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Economically-motivated female migration, on the rise over the past decades, is strongly linked to the domestic market. In Mali, girls and young women from rural regions migrate to large urban centers. There they work as “ petites bonnes” (“child maids”) in private households. Among Mali’s rural populations, migration of young women has risen spectacularly since the end of the 1980s. This paper analyzes this increase according to research both among Mali’s rural populations and in the capital, Bamako, the main destination of these young women migrants. Opposing points of view and discussion help to mitigate the image of misery that connects young women migrants and child labor to forms of prostitution and exploitation, by highlighting the educational and emancipatory value of these migratory experiences.