Labour Trafficking? Understanding the use of brokers in women's and girls' labour migration in the global South
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The notion of trafficking is often associated with modern slavery, exploitation and abuse, and with immigration. It has led to efforts to save victims and to prevent prospective migrants from falling prey to exploitation and deceit. However it raises difficult questions about the line between trafficking and smuggling and between migrant workers and other workers. It also raises questions about the use of brokers – or intermediaries as they are sometimes termed - and is often confused with unfree employment relations. Migrants use brokers to secure entry into unfamiliar labour markets – both internal and foreign – and to avoid a period of unemployment upon arrival.
There has been particular concern about trafficking in relation to women and children. They have been viewed as particularly passive and vulnerable, seen generally as too innocent and powerless to understand the exploitative motives of those seeking to use them for their own ends and thus easily preyed upon. But the reality is much more nuanced.
In celebration of International Women's Day 2015, the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium will host a panel debate on trafficking in the global South. This discussion on the use of brokers in women's and girls’ migration will explore trafficking discourses and their impact on female migrants of different ages to address the following questions:
• In which cases do anti-trafficking measures have positive outcomes for women and girls migrating to work?
• In which situations do concerns about trafficking gloss over women's and girls' agency in making decisions about migration, the trade-offs between different options, and navigation of the context in which they live?
• Do we need different types of intervention to increase the protection of female labour migrants of different ages?
Confirmed speakers:
Dr Priya Deshingkar, Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium
Priya Deshingkar is a specialist on internal migration and has 20 years of experience of designing and conducting multidisciplinary, mixed methods migration research. She is the research director of the Migrating out of Poverty RPC. Her work focuses on precarious occupations, migrant labour rights and social protection in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, and on the impacts of internal and regional migration for domestic work and construction work on poverty in rural households. She was a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute between 2004 and 2010, specialising in internal migration and poverty, during which time she undertook major research and consultancy assignment for DFID, the World Bank, USAID and the ILO.
Recent publications:
Does Migration for Domestic Work Reduce Poverty? A Review of the Literature and an Agenda for Research (Priya Deshingkar and Benjamin Zeitlyn, 2014)
Internal and Regional Migration for Construction Work: A Research Agenda (Benjamin Zeitlyn and Priya Deshingkar, 2014)
Circular Migration and Multilocational Livelihood Strategies in India. (Book edited by Priya Deshingkar and John Farrington, 2009, published by Oxford University Press)
Mike Dottridge is a specialist in human rights issues and has focused on various forms of exploitation for over twenty years. His work has been centred around how to protect the adults and children being exploited and how to prevent exploitation from occurring in the first place, whether it concerns child labour, the economic or commercial sexual exploitation of children, forced labour or trafficking in persons. In the period 1996-2002 he was the director of Anti-Slavery International and has since worked independently, undertaking evaluations and institutional learning exercises for organisations that include the ILO, UNICEF and international NGOs.
Recent publications:
How is the money to combat human trafficking spent? (Mike Dottridge, 2014)
What can YOU do to protect children on the move? A handbook to enable organisations to review how they prevent child trafficking and exploitation, and whether they ensure that the best interests of the child guide their activities. (Mike Dottridge, 2012)
Methods to Prevent Trafficking for Labour Exploitation: What to do and how. (Mike Dottridge, 2011)
Collateral Damage. The Impact of Anti-Trafficking Measures on Human Rights around the World (Mike Dottridge, 2007)
Dr Ligia Kiss, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Ligia Kiss is a specialist in public health research with over 14 years’ experience. She is one of the principal investigators of the Work in Freedom Evaluation, a DFID funded evaluation of a multi-components intervention to prevent trafficking in persons in South Asia. She works on the Study on Trafficking, Exploitation and Abuse in the Mekong Sub-region (STEAM), a longitudinal survey of health consequences of human trafficking.
Moreover she provides methodological guidance for the evaluation of a large NGO-funded intervention to prevent trafficking in seven Asian countries, and she is involved in the analysis of WHO multi-country data on sexual violence against girls.
Recent publications:
Health of men, women, and children in post-trafficking services in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam: an observational cross-sectional study (Ligia Kiss et al., 2015) See more here
Trafficking in persons: a health concern? (Cathy Zimmerman, Ligia Kiss, Mazeda Hossain and Charlotte Watts, 2014)
Jonathan Blagbrough, Independent consultant and co-founder of Children Unite
Jonathan Blagbrough is a specialist in child labour with profound experience in issues surrounding child domestic work and children’s street work. As co-founder and Programme Director at Children Unite, Jonathan works with local partner organisations in Africa, Asia and the Americas, as well as internationally, to protect child domestic workers from abuse and exploitation and to promote their rights. His work centres around evaluations of child labour and street and working children projects in Bangladesh and India and he is currently preparing a global good practice report for World Vision.
Recent publications:
Ending child labour in domestic work and protecting young workers from abusive working conditions (Blagbrough, ILO, 2013)
Related literature:
The nexus of trafficking in persons and labour migration (ILO, 2014)
The making of modern slavery (Julia O’Connell Davidson, 2014)
Child domestic workers: evidence from West and Central Africa (Dorte Thorsen, 2012)
Motherhood, apple pie and slavery (Bridget Anderson, 2007)
On Twitter: @migrationrpc
For the event: #migrationbrokers
To stream live on the day1, enter as a guest using this URL: https://connectpro.sussex.ac.uk/labourtrafficking/
**If you are having trouble logging in on the day via Adobe Connect - apologies, but this is Migrating out of Poverty's first attempt to STREAM LIVE. If, in the end, you cannot enter the meeting room, please do email us and let us know, but also look for the recording after the event, posted Friday or Monday to the webpage below.**
Watch a post-event recording via our webpage: http://migratingoutofpoverty.dfid.gov.uk/newsandevents/events_archive
1 Only up to 50 participants will be able to access the live stream, on a first come, first served basis