Exploitation Of Migrants Research Articles

Re-politicising Anti-Trafficking: Migration, labour, and the war in Ukraine

Drawing on multi-method research, this article demonstrates that the risks of large-scale trafficking due to the war in Ukraine were mitigated by granting Ukrainians more extensive rights than typically afforded to refugees. This shows the advantages of rights-based approaches to migration and labour exploitation. We draw on Bakhtin’s and Žižek’s work on the carnivalesque to argue that mainstream anti-trafficking initiatives—which are depoliticised and able to win support and funding from across the political spectrum—often serve merely as theatrical and distracting sideshows diverting attention from more impactful activities and the normalised exploitation within capitalism. However, avoiding trafficking is insufficient if Ukrainian citizens and residents still endure exploitative conditions. A weakened legal framework for workers’ rights within Ukraine alongside inadequate labour protections across Europe have facilitated such exploitation. In contrast to the depoliticised stance of the anti-trafficking industry, this article concludes that more explicitly political actions supporting migrants’ rights, workers’ rights, and access to welfare and public services will not only more effectively challenge trafficking but also prevent other exploitation of migrants.

How Criminal Organizations Expand to Strong States: Local Agreements and Migrant Exploitation in Northern Italy

How Criminal Organizations Expand to Strong States: Local Agreements and Migrant Exploitation in Northern Italy

We Shouldn’t Be Surprised: a management educator’s perspective on allegations at Immigration New Zealand

The urgent independent review, launched in mid-August 2023, of the accredited employer work visa system by Immigration New Zealandfollowed accusations that staff concerns were ignored by managers, leading to exploitation of migrants. Based on my experience as amanagement educator, and my research into what we teach (and do not teach) students about management, I argue that we should not be surprised by the allegations, but we should be concerned.

‘Inanimate Objects’: Human consequences of Australia’s commodified approach to migrant workers during COVID-19

The Australian government has long treated migrant labour as a commodity, a ‘tap’ to be turned on and off in accordance with government or employer perceptions of the labour market. This article examines the Australian government’s policies concerning migrant workers during COVID-19, against the backdrop of its failure to take any meaningful steps to address systemic migrant exploitation over the past decade. It then considers the devastating human consequences of these policies during the first pandemic lockdowns, based on empirical data from over 6,100 temporary migrants collected in mid-2020. The data demonstrate migrant workers’ inability to pay for essential needs (including food and medical care); their lack of access to secure or emergency housing as well as emergency support in the form of cash or food; and their experiences of racism, discrimination, and social exclusion during the pandemic. We conclude that Australia’s commodified approach to migrant workers and acquiescence to exploitation reflected a deeper disavowal of migrants’ humanity and rights. This lens explains the apparent contradiction in which the government first denied or disregarded its legal and moral responsibilities towards them during the immediate crisis posed by the pandemic, while at the same time courting their labour in the context of skills shortages during and after the pandemic.

Regional Migration Governance: The Approach of the EU and ASEAN during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Migration is a historical issue that exists along with the evolution of humanity. It becomes more pressing when society faces new challenges such as a pandemic. Unless governed by appropriate legislation, policy, and practice under the rule of law consistent with international norms, migration entails numerous social and economic problems including abuse and exploitation of migrants at work, denial of social protection, disruption of social cohesion, family disintegration, reduced productivity, and lost opportunities for development. Due to its urgency and comprehensiveness, impossibility of reducing only to the state level, the contemporary approach to the issue of migration should include policy analysis of the activities of international organizations. This paper theorizes the dynamics of regional migration governance as well as the interaction, the relationship between countries, and multilateral institutions within a region. The purpose of the research is to investigate the current role and practical course of activities of these two typical regional institutions (the EU and ASEAN) and examine whether and to what extent there was an approach to migration issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Value of Illegality: Venezuelan Migrants in Ecuador and the (Re)Entrenchment of Neoliberal Capitalism

