A
new term - labour trafficking – has crept into the vocabulary surrounding migration
facilitated by agents and other intermediaries. It is a timely attempt to shift
attention onto the nexus between trafficking and labour migration and to move
away from a narrow focus on migrant sex workers as the victims of trafficking.
But is labour trafficking a good term? And does it have the same connotations
for female and male migrants, and for younger and older migrants?
The
definition of trafficking set out in the Palermo Protocol
makes it clear that for migration to be legally defined as trafficking, the
migrant must have been recruited, transported or accommodated by another
person. This person must have used force, violence, deceit, abuse of power or
of the migrant’s vulnerable position and he/she must have been intend to
exploit the migrant upon arrival to his or her own ends. As the Protocol is an
instrument used by states to combat organised crime, state measures to combat
trafficking focus primarily on preventing the movement of persons perceived to
be at risk of being exploited and abused for the benefit of the trafficker and
on prosecuting people perceived to broker the movement of others to their own
financial benefit.This
focus tends to blur the distinction between trafficking and smuggling – the illegal
transportation of goods or people - especially at a time when global mobility
regimes have made it more difficult for many people in the global South to
migrate legally.
The tightening of border control, not just in the global North
but across the world, has opened a space for migration brokers, who set up
business to help potential migrants to go abroad. Brokers come in many shades
and do not necessarily operate in a way that is illegal. Some provide guidance
on form filling, the safest way to travel, and how to find work at the
destination; others travel with the migrant workers they have recruited and facilitate
employment for these workers at the destination; others again help procure
fraudulent papers and air tickets to expedite the visa application process. Some
enrich themselves on the back of migrants, sometimes being unscrupulous about
the risks they impose on them; others become brokers just to scrape by or to
consolidate their social status. The processes of facilitating migration, smuggling
and trafficking people thus overlap in the early stages of migration.
While
brokering businesses have proliferated alongside tighter border control, the
use of intermediaries is not a new phenomenon, nor is it tied to international
migration. It is the commodification that is new, for in many places it is
considered strange and, indeed, risky to travel alone, especially for women and
girls. Apart from the very real risk of sexual abuse, their respectability may
be undermined by suspicion and scurrilous rumours about intimate relationships
if travelling by themselves.
On
this point local ideas of appropriate behaviour for women of different ages
converge with one of the main concerns that has shaped the anti-trafficking
discourse, especially in the beginning: the persistent myth that the
destination of trafficking is sex work, and that sex workers are
women and that these women are trafficked. The overlap is not about appropriate
behaviour but about women’s perceived inability to fend for themselves and make
good – read sensible and well-considered – migration decisions. Over time,
trafficking has come to include a much broader range of concerns - including
child labour, domestic servitude, forced labour, forced marriage and child
soldiering - and it has become as much of an issue for internal migration as for
international migration.
This
brings us to the question of how to distinguish between trafficking, smuggling
and the facilitation of migration and migrants’ insertion into the labour
market at the destination. In principle, the relationship between the migrant
and the smuggler ends once the migrant arrives at the destination, while the
relationship with the trafficker continues. Reality is, of course, much more
complex for the migrants and for authorities dealing with them. The distinction
is shaped by moral, economic and political concerns.
When
the focus is on migration management
– whether international or internal – the division of migrants into ‘innocent,
possibly passive, victims of trafficking’ and ‘irregular or unruly,
street-living migrants’ is also a distinction between those, who deserve help because
they are perceived as victims, and those who don’t, because they have gotten
themselves into trouble through risky behaviour. From this perspective,
migrants are seen either as having no choice or as having had near-to-full
information about all risks involved in migration and to have ignored them.
Only, women and children are rarely seen to have such a high level of
information.
As a
matter of fact, very little empirical evidence exists on the recruitment
processes and the continuation of relationships between brokers and migrants at
the destination. While some women are forced into sex work, others choose this
occupation because they can earn more and can control when to work and when to
rest. If they are all treated as victims of trafficking, important questions
about unequal labour markets and gender inequity are overlooked.
Similarly,
when the focus is on child migrants moral concerns about the right kind of
childhood is at its heart of the discussion. Images of lost childhood, unhappy children, very heavy
work and, in case of adolescent girls, sexual abuse, are invoked in the name of
trafficking and the worst forms of child labour. The youngest children are
foregrounded despite the fact that the majority of children migrating in their
own right are teenagers over the minimum age for taking employment. For them,
migration is a rational strategy to earn money and acquire skills. That they
are frequently exploited and deceived by employers is not evidence of
trafficking but rather of generic problems in the labour market.
Currently
there is a push to work on regularising certain migrant workers and the labour
market for migrants to minimise exploitation and unfree conditions. Our panel debate Labour Trafficking? Understanding
the use of brokers in women’s and girls’ labour migration in the global South on
Friday 6 March in Jubilee 144 at the University of Sussex contributes to the
discussion. We outline the realities for women and girls of using brokers and
intermediaries in their migration; examine how anti-trafficking interventions
have affected female migrants; and explain why these interventions have changed
over time. See http://migratingoutofpoverty.dfid.gov.uk/newsandevents/events?id=29299
for full details.
Dr Dorte Thorsen is the Gender Theme Leader for the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium. She also teaches Anthropology at the University of Sussex.
This blog was originally published as 'Labour Trafficking' - What is behind the term? at http://sussexglobal.org/blog/labour-trafficking-what-is-behind-the-term/.
