Anti-Trafficking Review
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At Home: Family reintegration of trafficked Indonesian men
Get PDFLarge numbers of Indonesian men migrate each year for work in construction, in factories and in agriculture, on plantations and on fishing boats. Many of them end up exploited in ways that constitute human trafficking, suffering violence, deprivation, restricted freedom and severe exploitation as well as long periods of separation from their families. This article explores the challenges faced by forty-nine Indonesian men reintegrating into their families and communities after having been trafficked. While many problems with the family were caused by economics, tensions also resulted from long separations, fractured relationships, and frustration and blame over ‘failed’ migration and unfulfilled expectations. Tensions were sometimes exacerbated when men faced recrimination and blame in their communities after return. Understanding the nature of and reasons for the problems that men faced after trafficking is vital in considering how trafficked men and their families can be supported to recover and reintegrate after trafficking
Editorial: Moving Forward—Life after trafficking
Get PDFSpectacular stories of life in trafficking saturate the media, politicians’ speeches, and non-governmental organisations’ fundraising campaigns. With so much focus on stories of brutality, or of dramatic escapes and rescues, there has been little attention to what happens after trafficking. This special issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review shines a light on trafficking outcomes—both for those who have been labelled by state actors or the NGO sector as trafficked, as well as those whose exploitation garnered no legal protections or service provision. The volume puts centre stage the challenges and successes after trafficking that largely have unfolded off stage. It points to contradictions, slippages, missed opportunities, and failings
Words Matter. But Rights Matter More
Get PDFResponse to the ATR Debate Proposition: ‘It is important and necessary to make clear distinctions between (irregular) migrants, refugees and trafficked persons.’
The international community has recently taken steps to agree two intergovernmental compacts, which together are intended to revitalise the global governance of migration and asylum. The Global Compact on Refugees seeks to strengthen international cooperation on the refugee regime, while the Global Compact for Safe, Regular and Orderly Migration aims to establish principles, commitments and understandings among Member States regarding international migration in all its dimensions. The compacts have been brought into existence against a backdrop of widespread and increasingly systematic human rights violations committed against migrants by state officials, traffickers and other criminals, and leading to what has been called ‘one of the greatest human tragedies of our time’. At the same time, the very bifurcation of the compacts into two ‘separate, distinct and independent’ agreements rests on a set of assumptions that could distort rather than illuminate the complex issue of contemporary human mobility
Call Me by My Name
Get PDFResponse to the ATR Debate Proposition: ‘It is important and necessary to make clear distinctions between (irregular) migrants, refugees and trafficked persons.’
The image of rubber dinghies densely packed with people floating precariously in the Mediterranean Sea has become a symbol of our times. Among those in peril are persons who may have fled conflict, others who have left poverty and many who have suffered exploitation en route. Upon arrival, states are obliged to meet their immediate needs and to determine for what reasons they came, thereby identifying their rights under international and domestic law
Editorial: The politics of evidence, data and research in anti-trafficking work
Get PDFSince the mid-2000s, critical commentators have raised concerns about both the paucity of evidence on important aspects of human trafficking, and the difficulty of obtaining meaningful data. Policy formations, advocacy campaigns, concrete interventions, and popular understandings of human trafficking have all had accusations of wild claims and unfounded assumptions levelled at them. Guesstimates prevail and take on a life of their own in such a context. Calls for more robust evidence to prove or disprove claims about the nature, extent and location of human trafficking, the characteristics of trafficked persons, and the continued investment in particular types of responses have abounded. This has occurred in light of the growing potential for unsubstantiated claims to fulfil the place of rigorous evidence to inform anti-trafficking work
Acting in Isolation: Safeguarding and anti-trafficking officers' evidence and intelligence practices at the border