Despite Ecuadorians’ own extensive experiences as international migrants, as Venezuelan migration into Ecuador has increased sharply in the last five years, the Ecuadorian government has enacted a barrage of restrictive and exclusionary policies at and within the country's borders. Consequently, Venezuelans in Ecuador are forced into illegality, a spatialized social condition that entails simultaneous marginalization and inclusion in the contemporary socioeconomic order. This paper draws on theorizations of governmentality, destitution economies, and status value to argue that the illegalization of migrants produces various forms of value for the government and broader public. First, illegality works as a governmental mechanism to reconcile neoliberal capitalism with the inequalities it exacerbates. At the national scale, illegalization of Venezuelan migrants facilitates political legitimation for the Ecuadorian government, and at the local scale, illegality makes migrants hyper-visible in ways that obscure the negative consequences of neoliberal economic strategies. Second, illegality facilitates strategies for economic exploitation of migrants by private actors at the local scale. Exploring how illegality produces value in Ecuador is useful for understanding other cases of South–South migration and draws attention to the disciplinary functions of migration management outside the Global North. This article provides a case study of multiple mobilities in the context of growing poverty, historical inequalities, and the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism.

Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Dispossession, and Survival in the Americas

Migration and Mortality is an edited collection on immigration, health, and the legacy of colonialism. The book is edited by Jamie Longazel, a political scientist who focuses on immigration law, and Miranda Cady Hallett, an anthropologist who researches migration. The two have assembled an interdisciplinary collection divided into four sections. Each section focuses on what the editors call the United States’ “parasitism,” examining the contemporary health consequences of migrant exploitation through the lens of the United States’ history as a “crucible of settler colonialism” (p. 2).The first section, “Haunted Humanitarianism,” examines how mainstream humanitarian discourses reproduce the Global North's “violent parasitism” (p. 13). Joseph Nevins explores how human rights organizations fail to challenge the root causes of violence against migrants: borders and migration restrictions. Nevins argues the limited ambitions of most human rights organizations fail to protect immigrants. Alicia Ivonne Estrada continues the section's focus on the inadequacy of Western institutions’ humanitarianism. Her chapter looks at the US media's failure to contextualize the life and death of Maya-K'iche’ migrant Hugo Alfredo Tale Yax within the frame of genocide. The final chapter in the first section, co-written by Marianne Madoré and Nicholas Rodrigo, examines the 2019 border security expo in San Antonio. They note the contradiction of the US Department of Homeland Security's rhetorical emphasis on humanitarianism at a tactical weaponry exposition. The three chapters in this section focus on the hypocrisy of Western institutions’ professed commitment to “humanitarianism.”The second section, on “Death and Dispossession,” examines US parasitism “on full display” (p. 14). Nicholas de Genova looks at mass death at the US–Mexico border. De Genova argues that rising mortality is the result of border militarization and US law. He concludes that these measures’ effect is to catch “illegalized” migrants inside the United States. as rich countries actively redraw “the global color line” (p. 87). In the next chapter, Deirdre Conlon and Nancy Hiemstra examine US migrant “detention economies.” In a detention economy, migrant well-being is sacrificed so local governments can raise “critical revenues” through confinement (pp. 113–16). Nathan Music and Linda McCauley, in the section's last chapter, examine the consequences of excess heat on H2-A migrant farmworkers, whose lack of protections echoes the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, the Bracero Program, and the “dark history” of slavery. This section assesses the ways US capital takes precedent over migrants’ health.The third section focuses on the “haunting presence of death” that lingers over migrants. The section begins with Daniel Stageman and Shirley Leyro's examination of mental health issues that manifest in undocumented migrants and detained immigrant children, including anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. The health impact of strict immigration enforcement is then the focus of Juan Pedroza and Pil Chung's chapter. They examine the Hispanic Epidemiological Paradox and the health impacts of deportation, concluding the “price of settling in the USA seems to have risen” (pp. 165–66). In the third section's final chapter, Noah Kline focuses on the effects of Georgia ending emergency Medicaid access for unauthorized migrants. Kline argues that Georgia's denial of emergency Medicaid is part of “bureaucratically orchestrated death” (p. 187). This set of chapters showcases valuable approaches for understanding the health impact of anti-immigrant policies.The fourth section—“Outsourced Suffering and Survival in the Americas”—focuses on the international impacts of the United States’ exclusionary policies. Jared Van Ramshorst examines “metering,” an initiative to limit the daily number of asylum seekers who enter the United States. Metering pushes refugees into Mexico, thus allowing the United States to “manage violence” by keeping asylees outside its territory (pp. 213–18). Amelia Frank-Vitale then examines deportees in Honduras, who are caught between the dangers of migration and of violence at home. Frank-Vitale argues these young Honduran men are “systematically devalued” and that migration is their only hope to reclaim “a meaningful life” (p. 232). In the next chapter, Karina Alma explores Nicaragua's sweet-lobster industry, focusing on one Afro-Indigenous community that faces “troubling” rates of workplace mortality. These workers, whose lobsters are sold to US consumers, are thus still vulnerable to the US “apparatus of power,” even though they never left Central America (p. 239). Finally, Abby Wheatley examines migrant agency in her chapter, “A Politics of Survival.” Wheatley draws on narratives to show how immigrants assert their “right to life, livelihood, and autonomy.” This section demonstrates how the United States externalizes the cost of its exclusionary policies.The epilogue, by Anna Babel, Hallett, and Longazel, ties the books’ main themes to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like the rest of the collection, the epilogue connects individual stories to broader themes in history, theory, and politics. The editors and contributors of this book make a strong case for a multidisciplinary approach to assess the health impacts of migration.

