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Abstract
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We can spend a lot of time debating the connections or essential differences between the concepts of trafficking, forced labour, slavery and modern slavery, or slavery-like practices. Some insist that trafficking is a subset of forced labour, others the reverse. The arguments between academics, bureaucracies and even government agencies have often been vitriolic.
But we really need to sift out the important issues from the trivial, and from the self-interests of certain agencies in pushing their own agenda or ideology. I would suggest that the main issues at stake are as follows:
Is the presence of coercion a necessary condition for articulating the offence of human trafficking, whether for sexual or labour exploitation?
To what extent should law enforcement responses focus on criminal justice, or on other remedies including in particular the application of labour justice?
To what extent can these abusive practices be dealt with using action based on individuals, either law enforcement against the perpetrators, or the protection and compensation of the persons wronged? And to what extent are these systemic practices, perhaps deeply embedded in the norms and values of any society, requiring a response that goes way beyond law enforcement?
Related to this, to what extent are we talking about longstanding systemic abuses, deriving from a long history of discrimination against vulnerable groups? And to what extent are there new systemic patterns of abuse, mainly linked to contemporary globalisation?
It is also important to understand the context in which the main international instrument against human trafficking1 was adopted. The period after the 1980s saw strong pressures for deregulation, led by the international financial institutions and the erosion of social protection systems for vulnerable people. This was the period of the break up of the former Communist bloc, opening of borders and mass international movement of people, particularly women, to seek new opportunities. There was also an extraordinary mismatch between the economic policies of many wealthier countries, seeking to attract migrant workers at the bottom end and often unregulated sector of the labour market, and border control policies which were concerned with stemming the flow of people. These systemic inequalities inevitably led to the trafficking of women and also men, much of it through labour brokers and unscrupulous recruitment agencies operating in both sender and destination countries...
Language: en |