Ali has around seven years of experience in human rights advocacy and monitoring, including six years of working as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan. His work included monitoring of and advocacy around the rights of vulnerable people, including women and children, and preparation and drafting of regular reports on situations related to human rights in Afghanistan. He was a member of the faculty of law at Kateb University Afghanistan for about six years where he taught constitutional law, administrative and international law as well as human rights courses. He has been teaching culture of peace and conflict situations in the Political Science department at Wilfrid Laurier University. Ali has four scholarly books published in Persian which were published in Afghanistan, and many research papers in Persian and English on human rights, development and peace. He has an MA in international law from Allameh Tabataba'i University and a bachelor's degree in Law from Mofid University Iran. His education also includes advanced studies in Islamic jurisprudence and culture at Qom seminary (Hawza).
Shawna Reibling 00:35
In this episode Ali Hosseini will interview Hari KC. First I'll introduce them to you.
Shawna Reibling 01:59
Hari KC, pronouns he/him, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Migration Research Centre at the School of International Policy and Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University. His research broadly looks at South South labor migration with a regional focus on South Asia, governance of international migration, as well as social justice. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow examining the intersection of labor migration, food sovereignty and development through a gender lens in the Global South with a particular focus on South Asia. He has collaborated on several research projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, UN Women United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, International Organization for Migration and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
Shawna Reibling 01:59
In one such ongoing project, the Gender+Migration Hub, he has played a role from the conceptualization of the project to its development and operationalization. Project details are available at gendermigrationhub.org. The project, which was launched during the 2022 UN International Migration Review Forum in New York seeks to enhance the capacity of governments, civil society and other stakeholders in formulating and implementing gender responsive migration policies and programs in the spirit of the principle of gender responsiveness, as stipulated in the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. Hari is also a part-time teaching faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University, where he has taught a range of undergraduate and graduate courses on migration, citizenship, global justice, gender and feminist theory.
Shawna Reibling 03:43
In the past, Hari has worked in various roles for BBC Media Action, Embassy of India, Carter Center, and Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal. Hari holds two master's degrees in English from the University of Waterloo, and Tribhuvan University in Nepal. He also holds a master's degree in Peace and Conflict studies from Conrad Grebel University College.
Shawna Reibling 04:06
Hari and Ali have shared academic venues before. They both have published articles in the book titled Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Global governance challenges, which was edited by Simon Dalbey, Susan Horton and Rianne Mahan, with Diana Thomaz. This book was published in 2019. Hari's chapter, which was co authored with Dr. Jenna Hennebry, was titled, Gender Labour Migration Governance and the SDGs: Lessons from a case of Nepal. Ali's chapter was titled Development as Usual: Ethical reflections on the SDGs. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. I will now turn the microphone over to you Ali.
S. Ali Hosseini 04:44
Hi, Hari, thank you for chatting with me about your research today.
04:44
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Hari KC 04:56
Nice to be here.
S. Ali Hosseini 04:58
Just as a starting question, what issues did you explore in your PhD dissertation?
Hari KC 05:04
In my research, I looked at labor migration from Nepal to the Arabian Gulf countries with a focus on women migrant and, domestic workers, particularly in the context of the discriminatory migration policy of the government of Nepal. Nepal has imposed a ban on women preventing them from migrating to the Gulf Countries, especially in the domestic sector. So because of the bans, many women, they are compelled to take irregular routes and channels of migration through India that pushes them and places them at greater risk of abuse and exploitation in the destination countries and also along the way of their migratory journey.
S. Ali Hosseini 05:56
What's the motivation for your research?
Hari KC 05:59
So my motivation my interest in the issues of women migrant domestic workers is linked with my lived experience in Nepal, as well as my work with the BBC Media Action in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I worked across radio and television programs. In connection with producing one of the episodes of the radio drama called kaha Mito Sauron Gago, I had the opportunity to interview and engage with women who have written from different Arabian countries after having worked there as domestic workers, migrant domestic workers. And many of those women were living in the south at the time, and many women hide babies with them but they didn't know the whereabouts of their fathers. So because of socialistic mass, these women were not accepted back into the families and communities and the stories that they said about the abuse and exploitation that they went through during their migration journey were harrowing, were shocking. And this was lying dormant in my mind but after I emigrated to Canada in 2011, and the experiences that I went through as a member of visible minority group in Canada, racialized immigrant, so I had a different perspective on those women, migrant domestic workers who I engaged with. So this is the genesis of my PhD research, indeed.
S. Ali Hosseini 07:43
What challenges did you face throughout your research?
Hari KC 07:47
So pursuing a PhD definitely comes with a lot of challenges, a long time commitment, and balancing your personal life and your academic life. And in the process, in the course of my PhD, I lost my father in Nepal, and I was away from home. So that was a very painful moment. And it definitely did have some impact on my work, especially on the progress of my research present. And the other thing I would like to note here is that my dissertation research was split between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic era, so as to say. In my initial plan, after completing the analysis of the data, and analyzing the data, and coming up with the findings of my research, I had planned to conduct a debriefing with women migrant domestic workers with whom I interviewed back in Nepal. But this didn't happen, couldn't happen, because of the pandemic and travel restrictions put in place. So those were some of the challenges that I had to encounter in the course of my research.
S. Ali Hosseini 09:09
What are the next steps in your work?
