| Summary: | In 2013, the Sri Lankan Government issued the Family Background Report (FBR), a circular requiring women to obtain a medical certificate before migrating abroad for domestic work. In 2015, the FBR was revised to further restrict the labor choices of Hill Country Tamil women in the plantation sector. Feminist scholars and activists critique the FBR as an exceptionally restrictive policy that contradicts women’s rights. However, closer examination of the plantation sector’s labor policies and reproductive practices suggests that it is not entirely exceptional but a continuation of the restrictions imposed upon women in Sri Lanka. Drawing from discourse analysis and ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2017, I argue that in the context of the plantation sector the plantation clause signals the resilience of strategic entanglements between the state and industrial policies, and exposes the limits of human rights praxis in securing women’s labor and reproductive rights.
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