Women’s labour mobility to the Middle East is governed by repressive rules that are not applicable to professionals, male workers or workers going to most other parts of the world. These include a minimum age of 30 years and recruitment exclusively by specified state-run agencies. Private recruitment even through close relatives is prohibited. A paternalist approach to governance fosters control over the mobility of women who are predominantly from resource-scarce and oppressed caste households but has failed to advance the protection of rights of women migrant workers. With material generated through field work in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala in 2013 and 2019, this article probes the vexed relationship between paternalist (gendered) governance and informality which generates tacit spaces for border crossing and enables women to take up employment in the Middle East but at increased risk. The implication of paternalist governance in generating increased risk for women migrant workers is that the state merely performs ‘protection’ and may be at best ambivalent about irregular migration.
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