Laura Pariani’s Novels of Migration: From Transnational Memory to Cosmopolitan Ethics

This article focuses on two novels by Laura Pariani: Quando Dio ballava il tango (2002) and Il piatto dell’angelo (2013), both of which recount tales of travel and migration between Italy and South America across a broad historical timeframe. These novels represent a challenge to narrow constructions of Italy as a monocultural and monolingual nation, foregrounding cultural and linguistic hybridity and highlighting patterns of belonging that do not map smoothly onto national borders. I argue that while the earlier novel explores the interconnectedness between Italy and Argentina, reconstructs Italy’s past as a nation of emigrants, and gives voice to the historically marginalized, the later novel uses the past more pointedly as a key to understanding the present. Il piatto dell’angelo’s juxtaposition of stories of Italian emigration from the early twentieth century with personal accounts of present-day migrants to Italy reminds Italians of their own emigratory past and aims to elicit empathy with their contemporary counterparts. In highlighting the economic exploitation of migrants in Italy, the novel explores the ethical dilemmas posed by globalization and raises pertinent questions about Italy’s and Europe’s response to the contemporary movement of people from the Global South to the Global North. Rather than viewing migrants as marginalized others, these novels place a cultural memory of migration and movement at the very center of their understandings of italianità.

Displacement, Dispossession, Trauma, Refugee Crises: The New Middle Passage in Helon Habila’s Travellers

This paper analyses Helon Habila’s Travellers (2019), focusing on its depiction of African migrants experience as the new middle passage. The novel as a diasporic narrative reveals the experiences of immigrants especially of war torn Africa, and the Middle East in Europe. The setting in Europe, revolves around cities like Berlin, Basel, London and Lampedusa lsland, where the unnamed narrator, meets various immigrants who narrate their stories of life in Europe, and their experiences as they travel to Europe. The study conceptualizes the middle passage as a movement symbolic of the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. The concept will be examined in the six titled divisions of the book, to discuss the experiences of displacement, trauma and refugee crises. The study concludes that African migrants yet again encounter challenges, because they are forced to leave their homes and communities due to political and social upheavals and in the course of movement, are traumatized and dispossessed of their homes, families, and identities, leading to profound psychological and emotional suffering. The author argues that the middle passage experience situates African refugees as people who have been robbed of their past and their future, forced to live in a perpetual state of limbo and uncertainty, as a result of power. The narrative discourse thus examines the complex power dynamics that emerge in the context of migration, which are the exploitation of migrants by smugglers and the tensions that arise between different groups of refugees.

