Anti-Trafficking Review
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Life after Trafficking in Azerbaijan: Reintegration experiences of survivors
Get PDFAssisting survivors of trafficking is considered one of the pillars of a human rights-based response Shelter, medical, psychological and legal assistance in the short term and job placement, accommodation and reunification with family and community in the long term are critical steps for helping them recover and feel in control of their lives and futures. This paper examines survivors’ experiences of trafficking and recovery in the Azerbaijani context, using questionnaire responses from 22 women who were trafficked for sexual exploitation between 2006 and 2009 and who were assisted upon their return. It finds that while Azerbaijan has been quite successful at short-term assistance, there are still significant gaps in longer-term assistance, especially with regard to job placement and family reunification. Survivors point to these gaps as significant impediments to full reintegration into society. Looking at their experiences can provide insights into improvements in assistance programmes that can be implemented in both Azerbaijan and elsewhere
The New Life: Construction sites and mine fields
Get PDFInterview with Sara Donath, counsellor at FIZ Fachstelle Frauenhandel und Frauenmigration (FIZ – Advocacy and Support for Migrant Women and Victims of Trafficking, Switzerland).
Sara Donath has counselled hundreds of survivors of trafficking and accompanied them into their new lives. We asked Sara about the experiences of these women after having experienced exploitation and violence
‘What’s in a Name?’: Mislabelling, misidentification, and the US government’s failure to protect human trafficking survivors in the Central American refugee crisis
Get PDFThis article explores how competing and overlapping legal classifications such as ‘victim of trafficking’, ‘smuggled migrant’, ‘illegal alien’, and ‘refugee’ play out in the United States (US) immigration system. In particular, it focuses on the repeated failure of US authorities to identify and protect survivors of human trafficking who were victimised by the smugglers they voluntarily employed in fleeing their home countries—a scenario that is becoming increasingly common in the midst of the Central American refugee crisis. The article draws upon the authors’ experience providing direct legal representation to Central American migrants in the US to discuss how misassumptions about this population, a misunderstanding of the relevant legal terminology, and the US government’s focus on border security negatively impact the conduct of law enforcement agencies and immigration adjudicators. Due in large part to the US government’s increased restrictions on, and criminalisation of, many forms of migration, survivors of human trafficking who are victimised by smugglers often find themselves classified as ‘illegal aliens’ or ‘criminal aliens’, and their legitimate claims for protection are frequently dismissed for the irrelevant fact that they initially consented to be smuggled. Such mistreatment and misidentification fail to hold perpetrators accountable, and to offer assistance to populations that the US government has pledged to defend
‘Circuit Children’: The experiences and perspectives of children engaged in migrant smuggling facilitation on the US-Mexico border
Get PDFIn Mexican child protection circles the term ‘circuit children’ has been used to designate people under the age of 18 who cross the US-Mexico border irregularly and cyclically for the purpose of smuggling drugs or irregular migrants. Young people of the border region have historically been involved in these markets. Yet their activities have become more visible in recent years in the context of increased border militarisation, and immigration and crime controls implemented by both the US and Mexican governments. Depicted in official and media discourses as forced recruits of local organised crime gangs, circuit children have increasingly been at the centre of initiatives that seek to identify and treat them as victims of trafficking. These efforts often rely on portrayals that frame them as gullible and defenceless, and their families and communities as inherently dysfunctional, dangerous and crime-prone. The structural and geopolitical conditions related to the children’s participation in smuggling, however, remain unchallenged. Most troublingly, trafficking discourses tend to silence the perspectives of circuit children themselves. This paper, based on interviews and participant observation, shows how circuit children, rather than seeing themselves as victims, articulate legitimate, important claims concerning their engagement in illicit markets, reflective of the ways they navigate the complex economic, socio-political and migratory contexts of the US-Mexico border
From Passive Victims to Partners in Their Own Reintegration: Civil society’s role in empowering returned Thai fishermen
Get PDFDespite the significant international attention to human trafficking in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia, victims continue to experience poor outcomes after their return to Thailand. The Labour Rights Promotion Network (LPN) has assisted many returned fishermen in the difficult journey that begins after their rescue and repatriation. In this paper, we argue that the poor outcomes are the product of systemic failures in the aftercare processes, which are not sufficiently victim-centred and discourage trafficked fishermen’s participation in prosecutions. This is the case in the criminal justice system, where flaws in victim identification and evidence collection can undermine trafficked persons’ rights and make it extremely difficult for them to obtain compensation—a significant factor in their recovery and reintegration. This same cycle of disenfranchisement is pervasive in reintegration services at large in Thailand, many of which are overly paternalistic and neglect survivors’ individual needs and interests. Civil society organisations can remediate these problems by supporting the government in its efforts to strengthen prosecutions and make the criminal justice system more victim-friendly. More broadly, civil society can contribute to a victim-centred approach that places aftercare in a larger perspective—one that extends beyond the purview of the criminal justice system. This paper will examine two emerging models in post-trafficking service provision: Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCTs) and volunteer social networks, which recognise victim empowerment not just as a means towards better law enforcement, but as an end in itself
Editorial: Categorising Migrants: Standards, complexities, and politics
Get PDFIn spring 2017, New York Times correspondent Patrick Kingsley went to Turkey to cover the lives of Syrian refugees. In Istanbul, Kingsley met Abu Mohammed, a former surgeon’s assistant from Syria, who between 2015 and 2016 had helped to facilitate the passage of refugees from his home country into Greece. After narrowly escaping death in his own failed attempt to reach Europe, Mohammed had earned some USD 800,000 with ‘smuggling’ activities. He himself spoke of a ‘dirty business’, but it had also been more than just a business—the refugees whom he had helped reach Europe included relatives and even his own son.
