Invisible Chains: A Feminist Political Economy of African Female Labour Migration to the Middle East

African female labour migration to the Middle East has accelerated into one of the defining humanitarian and political economy crises of the twenty-first century, yet it continues to be framed primarily within humanitarian discourse rather than analysed as a structural consequence of intersecting global inequalities. This study brings feminist political economy into direct conversation with African feminist theory to examine how African women from Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana are channelled into domestic work in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states under conditions that systematically reproduce exploitation. Against analysis that frames African female migrants as uniformly victimised, the study draws on African feminist frameworks particularly the work of Amadiume, Mama, and Nzegwu to recover the forms of knowledge, collective action, and survival strategy that migrant women deploy even within structurally hostile conditions. The article concludes that meaningful redress demands not regulatory tinkering but a fundamental reorientation of the political economies, both African and Gulf, that sustain this system of organised devaluation. The study employs a feminist critical review methodology, drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship, ILO and World Bank data, and human rights documentation. Its objectives are to map the structural drivers of African female migration to the Middle East, to analyse the kafala system as a site of gendered labour governance, and to theorise migrant women's agency within an African feminist frame.

African female migration, feminist political economy, kafala, domestic labour

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