Get PDFInternationally, the border has been presented as a site of unique opportunity for the identification and protection of victims of human trafficking. In the UK, the establishment of specialist safeguarding and anti-trafficking (SAT) units within the border force has raised questions about the challenges for border force officers (BFOs) of balancing the enforcement of strict immigration rules with the protection of victims under anti-trafficking legislation. In this paper we draw on data collected from a study of anti-trafficking initiatives at Heathrow airport to consider a particular area of BFO frustration with SAT work: the collection and use of evidence and intelligence to support investigation and pursuit of potential SAT cases at the border. Our findings focus on the use of intelligence and data to inform initiatives and develop a comprehensive understanding of the trafficking problem; and the scope of BFO powers of evidence-collection on the frontline. The experience of BFOs points to a team often working in isolation as they attempt to traverse gaps in data collection and limits to their powers to gather evidence in pursuit of their duty to identify victims of trafficking at the UK border. We conclude by making proposals for how the border force and central government could improve evidence and intelligence practices in ways that translate into both more coherent anti-trafficking policy and better identification and support for victims
Building the Infrastructure of Anti-Trafficking, Part II: Why measurement matters
Get PDFHaving worked on human trafficking issues since the late 1990s, I have been fortunate to observe the rapid development of the infrastructure necessary to respond to these crimes. In 1999, a time of much concern about ‘mail order brides’ and debates about the differences between human trafficking and smuggling, I published a report noting that:In Australia, as in other countries of the world, limited evidence is available about the nature and incidence of trafficking in persons. There is some anecdotal evidence of trafficking activity occurring in various industries, including hospitality, manufacturing, and agriculture. The sector that has received the most media attention, however, is the sex industry
Playing the Numbers: The spurious promise of global trafficking statistics
Get PDF‘Playing the numbers,’ ‘the numbers game,’ ‘the policy racket’: for those unfamiliar with American illegal lotteries and some of the legendary gangsters like Bumpy Johnson and Dutch Schultz that turned them into a major revenue stream for organised crime that still flourishes today, the concept was simple. The odds were disproportionately long, but poor people could bet very small amounts. It was, as they used to say, ‘a mugs game’; the organisers did well, while the poor lived on hope
Black Suffering for/from Anti-trafficking Advocacy
Get PDFThis article analyses the images that Antislavery Usable Past creates to promote its cause of ‘making the antislavery past usable for contemporary abolition’. Drawing on collective memory studies, I discuss the political implications of how pasts are used for present issues. I argue that Antislavery Usable Past appropriates black suffering by reducing the memory and imagery of slavery to objects that are compatible with the anti-trafficking narrative, without regard for the ongoing black liberation struggle. I conclude by discussing the troubling trend of incorporating anti-trafficking exhibitions into institutions that preserve the history of slavery and abolition. Such inclusions redirect the history lessons of slavery away from understanding and addressing anti-blackness in the present and towards supporting advocacy campaigns articulated in the logics that underpinned racial chattel slavery in the first place
Constraints to a Robust Evidence Base for Anti-Trafficking Interventions
Get PDFOver fifteen years after the UN Trafficking Protocol was adopted, the evidence available to determine how much progress has been made in combatting human trafficking remains very limited. This paper provides a practitioner’s perspective on some of the main reasons for the continuing lack of meaningful results documented in the context of anti-trafficking projects. A key finding is that limitations in the practice of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) pose the greatest constraint rather than the clandestine nature of trafficking in persons. There are currently few incentives to be rigorous in pursuing evidence, especially of the contribution made to long-term reductions in human trafficking. Bean counting the direct outputs of activities rather than assessing the outcomes that are intended to flow from them remains the core approach to M&E in the sector. Because the collection and analysis of data has not been prioritised, anti-trafficking initiatives without a strong empirical basis are reflexively continued for years–particularly notable in some of the untested assumptions about the central importance of an effective criminal justice response. Increased commitment by donors and practitioners to raise their standards of evidence for anti-trafficking projects is necessary to move beyond basic accountability and start leveraging learning, including greater willingness to document in rich detail where interventions have failed to produce their intended outcomes