Reducing vulnerability to forced labour and trafficking of women migrant workers from South-to West-Asia (original) (raw)
Related papers
PLOS ONE, 2020
Background Awareness-raising and pre-migration training are popular strategies to prevent human trafficking. Programmatic theories assume that when prospective migrants are equipped with information about risks, they will make more-informed choices, ultimately resulting in safe migration. In 2016, India was estimated to have 8 million people in modern slavery, including those who migrate internally for work. Work in Freedom (WiF) was a community-based trafficking prevention intervention. This study evaluated WiF's pre-migration knowledge-building activities for female migrants in Odisha to prevent future labour-related exploitation. Methods Pre-and post-training questionnaires were administered to women (N = 347) who participated in a two-day pre-migration training session. Descriptive analysis and unadjusted analyses (paired t-tests, McNemar's tests, Wilcoxon signed ranks tests) examined differences in women's knowledge scores before and after training. Adjusted analyses used mixed effects models to explore whether receiving information on workers' rights or working away from home prior to the training was associated with changes in scores. Additionally, we used data from a household survey (N = 4,671) and survey of female migrants (N = 112) from a population sample in the same district to evaluate the intervention's rationale and implementation strategy. Results Female participants were on average 37.3 years-old (SD 11) and most (67.9%) had no formal education. Only 11 participants (3.2%) had previous migration experience. Most participants (90.5%) had previously received information or advice on workers' rights or working
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a CGIAR Research Center established in 1975, provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition. IFPRI's strategic research aims to foster a climate-resilient and sustainable food supply; promote healthy diets and nutrition for all; build inclusive and efficient markets, trade systems, and food industries; transform agricultural and rural economies; and strengthen institutions and governance. Gender is integrated in all the Institute's work. Partnerships, communications, capacity strengthening, and data and knowledge management are essential components to translate IFPRI's research from action to impact. The Institute's regional and country programs play a critical role in responding to demand for food policy research and in delivering holistic support for country-led development. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world.
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 ...
Labor Migration and Trafficking among Vietnamese Migrants in Asia
Asia is known as a continent where human trafficking is particularly prevalent. Departing from the bulk of research on trafficking in Asia that focuses on illegal migration and prostitution, this article examines the embeddedness of human trafficking in legal temporary migration flows. This analysis uses survey and interview data to document the experiences of Vietnamese migrants who worked in East Asian countries. It identifies a continuum of trafficking, abuse, exploitation, and forced labor, and examines how exploitation begins at the recruitment stage with the creation of bonded labor. Guest-worker programs in destination countries put migrants in particularly precarious situations, which do, in some cases, qualify as trafficking. I argue that temporary migration programs may create the conditions that lead to extreme forms of exploitation among many legal migrant workers in the region.
Negotiated Agency amidst Overlapping Vulnerabilities of Women Migrant Workers in South Asia
Social Change, 2020
Marriage, family reunification, forced labour and trafficking are some of the most widely attributed causes of women’s migration within South Asia. This paper contributes to a small but growing literature about women’s migration within South Asia for employment amidst social, cultural and policy level barriers that hinder women’s mobility choices. It examines the experiences of 45 migrant women from economically poorer backgrounds comprising both cross-border, undocumented migrants from Nepal and Bangladesh and internal migrants from India working in informal jobs within India. This paper also explores similarities and differences between migration and labour market experiences of women migrants in South Asia showing how migration for employment can contribute towards agency formation but at the same time increase vulnerability by bringing about a reduction in well-being, security and dignity in the absence of secure policies that address challenges of women migrants in the region.
TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND GIRLS: A STUDY OF CAUSES AND COPING STRATEGIES
Trafficking is an experience replete with trauma. Women ad Girls who have experienced extreme periods of helpless and a lack of control in their life, life seems to stop, and the events leave footprints on their mind. The misery defines their space and their time. With the history of chilly powder in your vagina and HIV in your blood how do you trust the counselor sitting in front of you and tell them how you actually feel? Do you have the emotional capacity to start a relationship? Can you think about what you want from life when all that life has been for you is a series of traumatic events? Benumbed and indifferent, can you start anew? This research work examines the causes of trafficking and forced involvement in the sex trade on women and girls who were rescued from brothels in India and brought back to rehabilitation centers. In these centers, the rescued victims are given counseling and practical training to enable them to ease back into society after their traumatic experiences. The population of the study consisted of 25 women and girls from various rehabilitation centers. Questionnaire interview, case study and informal conversation were the tools of data collection. Despite the limitations of sample selection, the findings suggest that trafficking is the worst form of human rights violation. The female population is treated as the second-lass citizens in various social, judicial, financial, political and cultural contexts. These reasons together with disparity against women and girls have been the cause for the prevalence of the sad incidence making them the victims of trafficking, violence and injustice. Poverty and unemployment is not the only obvious cause of trafficking, even educated females are being trafficked. The Sexual and other physical assault is the normative experience faced by women/ girls in prostitution. To exterminate these brutality faced by women, organizations have adopted strategies that include awareness, advocacy for policy change, interception, rehabilitation and reintegration of the women and girls.
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.