Building a better understanding of labour exploitation's impact on migrant health: An operational framework.

There is limited evidence on labour exploitation's impact on migrant health. This population is, however, often employed in manual low-skilled jobs known for poor labour conditions and exploitation risks. The lack of a common conceptualisation of labour exploitation in health research impedes the development of research measuring its effects on migrant health and, ultimately, our understanding of migrants' health needs. To develop an operational conceptual framework of labour exploitation focusing on migrant workers in manual low-skilled jobs. Non-probabilistic sampling was used to recruit multidisciplinary experts on labour exploitation. An online Group Concept Mapping (GCM) was conducted. Experts: 1) generated statements describing the concept 'labour exploitation' focusing on migrants working in manual low-skilled jobs; 2) sorted generated statements into groups reflecting common themes; and 3) rated them according to their importance in characterising a situation as migrant labour exploitation. Multidimensional Scaling and Cluster Analysis were used to produce an operational framework detailing the concept content (dimensions, statements, and corresponding averaged rating). Thirty-two experts sorted and rated 96 statements according to their relative importance (1 "relatively unimportant" to 5 "extremely important"). The operational framework consists of four key dimensions of migrant labour exploitation, distributed along a continuum of severity revealed by the rating: 'Shelter and personal security' (rating: 4.47); 'Finance and migration' (4.15); 'Health and safety' (3.96); and 'Social and legal protection' (3.71). This study is the first to both generate an empirical operational framework of migrant labour exploitation, and demonstrate the existence of a "continuum from decent work to forced labour". The framework content can be operationalised to measure labour exploitation. It paves the way to better understand how different levels of exploitation affect migrant workers' health for global policymakers, health researchers, and professionals working in the field of migrant exploitation.

Climate Migration: Adding Fuel to the Ethnocentric Fire

ABSTRACT While conflict, crime, and terrorism are persistent geopolitical and human security threats, climate change can be a threat multiplier, affecting geopolitical stability on local, regional, and global scales. This paper provides a qualitative assessment of the literature and geopolitical trends related to climate change, migration, and ethnocentrism in order to evaluate the current situation and future potentials for climate-driven conflict, crime, terrorism, and ethnocentric extremism. The paper concludes that as climate change becomes a major driver of environmental degradation, natural disasters, mass migrations, and urbanization, this will escalate the impetus for violence against migrants, the exploitation of migrants, and anti-migrant politics. Potential implications in terms of terrorism and extremism are discussed.

Migration, Human Rights & Sustainable Economies: A Century 21 Agenda

This comprehensive brief identifies a range of key contemporary challenges for human rights, development, and governance of international migration as an all-encompassing human, social, economic, political, and environmental phenomena. It premises that migration is fundamentally about development, human rights, and social welfare, showing that labour and skills mobility is key to sustaining viability of labour forces and economies and to obtaining return on capital in a globalized economy. It notes that over 90 percent of migration today results in employment and economic activity outcomes. Sustaining development in all regions depends on migration. The article discusses the structural and systemic imperatives for mobility of people worldwide and it identifies 20 law, policy and practical challenges for economic and social development, human rights, welfare of people, and for governance. The article reiterates the comprehensive international legal framework for governance of migration and reviews especially relevant global policy frameworks: the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the New Urban Agenda. Discussion addresses abusive exploitation of migrants versus lacuna in legal protection; contentions between capital and labour in deregulation impacting migrant workers; dangers of xenophobia; gender specificity in migration; restrictions in access to social security for migrants; challenges to social and family welfare; growing skills and training constraints, and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and often inappropriate response measures. The trend of regime change towards deregulatory migration control is raised, with mention of concerns on the Global Compact on Migration. A comprehensive Agenda for Action outlines policy lines and practical actions for rights-based, economically sustainable, and socially responsible governance of migration. This article and the action agenda build on the plenary address by the author to the Global Parliamentary Consultation on International Migration held in Rabat, Morocco in December 2018.