Kingsley also met 15-year-old Syrian Ismail Alanzi, a refugee working ‘up to 11 hours a day, six days a week’ on a farm in the east of Turkey—much more than the limit set by Turkish law for someone his age. With his father unable to find employment, however, the burden of supporting the family fell upon Ismail. He earned about TRY 800 (USD 225) per month for his toil, which was little more than half of the statutory minimum wage in the country. Ismail also received permission for his family to set up a tent on the land of his employer as they struggled to find proper housing. Turkish law restricts refugees to residing in the province where they are registered, but the family had moved in search of work
Migrants, Irregular Migrants, or (Irregular) Migrants?
Get PDFResponse to the ATR Debate Proposition: ‘It is important and necessary to make clear distinctions between (irregular) migrants, refugees and trafficked persons.’
Upon first reading this issue’s debate proposition, I was struck by its structure rather than its content. Its content is subject to lively discussions among scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers, as attested to by other contributions in this issue of the journal. Its curious structure, though, raises issues that merit articulation. In what follows, I briefly problematise the bracketing of the word ‘irregular’ in the debate proposition. What the brackets do is prompt an additional question: migrants, irregular migrants, or (irregular) migrants
‘There are no Victims Here’: Ethnography of a reintegration shelter for survivors of trafficking in Bangladesh
Get PDFThis article, based on nine months of ethnographic data from a reintegration shelter for survivors of trafficking in Bangladesh, examines the tensions between claims of empowerment and the disempowering practices that undermine an organisation’s liberatory objective. The author documents how the leadership and other staff of an anti-trafficking NGO engage in regulating survivors’ desires, directing their desires by demanding that they perform a desire to engage in particular modes of self-improvement, and rehabilitating their desires to seek gender-conforming occupations. These three strategies together constitute disciplining desire, which I identify as a process of othering of poor Third World women and cultivating an ideal survivor subjectivity that conforms to gender and class expectations in the name of ‘reintegration’. This account encourages researchers to critically consider the micro-interactions that undermine the emancipatory goals within women’s empowerment regimes in the Global South
The Antics of Semantics in International Law
Get PDFResponse to the ATR Debate Proposition: ‘It is important and necessary to make clear distinctions between (irregular) migrants, refugees and trafficked persons.’
Whether a person is given a loaded label like ‘irregular’ migrant, refugee or trafficked person, can make the difference between arrest and protection, or between deportation and asylum, or between return to an uncertain fate and assistance for a decent life. In short, the distinctions we make in the language of international law may mean the difference between life and death
Vulnerable Here or There? Examining the vulnerability of victims of human trafficking before and after return
Get PDFThis article deals with how return programmes for rejected asylum seekers and irregular migrants construct and create vulnerabilities. Few studies have explored the role of assistance provided through such programmes for the sex worker returnees and victims of trafficking who return through them. Even fewer holistically examine a return programme through data elicited in both destination and origin locations, before and after return. That is what we aim to do in this article. We first look at the legal-bureaucratic construction of vulnerability in a host state, Norway, and the systemic logic of its efforts to return victims of trafficking. We then look at how returnees narrate their experiences of and perspectives on vulnerability upon return to their country of origin, Nigeria. This study, together with the broader research within this field, indicates that flaws in programme implementation can in fact exacerbate vulnerabilities rather than help returnees overcome them