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Ethiopia is one of the major origins for international migrants to the Middle East in Africa regardless of the risks and the abuses that migrants face. The study aims to analyse the determinants of international migration of Ethiopians to the Middle East and its impact on the income of households staying behind particularly in the Dessie Zuria district of the Amhara region in Ethiopia. Data were randomly collected from 346 households and analysed using descriptive statistics, logit regression, and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) models. The logit regression analysis indicates that bigger family size, network with migrants/returnees, and the presence of peer/family pressure influence the probability of international migration positively. On the contrary, being a male household head, ownership of larger farmland and livestock, and participation in additional non-farm activities determine international migration negatively. The findings from the PSM model revealed that international migration increased the annual income of migrant-sending households by 13,079.51 ETB per year over non-migrant sending households. However, the benefits enjoyed by the families staying behind have been at the expense of migrants, whose income is hard-earned and they often take a risky route to reach the destination regions. The findings call for an integrated policy approach to control population pressure that depletes the key financial and physical assets of households in the origin and thus forces individuals to look for alternative livelihood strategies such as migration. Location-specific policy interventions are needed to create non-farm and alternative livelihoods, improve agricultural productivity, and access information to reduce exaggerated and misleading information about the destination areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines why young women in rural Ethiopia decide to migrate as domestic workers to the Middle East. Based on survey data and 84 in-depth interviews, it explores the forces shaping young women's aspirations and capabilities to migrate, challenging the dominant narratives of trafficking, deception, and victimization that surround this migration corridor. It finds, first, that migration to the Middle East is one migration trajectory embedded within a broader urban transition occurring across Ethiopia. For rural women, labor emigration is often a long-distance, short-term strategy to access the capital needed to realize a long-term, short-distance move to town. Second, the aspiration to migrate emerges at a particular moment in the life course, as young women transition from adolescence into adulthood and when local opportunities do not provide promising pathways to achieve their life aspirations. This paper shows why labor emigration can simultaneously be a reasonable, capabilities-enhancing choice for young women and a response to a critical lack of capabilities in other domains of their lives. Finally, through applying an aspiration–capability framework, this paper advances a theoretical approach that avoids the common binary between "forced" and "voluntary" migration and thus contributes to advancing research on other forms of precarious migration occurring under highly constrained conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses ethnography along Ethiopian women's irregular migration routes through Djibouti to analyse the complex reasons women leave home to seek labour opportunities in the Gulf States. Theories and policies that either narrowly depict women's motivations as economic in nature or focus only on women's needs for security and protection, fail to account both for the politics of seeking employment abroad, and the ways migration provides women a potential refuge from various forms of violence at home. Using a feminist analysis, we argue that women do not migrate only for financial opportunities, but also to escape combinations of domestic, political and structural violence. As such, irregular migration both evinces a failure of asylum systems and humanitarian organisations to protect Ethiopians, and a failure of the state to provide Ethiopian women meaningful citizenship. Lacking both protection and meaningful citizenship, international migration represents women's journeys for opportunity and emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: International migration has become a global political priority, with growing concern about the scale of human trafficking, hazardous work conditions, and resulting psychological and physical morbidity among migrants. Ethiopia remains a significant "source" country for female domestic workers to the Middle East and Gulf States, despite widespread reports of exploitation and abuse. Prior to introduction of a "safe migration" intervention, we conducted formative research to elicit lessons learned by women who had worked as domestic workers abroad. The aim of the study was to identify realistic measures future migrants could take to protect themselves, based on the collective insights and experience of returnees.Methods: We conducted a qualitative assessment among returnee domestic labour migrants in Amhara Region, Ethiopia, an area considered a "hotspot" for outmigration. We conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with a total of 35 female returnees, exploring risk and protective factors experienced by Ethiopian women during domestic work abroad. We used thematic content analysis to identify practical messages that could improve prospective migrants' preparedness.Results: Returnees described the knowledge and skills they acquired prior to departure and during migration, and shared advice they would give to prospective migrants in their community. Facilitators of positive migration included conforming to cultural and behavioural expectations, learning basic Arabic, using household appliances, and ensuring safety in employers' homes. Respondents also associated confidence and assertiveness with better treatment and respect, and emphasized the importance of access to external communication (e.g. a mobile phone, local sim card, and contact details) for help in an emergency. Following their own challenging or even traumatic experiences, returnees were keen to support resilience among the next wave of migrants.Conclusions: There is little evidence on practices that foster safer migration, yet attention to human trafficking has led to an increase in pre-migration interventions. These require robust evidence about local risk and protective factors. Our findings identify knowledge, skills, attributes and resources found useful by returnee domestic workers in Amhara region, and have been used to inform a community-based programme aiming to foster better decision-making and preparation, with potential to offer insights for safer migration elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1990s, there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of Ethiopian women working on short-term contracts as domestic workers in Gulf countries. Drawing on primary research conducted in Ethiopia and in Kuwait, this paper analyzes the gendered production of the migration trajectory of Ethiopian women domestic workers to the Gulf countries. The paper maps the linkages between the gendered political economies and the policy choices of both sending and receiving countries to argue first, that there is evidence for the Ethiopian government's role as a 'labor brokerage state,' although its regulatory capacity is weak. Second, the paper argues that the assumption that the demand for migrant domestic workers is driven by national women entering the workforce is not necessarily true in the Gulf countries, where the 'social compact' and the kafala or sponsorship system are primary institutional drivers of the demand for migrant domestic workers. The paper concludes with reflections on the consequences of Ethiopian women's migration for social reproduction across national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on life stories of ex-slaves from Ethiopia now living in Israel, the present article attempts to uncover complex relationships and conceptions of intimate domination and subjugation. The dramatic passage of masters and slaves from rural Ethiopia to the democratic State of Israel enables their stories to emerge. Hearing these personal stories became possible when continuous slavery taken for granted in one particular cultural context became alien and unbearable in another. Key images at the basis of Ethiopian slavery constitute an ample reservoir for new interpretations, in which hidden aspects are brought into relief within a new reality. The present article focuses on cows as an organising image through which complex master-slave (Choa-Barya) relations are decoded. It explores the centrality of this image for these exploitative, complex relations, both in Ethiopia and following the move to Israel. The cow figures prominently as the embodiment of a range of concrete and symbolic meanings, particularly in the most intimate details of master-slave power relations and hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the growth in the number of Ethiopians and Somalis migrating to the Middle East through Yemen. International Organization for Migration communication officer Demissew Bizuwerk said that Ethiopians and Somalis are migrating in the Arabian Peninsula with no official documents with the hope of better life. Immigrants may face the risk of human rights abuses. Yemen is facing humanitarian crisis caused by the immigration.