Anti-Trafficking Review
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‘No Income, Temporary Visa, and Too Many Triggers’: Barriers in accommodating survivors of human trafficking and slavery in Australia
Full text linkAccess to stable housing has a significant effect on the wellbeing of survivors of human trafficking and modern slavery. Safe and sustainable accommodation provides a crucial foundation for survivors beginning their recovery; however, it is often very difficult to source for support services assisting them. This paper presents the findings of research that analysed the eligibility, suitability, availability, and accessibility of short-term accommodation and long-term housing options to better understand the barriers to accommodating survivors in Australia. It demonstrates that survivors were not eligible for many options due to their immigration status or lack of income. Within the limited options, there is a shortage of suitable accommodation due to the absence of survivor-specific services, and due to rules and requirements imposed by accommodation providers that are not supportive of survivors’ unique needs. These include restrictions on survivors’ freedom of movement, on the use of alcohol and other drugs, and on accommodating men, children, and extended family, as well as requirements related to engaging in activities. These barriers negatively impact survivors’ recovery and may lead to homelessness whilst increasing the risk of re-trafficking or other harm. Collaboration and coordination between actors within anti-slavery and housing policy spheres is urgently required to mitigate these barriers and prevent such harms
‘Inanimate Objects’: Human consequences of Australia’s commodified approach to migrant workers during COVID-19
Full text linkThe 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
‘The Pandemic Played a Cruel Joke on Us’: The vulnerabilities of Kyrgyz women migrant workers in Russia during COVID-19
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic affected various aspects of social and economic life across the world, with women and minorities especially bearing the brunt of its negative consequences. For Kyrgyz migrant women in Russia, this was further compounded by particularities of the low-wage or informal sectors where they worked. This article contributes to the scholarship on the impact of COVID-19 on migrant workers in destination countries. Drawing on data from 298 Kyrgyz women working in Russia, it explores women’s experiences with income, labour protections, freedom of movement, and violence in the workplace during the pandemic. It demonstrates that these experiences are caused by the intersection of gender and migration status. The article concludes with recommendations directed at the Kyrgyz government and civil society to improve the situation of Kyrgyz migrant women working in Russia
‘Now More Than Ever, Survivors Need Us’: Essential labouring and increased precarity during COVID-19
Full text linkDuring the earliest waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, much media and public discourse focused on the effects of increasing precarity on already vulnerable populations. As in-person work added a layer of viral risk and unemployment drastically exacerbated economic precariousness, the category of ‘essential worker’ gained new prominence in these conversations. In this paper, we focus on the complicated relationship between two groups of workers depicted as marginalised and exploited to different degrees during COVID-19: trafficked persons and anti-trafficking service providers. Though media coverage did not conflate these groups, it applied a capacious understanding of precarious labour and structural inequalities that encapsulated different types of essential work. We draw on media produced by frontline anti-trafficking and sex workers’ rights organisations between March and May 2020. Even with renewed attention to macro-level harms, many publications still emphasised individualism over collectivity. This emphasis on singular organisational representatives—frontline workers—as heroic rescuers mirrored larger, normative anti-trafficking discourses. At the point at which the ‘new normal’ was nowhere in sight, COVID-19 served as a flashpoint to reconsider current intervention strategies and instead emphasise a critique of precarious labour along multiple vectors
When the Home Is Also the Workplace: Women migrant domestic workers’ experiences with the ‘live-in’ policy in Singapore and Hong Kong
Full text linkThis article examines the link between the mandatory live-in policy and the unsafe working and living conditions of women migrant domestic workers. This policy has been rationalised on the principles of the inviolability of the private home and challenges around regulating and enforcing labour protections in the home-workplace but has, in practice, increased migrant domestic workers’ precarity and exploitation. Drawing on empirical research in Singapore and Hong Kong, the article demonstrates how the live-in policy operates in tandem with inadequate labour and migration regulations to produce a situation where poor working and living conditions are an enduring part of workers’ employment and everyday lives. It contributes to research that has highlighted the gendered dynamics and exclusionary bordering practices that shape waged domestic labour, and considers the implications this may have for the well-being and security of women migrant domestic workers
Editorial: Labour, Migration, and Exploitation during COVID-19 and Lessons (Not) Learnt
Full text linkThis Editorial introduces a Special Issue of Anti-Trafficking Review on COVID-19 and its impacts on labour, migration, and human trafficking. It outlines some of the main challenges that internal and cross-border migrants faced during the pandemic, including closures of workplaces, deportations, lack of access to healthcare and social support, increasing xenophobia and racism, and more. It then presents a summary of the articles contained in the Special Issue and concludes with some broad reflections on the lessons (not) learnt from the pandemic
Shelter Homes - Safe haven or prison?