Barriers to the effective exploitation of migrants' social and cultural capital in hospitality and tourism: A dual labour market perspective

This article examines migrants' labour market entry experiences and positions in hospitality and tourism from a dual labour market theory standpoint. We conducted thirty interviews with migrants from Latin America, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The transcripts were first analysed through an open coding framework. That was followed by emotion and sentiment analyses for the interviewees' transcripts using Natural Language Processing approach (NLP) with a programming code written in Python. This article found that migrants' high representation in tourism and hospitality is linked to the immense cultural capital they harbour. However, migrants are often at the sector's lower end and fail to build on their social and cultural capital. The research contributes to the understanding that migrants' positions within tourism and hospitality are misaligned with migrants' credentials. Ethnicity impacts job search success and attainment of higher ranks significantly. The underemployment of migrants in hospitality and tourism leads to human capital loss for both migrants and host economies.

Not Slaves Enough: On the Trivialization of Systemic Migrant Labor Exploitation in Tuscany, Italy

This article focuses on the exploitation of migrant labor in Tuscany, in relation to its neglect by anti-trafficking organizations. It contends that a conceptualization of human trafficking centered on coercion, violence, and forced movement of bodies focuses only on extra-ordinary cases, dismissing the wide-ranging exploitation of migrants currently taking place in Tuscany. It contends that the structural presence of exploitation within lawful frameworks renders exploitation itself invisible and it normalizes it. This study used the extended case methodology, linking the context of labor in Italy with the analysis of interviews with migrant workers and trade union and inspection officers.

Decent work for migrants? Examining the impacts of the UK frameworks of gangmasters legislation and modern slavery on working standards for irregularly present migrants

Decent work for migrants has been a preoccupation of a number of international organisations, in particular the International Labour Organisation (ILO), for more than a decade. The ILO’s Fair Migration Agenda was boosted by the publication of its ‘Fair Migration: Setting an ILO Agenda’ in 2014 followed by a Protocol in 2014 to its Forced Labour Convention (no. 29, 1930). The UK was enthusiastic in its support and ratified the Protocol in 2016. But between the ILO standards and UK implementation inconsistencies have appeared. In this paper, we use the UK example to analyse this implementation gap by examining how delivering decent work for migrants has proven elusive. We examine how the objective of decent work for migrants has been implemented in the UK from 2014 to 2016, dates of showcase pieces of legislation to counter labour exploitation of migrants yet limiting access to work. The outcome would be that irregularly present migrants have few remedies and diminished access to them as a result of changes which post-date the UK’s commitment to the Fair Migration Agenda and ratification of the Forced Labour Protocol.

Captivity, Migration, and Power in Libya

ABSTRACT In this article, we investigate abuse, captivity, and human trafficking along routes of irregular migration in Libya after the reign of Muammar Gaddafi. We argue that the systematic exploitation of migrants financially benefits competing actors in intra-state conflicts and terrorist organizations with global ambitions. Through a macro to micro analysis informed by a corpus of investigative reports and survivor testimony from 2011 to 2019, we map sites of captivity, facility types, and the conditions of abuse. We establish that the treatment of detainees across both official and illicit channels constitutes conditions of human trafficking, gender-based violence, and enslavement. Decentralized mechanisms of detainment directly benefit militant, criminal, and terrorist actors vying for power. This realization compels us to consider the implications of outsourcing migration control against the backdrop of verified human rights abuse, human trafficking, counterterrorism concerns, and global insecurity.

Intergenerational Exploitation of Filipino Women and Their Japanese Filipino Children: “Born out of place” Babies as New Cheap Labor in Japan

This paper focuses on the Japanese Filipino children as “born out of place” babies of migrant Filipino mothers and recent young migrant workers in Japan’s labor market. I present the unique position of Japanese Filipino children and their Filipino mothers as an example of intergenerational exploitation of migrants in Japanese society. The existence of Japanese Filipino children mirrors intersectional discrimination in Japanese society; they were born as a consequence of the inequality based on gender and ethnicity between the Philippines and Japan, then they were ignored by the Japanese state as “illegitimate” children, and now they their Filipino mothers have begun to be exploited as “unskilled labor” in Japan.

