Grant: Project Grant

Indonesia is a major sending country of migrant domestic workers in the Asia-Pacific region where numerous destination countries require or expect migrant domestic workers-regardless of age, marital status or sexual orientation-to receive contraceptive injections as a condition of working abroad or taking leave. Coerced contraception-the medical practice of forcibly or coercively ensuring that (primarily) women are temporarily unable to procreate-is a form of sexual and reproductive violence. Our previous research demonstrated there is an urgent need for a comprehensive study of coerced contraception among these workers whose experiences may serve as example of reproductive (in)justice and as such is a crucial topic for global health research and health equity. The primary goal of this project is to conduct a study of coerced contraception of Indonesian women migrant domestic workers who are or have been employed in Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. To address our goal, we will: (1) conduct focus group discussions with Indonesian migrant domestic workers who currently or formerly worked in these four countries and provide opportunities for the use of arts-based methods to convey their stories; (2) hold key informant interviews with migrant advocates, recruitment agency, government, and health personnel; (3) examine country-specific policies and practices; (4) use these findings to develop and conduct surveys to reach a wider sample of Indonesian migrant domestic workers, and (5) develop and share policy and practice recommendations, and produce knowledge-to-action outputs targeted to various public, policy, scholarly, and practitioner audiences. Our team of knowledge users, community partners, and academics in Canada and Indonesia are committed to enhancing research capacity and the tenets of feminist participatory research to guide our work and to make contributions to theory, policy, practice, and action.