Hari KC 09:13
So at the moment, after completing defending my dissertation, completing my PhD, I am working as a postdoctoral research fellow, and particularly looking at the nexus between migration development and food security. And there are a number of plans in the openreally. And one of the plans is to work on the proposal for a special issue of an international journal, which is already underway. And the other plan is to develop my dissertation into a book form and also building on my research on women's migration from Nepal to the Gulf countries. I am interested to expand my war and conduct a multi nation comparative study between three increasingly feminized migratory corridors in the Asia Pacific region, the SAARC region, the GCC Gulf Cooperation Council, and the ASEAN region and see how the global restructuring has impacted the lived experiences, the rights and justice issues of women migrant, domestic workers. So these are some of the plans.
S. Ali Hosseini 10:35
Great, and I wish you the best in your endeavors. How does your research interface with the Gender+Migration Hub project?
Hari KC 10:45
Thank you, Ali. So the Gender+Migration Hub started a couple of years ago under the leadership of my PhD supervisor, Dr. Jenna Hennebry and we are in the process of entering into the second stage of our project. So the main objective of this project is to calibrate the good practices around gender responsive governance of migration with an aim to enhance the capacity of governments, state actors, non state actors, policymakers and practitioners and so on. So this is exactly what my PhD dissertation was about, I looked at from a feminist conceptual framework, and the Gender+Migration Hub closely aligns with what I had done.
S. Ali Hosseini 11:41
Can you place your research in the broader context of global systems governing migration, and how?
Hari KC 11:49
Thank you, Ali. So my dissertation, as I said, uses the case of women's labor migration from Nepal to the Arabian Gulf countries is a window onto lots of processes of power politics and a governance and a political, global political economy as well as the gendered politics, it different levels and skills and asides. So, when I look at it in the context of global migration, discourse and these debates, it offers a very different distinct insight and there is a need to reimagine or reframe the discourse of global migration governance, from a different perspective from a different angle. For example, looking at the governance of migration, or the systems policies and practices that govern the migration of women, it is necessary to look at it from a holistic point of view, it is a multi layered multi level to multi skilled issue and a very complex issue. So, therefore, what is very important is to look at the governance of migration, not to look at migration is the point of departure, the problem does not begin after migration starts taking place, we should go back and look at the gendered systems and the practices even before migration begins. So, therefore, it takes us back to the origin countries, transit countries, destination countries, in all sites of governance at all levels and skills of governance. So, therefore, this has to be really embedded within the global migration policy, for example, Global Compact on Migration, I don't really see this perspective of this issue being embedded into this document.
S. Ali Hosseini 13:50
Excellent, a lot of things to be considered for improving global governance of migrations. What is your take home message for listeners about your research?
Hari KC 14:02
It's such a broad issue, but if I have to mention two things to take aways from my research, what I would say is that migration is a very gendered phenomenon, it is never gender neutral. So, this is how it should be looked at within all policy processes, governance processes and practices. And number two, what I would say is that in the context of Nepal, when we talk about women migrants, it is not a single homogeneous category, there are sectoral differences within women migrants. And what I would also say is that especially particularly, it is a certain class in a certain section of women who are more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, because of their caste because of the ethnicities, and particularly in my research, I have described it is the digitization of migration, especially women from indigenous communities women from so called untouchable Dalit communities are the ones who are overrepresented in overseas migration. So therefore, it is necessary to embrace an intersectional lens to look at labor migration.
S. Ali Hosseini 15:25
Very interesting. You raise a lot of good points, especially with the importance of intersectional view is studying immigration and having a feminist perspective on the issue. Is there anything about your research that you feel is important to share?
Hari KC 15:43
So, last, but not least, what I would emphasize is that migration is empowering for many women, especially when their livelihoods are under tremendous pressure at the intersection of translocal global forces, neoliberal forces and the locally existing gender discriminatory systems. But at the same time, if this is not governed in a general responsive manner, it can be disempowering, not only disempowering, it in trances perpetuates the gender inequalities pre existing gender equality. So this is very important. And number two, equally important is labor migration is not the only solution to developmental issues or problems or challenges of poverty and development. So migration has to be an option for those who are willing to, who are interested to migrate, but it should not be a compulsion, it should not happen out of obligation, but out of choice. So this is the responsibility of state, non-state actors working at different levels of governance.
S. Ali Hosseini 17:00
Excellent points. And thank you for sharing your research with me today.
Hari KC 17:05
Thank you very much. Nice talking to you, Ali.
Shawna Reibling 17:08
Thank you so much for chatting with me today about your research and sharing your expertise. I hope you enjoyed listening to today's discussion, and the two different areas of research, migration and peacebuilding that both highlight the importance of the promotion of democratic values such as human rights and gender equality, and the pursuit of a good quality of life for people around the world. Worldwide there is a real need for responsive international and government policies that enable and engage local citizens and their needs when making policy decisions.
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Shawna Reibling 17:50
If you want to learn more about global migration or peacebuilding in Afghanistan, there are resources additional readings and details about the work of each researcher on our website, wlu.ca/research-chat. Listeners like you are encouraged to share these episodes and use these podcasts to discuss these topics with your friends, or as an assignment in your classroom. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to be notified of new Research Chat episodes.
Shawna Reibling 18:20
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