Labour Exploitation in Human Trafficking Law

Abstract

The growing political, legal and academic attention to the phenomena grouped under the umbrella term ‘trafficking in persons’ over the last two decades resulted in various instruments defining trafficking and related concepts, and initiatives promoting different strategies towards its eradication. Many of those instruments and initiatives focused on trafficking for prostitution or sexual exploitation. Yet, awareness of the need to address severe labour exploitation within the trafficking framework is also growing. With this awareness, scholars and activists debate whether what was developed as a criminal justice response to smuggling and prostitution is an appropriate framework to address labour exploitation and systematic failures to protect vulnerable workers.1Labour Exploitation in Human Trafficking Law is a welcome and important addition to these debates. The book relies on international and domestic (Belgium and England and Wales) standards and case-law to consider the legal frameworks for severe labour exploitation—both established and emerging. The term ‘labour exploitation’ is used to consider together established legal definitions—slavery, servitude and forced labour—both as ‘stand-alone’ offences, and as the result of trafficking in persons under the trafficking umbrella. The notion of trafficking focuses on forced or coerced movement, especially across borders. The criminalisation of movement is at the heart of the dominant approach to trafficking. Labour Exploitation in Human Trafficking Law, while still looking at criminal justice interventions, shifts the focus from facilitation of movement to its purpose, the exploitation itself. It does so in four parts. The book’s contribution to academic literature and debates is strongest in the first and last parts, and in the conceptualisation resulting from their combination.