Anti-Trafficking Review
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Dilemmas in Rescue and Reintegration: A critical assessment of India’s policies for children trafficked for labour exploitation
Get PDFThis paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the Indian government’s efforts to combat pervasive child trafficking for labour exploitation through rescue and reintegration of affected children. It evaluates the extensive policy and legal frameworks against on-the-ground realities in the states of Bihar and Rajasthan, using empirical findings from a qualitative study carried out by the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University. The results demonstrate that current practices fail to adhere to human rights norms or protect rescued children from risk of future exploitation. They underscore important challenges in the rescue and reintegration of trafficked children, and call into question the singular focus on this category of post-harm response over preventative interventions. The findings point to a critical need for future research, sustained multi-stakeholder discussion and concrete reforms
In Their Own Words…
Get PDFThe Editors approached service providers members of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) with a request to speak to people who are using their services and ask them about the difficulties they are currently facing, their hopes for the future, or anything else they want to share with the journal audience. The responses below were translated by the service providers or GAATW staff and have been edited only for clarity
Consuming Life after Anti-Trafficking
Get PDFThe rise of transnational, market-based anti-trafficking organisations has expanded the anti-trafficking domain to include Western corporations and consumers. In an effort to improve living conditions for survivors of trafficking, these organisations sell commodities produced by former victims or women at risk of human trafficking and brand them as symbols of a new and better life after anti-trafficking. Thus, life after anti-trafficking is not isolated to the locations of the trafficking victims, but occurs in distant areas and among diverse groups of people. This article investigates how representations of life after anti-trafficking engage consumers, corporations and NGO workers in New York City through the sale and purchase of ‘slave-free’ products made by Southeast Asian women deemed ‘survivors of trafficking’. The ethnographic data illustrates how life after anti-trafficking unfolds in the context of US corporate and consumer culture and intersects with capitalist discourses of freedom, consumer ethics and politics of market-based aid. Consequently, life after anti-trafficking creates new consumer identities, anti-trafficking aid strategies and business opportunities detached from the actual victims of human trafficking
Life after Trafficking: A gap in the UK’s modern slavery efforts
Get PDFThe Modern Slavery Act (2015) was a symbol of the UK’s commitment to combatting exploitation and human trafficking. Yet the Act offers little help to people who have been trafficked to, or in, the UK to recover and build a new life
Seeing Migration like a State: The case of irregular Indonesian migrant workers deported from Malaysia
Get PDFThe corridor linking Indonesia with Malaysia is particularly rife with transborder mobility, including large-scale labour migration. While irregularity has long been a major feature of these flows, much of the movement now falls under the migration regimes adopted by Malaysia and Indonesia. Long-established casual migration flows collide with recently codified norms and, as a result, oscillate between regularity and irregularity. This paper explores the following questions: How does the regulatory state view and handle undocumented migrants? How does it interact with established social networks that have facilitated irregular labour migration? Particular attention is given to the distinction between the categories of deportable criminals and victims deserving protection, as ascribed by state actors to certain groups of migrants. Based on interviews with twelve deported Florenese migrant workers, the paper discusses how the Indonesian-Malaysian migration regime seeks to shape mobility. It argues that shifting categorisations reflect political imperatives more than the migrants’ needs that prompt them to migrate in the first place. 
Addressing Overlapping Migratory Categories within New Patterns of Mobility in Peru
Get PDFThis article reflects on the construction and application of different migratory categories in the Peruvian context, including irregular migrants, refugees, victims of trafficking, and smuggled migrants. Through legal analysis and interviews with key migration actors in the country, the paper explores the ways in which Peru responds to migrants in these different categories, in view of the recent changes in human mobility in the country. The article aims to shed light on the fragmentation of migratory categories and the negative effects this has on migrants’ human rights. It is exploratory in nature and serves as a starting point for further debate on the subject
Smuggled or Trafficked? Refugee or job seeker? Deconstructing rigid classifications by rethinking women’s vulnerability
Get PDFIn the context of recent large-scale migratory flows from North Africa to the European Union, significant convergence and overlap has been observed between human trafficking and migrant smuggling, and between ‘economic’ and ‘forced’ migration. This paper draws on the case of Nigerian women asylum seekers, most of whom are identified as potential victims of human trafficking, to illustrate the problems that arise when migrants are separated into discrete categories—trafficked/smuggled, voluntary/forced—to establish their treatment. These problems derive from the application of rigid bureaucratic labels to increasingly fluid migratory identities, and from gendered and neo-colonial stereotypes that inform views of agency and vulnerability. The paper discusses vulnerability as a core concept in the construction of the ‘deserving victim’ in order to critique stereotypical representations of ‘vulnerable subjects’ in light of feminist political philosophy and philosophy of law. In doing so, it highlights the role of receiving states in producing migrant women’s vulnerability, and argues that state institutions have a duty to both guarantee protection and acknowledge the subjects’ agency
Family Separation, Reunification, and Intergenerational Trauma in the Aftermath of Human Trafficking in the United States
Get PDFFamily reunification is a complex part of a survivor’s journey; its processes long, arduous, and unassured. This article seeks to examine the intricacies of human trafficking and family separation in migration, and intergenerational trauma following family reunification. The authors apply theoretical frameworks and concepts established by literature on migration and trauma, and provide a case study to explain the implications of family separation that occurs during and after the survivor’s human trafficking experience. Written from the perspective of social service providers, this article also provides a look at life after trafficking and how the individual’s worldview is altered by the trauma endured, resulting in possible intergenerational transmission of trauma from parent to child. The article explains the family’s process of moving from crisis back to balance, and the need for adjustment and adaptation, flexibility and cohesion in finding resilience. Finally, the authors discuss family resiliency frameworks as empowering models for serving survivors of human trafficking and their families during the reunification process. With the appropriate support, families can move forward in their journey towards healing
Trafficked Women in Denmark—Falling through the cracks
Get PDFThe policy framework for combating human trafficking and protecting victims in Denmark does not match the reality faced by the majority of the migrant women arriving in the country. Especially in relation to women from African countries, the national legislation and regulations can be a source of frustration for agencies such as Reden International, which helps foreign women working in prostitution in Denmark, particularly victims of trafficking
Refugees or Victims of Human Trafficking? The case of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong
Get PDFChina is party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 2000 UN Trafficking Protocol, but has not extended coverage of either of the treaties to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China (Hong Kong). Hong Kong does however offer non-refoulement protection on the basis of risks of torture or persecution. Further, Hong Kong legislation defines human trafficking, albeit only in terms of cross-border sex work. Victim identification also remains inadequate. The limited extant protection systems for refugees and victims of human trafficking operate separately and assume that such people are distinct with respect to their experiences and needs. These practices are often mirrored in the approaches of NGOs working in the city. Based on research undertaken by Justice Centre Hong Kong, this paper argues instead that boundaries between the two categories are blurry. The paper focuses on migrant domestic workers who may have claims to asylum and may be at the same time victims of human trafficking. It explores some of the implications for NGOs trying to secure better protections for such groups in Hong Kong. The paper concludes that siloing the refugee and the human trafficking frameworks creates a protection gap, particularly for people who enter Hong Kong as migrant domestic workers and cannot return home because they face a risk of persecution or torture