Sociology and Anthropology 6(8): 650-656, 2018 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/sa.2018.060803 Restrictive Labour Migration Policy on Nepalese Women and Consequences Uddhab Pd. Pyakurel School of Arts, Kathmandu University, Nepal Copyright©2018 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract This study seeks to understand the governance system of women labour migration as practiced by the Nepali state through various institutions on the basis of rules, regulations and laws, and explores the interface between the regulations introduced against women migration abroad, existing popular practices, and consequences experienced by women migrants and their families. After a review of the Nepal government’s rules and regulations introduced in the recent past, the paper concludes that Nepal still follow restrictive migration policy for women even if it is facilitating male out-migration in the job market abroad by introducing various schemes, rules/regulations and institutions. The often cited positive aspects of migration helped increase the aspiration of women to go abroad even women migration has become more costly, complicated and vulnerable due to the continued restrictive policy by the government of Nepal. Keywords Labour Migration, Restrictive Regime, Protective Regime, Feminization of Migration 1. Introduction In 2011, women comprised 12.5 percent of Nepalese people migrating for work outside Nepal. Current migrants are better educated than the past ones, and to manage their household poverty, opportunity comes to break the restrictions on their mobility (Peskin 2016). Women are increasingly working to increase their access to income on equal terms, and demand equitable migration laws. They pursue employment opportunities in the global labour market and need state protection when seeking foreign employment in the form of provisions for better safety and access to safe remittance procedures. The increasing involvement of women in voluntary work migration has been captured with the concept of "feminization of migration" (Pillinger 2007). This paper deals with the current labour migration policy on women in Nepal. Since there has been a significant increase of labour migration of Nepali women to the Gulf countries over recent years, the focus of this paper is to analyse the consequences of restrictive or “protective” (Parrenas 2008) policy of Nepali state on those women who aspire to work as labourers abroad. Primary data used for in this paper were collected from December 2013 to May 2014 in Nepal. In-depth interviews were conducted with women migrant labourers already working in the Gulf, who were present in Nepal for holidays during the time of this research. Policy makers, i.e. former ministers, former secretaries and serving secretaries of the concerned ministries; senior officers of implementing agencies, especially government officers of the passport department, etc. were interviewed as Key Informants for the purpose. Government’s Labour policies, laws, rules, regulations, journal articles, books, book chapters, papers and migration related reports published by different organizations were reviewed and used as secondary sources of data. 2. Recent Trend of Labour Migration of Nepal and State approach in Women’s Migration States are important actors in the process of migration. Earlier migration theories tried to undermine the role of the state in the process of migration (Reveco and Mullan 2014:10). Economic theories of migration said that migrants were free, had complete information about their migration that included the information about the place they would migrate. All migrants have to pass through administrative borders of the state and states are important in migration as senders and receivers. In Nepal, the Foreign Employment Act (FEA) of 1985 opened avenues for the private sector to facilitate foreign employment. There has been a steady increase in the percentage of the Nepalese population migrating out of Nepal from 3.4% in 1961 to 7.3% in 2011 (Government of Nepal, 2014). After the restoration of democracy in Nepal, the country gradually moved to free market economy which highly encouraged out migration (Government of