Marie Segrave, UoM

Marie has led significant research on human trafficking and slavery-like practices, the exploitation of irregular and temporary migrants, and the intersections of temporary migration and domestic and family violence. Maria has researched and published widely in these areas and has led major national and international studies that more broadly focused on women's safety and security in the  context of gendered violence including funding from ANROWS, the ARC, ILO and UNWomen. Marie co-leads the Border, Migration & Gendered Violence Research Hub, which brings together researchers within and beyond the University of Melbourne leading critical national and international research in this area.

In this talk, the question of safe work will be examined with a view to how we silo different forms of abuse and how this can in fact sustain the conditions that enable all forms of workplace abuse to continue. In 2022/23 an ANROWS study of migrant and refugee women and workplace sexual harassment pushed the boundaries of how we research workplace sexual harassment and our understanding of women's experiences of this behaviour. One aspect of the findings pointed to the limitations focusing on specific forms of abuse: women reported frequently experiencing both workplace sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination (most often racial or faith-based).  It was  also consistently clear that employment security is a priority that most often trumps being targeted in the workplace, such that reporting or seeking to hold perpetrators to account can effectively be a privileged position.