Mig-Right RESEARCH Labour Migration and Human Trafficking (original) (raw)
Related papers
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 ...
This paper uses the exodus of Cambodian migrant workers from Thailand in June 2014 as a focal point around which to explore Cambodian migrant attitudes towards the systems of documentation and brokerage that influence their movement. From the perspective of Cambodian returnees and their families, it builds on recent work exploring narratives of brokerage by demonstrating how documentation itself — and by extension the legality of migration — is viewed through a contextual lens. Specifically, it argues that documentation is not only viewed according to the formal regulatory framework governing migration between the two countries, but forms part of a more complex structure of influences in which norms of employment and brokerage are equally prominent. From this position, the paper suggests that migrants did not only respond directly to threats of a crackdown by authorities following the 2014 coup, but were additionally influenced by the actions of employers and brokers, whose guarantees of protection — or otherwise — were seen as vitally important in their migration decisions.
International Review of Social History, 2012
SummaryLabour brokerage and its salient role in the mobility of workers across borders in Asia has been the subject of recent debate on the continuing usefulness of intermediaries in labour mobility and migration processes. Some researchers believe that labour brokerage will decline with the expansion of migrant networks, resulting in reduced transaction costs and a better deal for migrant workers. From an economic standpoint, however, reliance on brokers does not appear to have a “use-by date” in south-east Asia. Labour brokers have played an important role in organizing and facilitating officially authorized migration, particularly during the contemporary period. They undertake marketing and recruitment tasks, finance migrant workers’ travel, and enable transnational labour migration to take place. Consequently, both sending and destination states have been able to concentrate on their role as regulatory “agencies”, managing migration and ensuring compliance with state regulatory ...
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.
Navigating the Currents: The Transnational Challenges of Migrant Fishers from Southeast Asia
BEBESEA Research Report, 2024
This report examines the complex challenges faced by Southeast Asian migrant fishery workers throughout their migration journey. Prior to employment, Indonesian workers, for instance, are often enticed by promises of higher wages on foreign vessels but these offers frequently conceal additional costs and harsh working conditions, leading to debt and exploitation exacerbated by language barriers and unclear contracts. The pre-departure phase often involves debt bondage, with recruitment fees reaching as high as US$1,289 in Indonesia, compounded by opaque credit systems. Furthermore, the complexity of employment contracts and varied visa regulations in destination countries, like Taiwan, create a precarious legal environment. Upon arrival at their assigned vessels, migrant workers face isolation, exploitation, and limited communication due to the retention of their documents by ship captains or agencies. Lack of access to adequate healthcare and insurance further jeopardizes their well-being, and the absence of union representation denies them collective bargaining power. Post-return challenges include unpaid wages, exacerbating financial vulnerabilities, and the often self-financed repatriation process hinders reintegration into their home countries. These multifaceted challenges underscore the need for comprehensive strategic interventions to ensure adequate protection and support for migrant fishery workers.
Global Labour and the Migrant Premium. The Cost of Working Abroad , 2018
The criminalisation of irregular migrants – in relation to irregular entry, residence, and work – is considered against the 1975 and 1990 ILO Migrant Workers Conventions (MWC); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 (ICCPR); the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 (ICESCR); the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG); and the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime 2000, including its Protocols to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (‘the Trafficking Protocol’) and against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air (‘the Smuggling Protocol’). The creation of laws, which are generally applied only to foreigners – concerning irregular entry, residence, and work – increases costs and exposure to adverse labour conditions and social vulnerabilities, and also impedes access to justice. The possibilities of criminal conviction, resulting in fines, imprisonment and expulsion contribute to a precarious class of low-skilled migrant. The chapter argues that the criminalisation of migration exacerbates the migrant premium because it decreases income while increasing dependency on employers, smugglers and traffickers and complicates access to human rights protection. The chapter suggests that one of the policy propositions for the Global Compact should be an understanding of how the emphasis internationally, regionally and nationally on smuggling and trafficking and border control has resulted in the criminalisation of irregular migrants – both potential and actual - for the ways in which they enter, leave, reside and work in a country; and that migrants need to be able to manage their working needs in a flexible manner.
Managing migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion: Regulation, extra-legal relation and extortion
2013
ABSTRACT One major aim of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) integration programme, supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is to foster regional ‘community’ for sharing resources, people and financial flows. This ‘community’ is the target of both economic growth and poverty reduction. The emphasis on ‘community’ in the ADB's mushrooming quantity of documents raises important questions about what kinds of people are included, in what roles and with what kinds of support and protection. This paper explores these questions in relation to the political economy of regulating ethnic migrants from Myanmar working in Thailand. This paper argues that extra-legal relations between migrants and state/para-state agents constitute a crucial part of regulation. In transferring the regulation of migration to the national scale, the ADB inadvertently reinforces national differences between Thais and cross-border people. Additionally, the complicated and fluctuating implementation of national regulations in both countries leaves migrants subject to violence and extortion from state and quasi-state agents in Thailand. This paper shows that the dynamics of global capitalism require ‘deportable labour’ supplied by ethnic migrants who are included in the GMS community as the most invisible, vulnerable and exploited members.