Globally, marginalized workers have been especially hard hit by the novel coronavirus. Migrant workers in particular have experienced some of the harshest effects of COVID-19 and the related lockdowns, quarantines and travel restrictions. Yet while the world has...
The Solidarity Center strives for rights for people on the move by ensuring migrant workers are fully able to exercise their workplace, social, economic and democratic rights. Solidarity Center/Jeanne Hallacy
Labor migration feeds the global economy. Hundreds of millions of migrant workers worldwide generate billions of dollars in global remittances. They are domestic workers, construction and agricultural workers, factory and service workers, teachers and professionals. Migrant workers often travel long distances due to a lack of decent work at home to support their families and build a better life. They frequently are denied the most basic human rights. For instance, most destination countries deny migrant workers the right to form unions, and explicitly exclude them from labor law protections, and women migrant workers are often subject to gender-based violence and harassment in their workplaces.
The Solidarity Center strives for worker rights for people on the move by ensuring migrant worker rights are a key part of the labor movement. We cultivate an understanding of how exploitative labor migration management schemes are a widespread means by which to undercut worker wages, create precarious work and pit workers against each other. And, in addressing these structural ills, we emphasize a response that understands the intersectionalities and identities that make migrant workers especially vulnerable. Our goal is to ensure that migrant workers are fully able to exercise their workplace rights, as well as their social, economic and democratic rights.
We also focus on the creation of decent work in home countries so workers can migrate by choice and not due to economic coercion. We recognize that migration is not caused by a single factor that “pushes” workers to migrate. In doing so, we bring our unique worker rights voice more broadly by emphasizing that everyone deserves dignity at work regardless of status—climate migrants, economic migrants and conflict refugees. We work to achieve this through programs that focus on union organizing and collective bargaining, policy advocacy, access to justice, safe migration and, more broadly, the ability to exercise fundamental freedoms as democratic participants.
Find out more
- A Pandemic Reset for Migrant Workers, Neha Misra and Shannon Lederer
- How COVID-19 Affects Women in Migration, Carolina Gottardo and Paola Cyment
Freedoms on the Move, a 2019 report by Solidarity Center and CIVICUS, is an urgent call to action for unions and other civil society groups to include migrant workers and refugees in advancing civic rights.
‘Information Is the Key’: Empowering Kyrgyzstan’s Young Workers
To promote youth civic engagement and the fair employment of women, workers with disabilities and those migrating outside the country to earn a living, the Solidarity Center’s second annual School of Young Leaders in Bishkek educated dozens of young people in...
Solidarity Center Partner Takes Action to Support Returned Migrant Domestic Workers
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of migrant workers have been forced to return to their homes or are languishing in their destination countries without jobs, and Nepali migrant workers are no exception. In 2019, Nepal’s Department of Foreign Employment...

Made for this Moment: How ILO Convention 190 Addresses Gender-Based Violence and Harassment in the World of Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond
Women workers and allies worldwide campaigned for more than a decade to secure the adoption of International Labor Organization Convention 190, the first global treaty that recognizes the fundamental right to work free from gender-based violence and harassment....

REPORT: CLIMATE CHANGE IN BANGLADESH DRIVES WORKER VULNERABILITY, POVERTY
This report, The Intersection of Climate Change, Migration and Changing Economy, explores the links among climate change, economic activities and migration in the coastal areas of Khulna and Jashore, Bangladesh, demonstrating its impact on the availability of decent...

The Benefits of Collective Bargaining for Women Workers in Morocco
Download in English. Download in Arabic. This report was made possible through the generous support of the Ford Foundation.

Agricultural Workers and Morocco’s Economy Benefit from Collective Bargaining Agreements
. Download in English Download in Arabic. This report was made possible through the generous support of the Ford Foundation.

Annual Report, 2018–2019
Download here.

When the Job Hurts: Workplace Injury and Disease among South Africa’s Domestic Workers
Through individual case studies and legal analysis, When the Job Hurts demonstrates the need for domestic workers in South Africa to receive the same coverage under the country's job safety and health compensation law as other workers. Download report.