Full text linkShelters are the most common form of assistance available to trafficked persons in Malaysia and other countries. They may offer a safe and protected environment in which they can begin their recovery and access services such as legal, medical, or psychosocial aid. However, the rules imposed in the shelters and the overall victim protection mechanisms in Malaysia have been heavily criticised for violating human rights principles. This is because ‘rescued’ victims are forcibly detained in shelters until they are repatriated, which may take months or even a year. This article considers the conditions of victims’ detention from a socio-legal perspective. Drawing upon interviews with 29 trafficked women and 12 professionals from a shelter in Kuala Lumpur, it explores the women’s living conditions and access to legal support and mental and physical healthcare within the facility. The article concludes that routine detention of trafficked persons in shelters violates fundamental principles of international law and is therefore to be considered unlawful
‘I’m Scared to Death to Try It on My Own’: I-Poems and the complexities of religious housing support for people on the US sex offender registry
Full text linkIn the US, street-based sex workers and people convicted of sex offences are both ‘special populations’, often with additional conditions of community supervision. People convicted of sex offences experience a complicated mix of assistance and surveillance as they re-enter society post-conviction, including numerous restrictions on housing and employment. As a result, they are especially likely to experience homelessness upon release. This article uses I-Poems drawn from interviews with volunteers and professionals who navigate the obstacles to re-entry that govern people on the sex offender registry. We focus on people with religious affiliations (n=38) who provide urgent support during the re-entry process. I-poems are a feminist technique for analysing qualitative data that forefronts the voices of people not often heard and distils complex experiences into accessible narratives. While few in our study overtly exploited re-entering persons on the registry, most support was problematic in subtler ways: we found that re-entering registrants are asked to accept constrained choices involving labour, religious participation, and romantic and other personal relationships in order to receive assistance. Given the secondary stigma attached to work with people convicted of sex offences, and the obscurity within in which many of these religiously-affiliated programmes operate, I-Poems both humanise and reveal the complexities of coercion, religious calling, and supportive housing
What We Know about Human Traffickers in Vietnam
Full text linkMyths and misconceptions about traffickers, the nature of trafficking, and how the crime varies in different jurisdictions pose challenges for prevention work, rehabilitating offenders, and achieving justice for victims. This article, based on an analysis of over 100 human trafficking court cases in Vietnam, outlines the reality of one particular trafficking crime: the trafficking of Vietnamese women and girls for sexual exploitation in China. We show that the majority of the prosecuted traffickers are similarly poor and vulnerable as their victims. Most are from ethnic minorities, with a poor educational background, and few income generation opportunities. Based on this evidence, we discuss some challenges associated with prosecution of these particular traffickers and suggest more effective approaches for human trafficking prevention
Chasing Geographical and Social Mobility: The motivations of Nigerian madams to enter indentured relationships
Full text linkThis article draws from interviews with Nigerian women convicted of trafficking for sexual exploitation in Italy to challenge the simplistic public narrative of traffickers as ruthless foreign men who coerce naïve women into migration and sex work. Madams’ narratives shed light on a reality of trafficking where both traffickers and victims share similar desires to overcome constraints imposed on their geographical and social mobility through their migration to Europe. Therefore, the article calls for the inclusion of traffickers’ perspectives into the knowledge on human trafficking, which is mainly victim-centred and justifies the current anti-trafficking approach aimed at victims’ protection and traffickers’ punishment. In the research context, taking into consideration the perspectives of all trafficking actors involved suggests the need to rethink Nigerian women’s indentured migration to Europe through sex work (and policies around it) in terms of attempts to achieve geographical and social mobility rather than transnational criminal activities. Finally, the article provides recommendations on how to address these issues both within the current anti-trafficking policy domain and beyond it, by calling for more open borders