Внутрирегиональная миграция трудовых ресурсов в Юго-Восточной Азии

The regional labor market in Southeast Asia is second only to China and India. Its development is subjected to the movement of labor force within the region. The flow of intraregional migrants has begun to grow since the 1990s, reflecting imbalances in the distribution of labor among the countries of the region and the existence of significant differences between them in household income, wages and competitiveness, working conditions and employment opportunities. The number of labor emigrants in 2015 was 10.2 million people, of which 6.8 million found work in the region itself. The positive results of labor migration are indisputable for both importing countries and exporters of labor. The first, which include Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, by attracting foreign workers cover the shortage of labor force in their labor market, especially in labor-intensive industries. The bulk of migrants from neighboring countries are semi-skilled and unskilled labor. Its main suppliers are Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam. In these countries, due to higher rates of population growth and its rejuvenation, excess labor has emerged, which does not have the opportunity to find employment in still underdeveloped economies. Intraregional migration facilitates the solution of the problem of poverty and employment in these countries, raising the level of skills of the workforce, and the flow of funds into the economy through the remittances of migrant workers. However, intraregional migration brings not only economic benefits to the countries of the region, but also creates certain difficulties for them, since it is often accompanied by exploitation, violence of migrants, especially illegal ones. Although labor migration in labor-importing countries is regulated by laws that restrict the entry of migrants from neighboring countries and the duration of their stay in the country, these measures are not sufficient to stop the flow of illegal migrants. Costly and time-consuming bureaucratic procedure for obtaining a visa, the high cost of services of labor agencies, brevity and rigidity of labor contracts – all these factors encourage migrants to seek informal channels to move to another country. To combat illegal migration, various means of policy are used: the deportation of illegal migrants, their criminal prosecution (applies also to the entrepreneur who hires an illegal worker), periodically conducted campaigns for their registration and amnesty. However, these measures are ineffective in terms of reducing the influx of illegal migrants, and most importantly, are detrimental to the economy. The migration policies carried out in Malaysia and Thailand do not satisfy the needs of their economic development. In Singapore, the solution to these problems is ensured by the presence of an effective migration management system. Given the prospects for the development of integration processes in Southeast Asia, the problem of improving the management of intraregional migration is of particular importance. The ways to solve it are seen not so much in the tightening of migration policies in host countries, but in the removal of those barriers that impede the free movement of labor force within the region through legal channels. The task of the countries is to make amendments to their migration systems, including the elimination of any forms and types of exploitation of migrants.

Essex 39: the root causes

Following the deaths of thirty-nine Vietnamese nationals, whose bodies were found in the back of a refrigerated lorry container in Essex, UK on 23 October 2019, this article looks at the global conditions and the deadly border regimes that contributed to the deaths. The author, who co-organised a vigil for the ‘Essex 39’, argues that the mainstream response, calling for tougher borders and criminal investigations aimed at prosecuting smugglers and traffickers, does not address the enabling conditions for migrant exploitation, abuse and death.

Midwestern Service Provider Narratives of Migrant Experiences: Legibility, Vulnerability, and Exploitation in Human Trafficking

This exploratory study examined the vulnerability and exploitation of migrants from the perspective of service providers who work in social service organizations. Researchers conducted 16 interviews and 1 focus group with service providers whose clientele had direct experience with migration. These service providers indicated that there is incongruence, even tension, between a welcoming local response to migrant populations and the state-level political rhetoric and policy initiatives, which are predominantly anti-immigration. This study demonstrates that there are contradictions and tensions related especially to exploitation in Midwest migrant populations. Service providers acknowledged complexity in the problems related to migrant vulnerability and exploitation and were interested in change. Findings of this study highlight particular vulnerabilities of migrant populations, a lack of legibility of human trafficking in social service organizations, and a difference between political rhetoric and local responses to migrant populations. Policies and practices in social service delivery need to reflect the subtleties of risk for exploitation and offer broad preventive support for migrant populations through education and advocacy.