Labor Migration and Trafficking among Vietnamese Migrants in Asia (original) (raw)
Related papers
Over the past few years, Lao PDR has been facing a strong seasonal and illegal migration movement to Thailand, attracting a rising number of female migrants. In the near future, due to its unique geographical situation at the crossroads of the GMS, Lao PDR will likely to tackle an explosion of labor migration flows resulting from the ongoing regionalization processes, generating demand for sexual and labor exploitation as well. Yet, there exists some significant gaps in the available information about the nature and extent of the link/overlap between migration and trafficking. Can patterns be identified to distinguish trafficking from illegal migration? If so, are these patterns linked to vulnerability factors, to awareness levels, to routes taken, to connections? Finding answers to such questions calls for an innovative investigation that can inform us on how migration turns into trafficking and, more generally, on how trafficking operates, thus allowing GMS policy makers to govern migration for both national development and regional integration. We hypothesize that an identifiable distinction exists between illegal migration and trafficking and that certain individuals or groups of people are more vulnerable to exploitation than others. Through an Action Research carried out with AFESIP, an international NGO, based on a narrative analysis of life story material from residents of its Rehabilitation Centre, this paper intends to open the way to new approaches to migration discourse, building evidence base for debates, policies and interventions in the Mekong region.
Syndicate Marriage or Trafficking? The Travails of Asian Migrant Women
Journal of Educational and Social Research, 2022
Migration is a phenomenon that has come to stay. It cuts across all nations in the world. People migrate for different purposes such as education, marriage, labour, job opportunity or employment and shelter for refugees. Migration occurs through various mediums which could be self, family members, friends, or other intermediaries such as brokers. This research applied the pure library-based research method to highlight the activities of brokers in migration in Asia and examine the ordeals of women victims in cross-border migration. It was discovered that activities of these illegal brokers, that is also known as syndicates, are not different from human trafficking. The women victims, whose desires are to change their status, soon got trapped in uncertainty with shattered dreams, hence the suggestion that Asian countries enter into bilateral agreement to enable favourable and a less strict migration procedures for their member states. In addition, the contracting states should enact ...
Development and change, 2010
Over the past few years some governments and development organizations have increasingly articulated cross-border mobility as ‘trafficking in persons’. The notion of a market where traffickers prey on the ‘supply’ of migrants that flows across international borders to meet the ‘demand’ for labour has become a central trope among anti-trafficking development organizations. This article problematizes such economism by drawing attention to the oscillating cross- border migration of Lao sex workers within a border zone between Laos and Thailand. It illuminates the incongruity between the recruitment of women into the sex industry along the Lao–Thai border and the market models that are employed by the anti-trafficking sector. It discusses the ways in which these cross-border markets are conceived in a context where aid programming is taking on an increasingly important role in the politics of borders. The author concludes that allusions to ideal forms of knowledge (in the guise of classic economic theory) and an emphasis on borders become necessary for anti- trafficking programmes in order to make their object of intervention legible as well as providing post-hoc rationalizations for their continuing operation.
The Phenomenon of Cross-Border Human Trafficking: Complexities of Exploitation Issues in Thailand
2011
The aim of this article is to analyze the phenomenon of cross-border human trafficking relating to the complexities of exploitation in Thailand. Drawing on some empirical research, but mainly offering conceptual ideas, this paper demonstrates the complexities of the exploitative issues of both human trafficking in labor and sexual exploitation in women and children in which the different forms of vulnerability and exploitation have been neglected and de-conceptualized in the context of trafficking and protection in international human rights regime. Most cases of trafficking have been interpreted in the wider perspective of illegal migration and transnational crime and have often been undermined or duplicated in the context of human smuggling or have not been applied to the protection measures under the trafficking laws. Recent discourses have revealed the complicated characteristics of emerging exploitation in other aspects of migration i.e. border crossing and procurement of trave...
of Labor Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia
2014
Human trafficking is one of the most widely spread and fastest growing crimes in the world. However, despite the scope of the problem, the important human rights issues at stake and the professed intent of governments around the world to put an end to "modern day slavery", there is very little that is actually known about the nature of human trafficking and those most at risk as potential victims. This is due in large part to the difficulty in collecting reliable and statistically useful data. In this paper we present the results of a pilot study run in rural Vietnam with the aim of overcoming these data issues. Rather than attempt to identify victims themselves, we rely on the form rural migration often takes in urbanizing developing countries to instead identify households that were sources of trafficking victims. This allows us to construct a viable sampling frame, on which we conduct a survey using novel techniques such as anchoring vignettes, indirect sampling, list randomization and social network analysis to construct a series of empirically valid estimates that can begin to shed light on the problem of human trafficking.
This paper sets out to explore the interrelations between safeguarding migration flows between Laos and Thailand and dual models of migrant brokers’ subjectivity. Within the anti-trafficking community in the Mekong region there is a tacit dual imagery of “insider” and “outsider” categories, where external brokers are associated with “risk,” whereas friends and personal networks within village communities constitute possible avenues for “safe migration.” The Thai and Lao governments have over the past years attempted to legalize migration flows. An important rationale for this—which is advocated by international organizations in the Mekong region and elsewhere—is the claim that legalization will “dry out” a market for dubious brokers, making labour migration safer. This paper suggests that what sustains this “legalization model” is an implicit utilitarian view of migration which projects ideal- type depictions of traffickers and brokers. In light of ethnographic data from the commercial sex industry along the Thai-Lao border, this paper suggests that migration networks do not replace brokers, as brokering services are embedded within these very same networks where legality is appropriated as a resource with mixed results. Yet, although legality is being manufactured through the migration process, both consensual and deceptive recruitment (i.e., “trafficking”) of young Lao women, is taking place within a context where sex workers themselves play a central role as dilettante-brokers within wider informal social networks. In other words, legality does not alter brokering services, but rather the reverse holds true. “Trafficking,” then, is taking place in the very same contexts that are deemed “safe” by anti-trafficking programs.
Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia: Results from a Pilot Project in Vietnam
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
Human trafficking is one of the most widely spread and fastest growing crimes in the world. However, despite the scope of the problem, the important human rights issues at stake and the professed intent of governments around the world to put an end to "modern day slavery", there is very little that is actually known about the nature of human trafficking and those most at risk as potential victims. This is due in large part to the difficulty in collecting reliable and statistically useful data. In this paper we present the results of a pilot study run in rural Vietnam with the aim of overcoming these data issues. Rather than attempt to identify victims themselves, we rely on the form rural migration often takes in urbanizing developing countries to instead identify households that were sources of trafficking victims. This allows us to construct a viable sampling frame, on which we conduct a survey using novel techniques such as anchoring vignettes, indirect sampling, list randomization and social network analysis to construct a series of empirically valid estimates that can begin to shed light on the problem of human trafficking.
Refugees or Victims of Human Trafficking? The case of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong
Anti-Trafficking Review, 2018
China is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 2000 UN Trafficking Protocol, but has not extended coverage of either of the treaties to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China (Hong Kong). Hong Kong does however offer non-refoulement protection on the basis of risks of torture or persecution. Further, Hong Kong legislation defines human trafficking, albeit only in terms of cross-border sex work. Victim identification also remains inadequate. The limited extant protection systems for refugees and victims of human trafficking operate separately and assume that such people are distinct with respect to their experiences and needs. These practices are often mirrored in the approaches of NGOs working in the city. Based on research undertaken by Justice Centre Hong Kong, this paper argues instead that boundaries between the two categories are blurry. The paper focuses on migrant domestic workers who may have claims to asylum and may be at the same time victims of human ...