Forced Labour Migration and
Migrant Rights Activism in Asia
Professor Nicola Piper
MA in Human Rights and Democratisation (Asia Pacific)
Objectives
› Shedding light on conceptual confusion between FL, slavery, trafficking
(yet, many overlaps)
› Sensitisation of political discourse around those concepts
› Institutional architecture around this topic area
› NGO/trade union campaigns
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Trafficking
› Trafficking
- usually treated as a women’s/children’s issue (historical reasons)
- predominantly applied to prostitution/’sex and entertainment’ sector
The main international NGO networks involved:
- Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW)
- Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW)
- ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography & Trafficking of Children for
Sexual Purposes)
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But trafficking is more than that….
› “people are generally not aware that anti-trafficking laws can
be applied just as readily to a situation involving the
exploitation of a male industrial cleaner, for example, as
they could to a woman brought to Australia for the purpose
of sex slavery”
› (Fiona David, “Labour Trafficking”, 2010: iii)
Remaining issues for critical debate concern the validity of drawing a
distinction between sex trafficking and labour trafficking……
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Trafficking in Persons
UN Definition
› Article 3 of the UN Trafficking Protocol (UN 2000) defines trafficking as a
process composed of three elements:
› 1. an action by the trafficker (recruitment, transportation, transfer,
harbouring or receipt of persons), and
› 2. the action must be undertaken by one of the following means: force or
threat of force, other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse
of power, giving or receiving payments to achieve consent of a person
having control over another; and
› 3. the action must be undertaken for the purpose of ‘exploitation’, a
concept which includes at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of
others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services,
slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs
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Trafficking/forced labour
Two components/angles:
1.
migration (internal/international)
a. irregular (“illegal”) migration across borders
b. rural to urban in internal context (China, VN)
= confiscation of passports;
1.
exploitation/force/coercion element
= false promises, abduction, debt bondage
a. who is victim/perpetrator?
b. who is responsible? (legally, politically)
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Migration element
Understanding migration dynamics
› Drivers of migration (push and pull factors)
› Migration policies
- restrictive/selective, on employer tied temporary basis, few legal channels
› Migration process
- involvement of recruitment agencies/middle person/brokers – incurrence of huge
debts (Bassina Farbenblum’s work)
› Feminisation of migration
- domestic/care work (Stuart’s topic)
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Exploitation/Coercion element
Two angles:
› 1. crime
angle (punitive approach)
- focus on individual traffickers as violators
- in context of international migration, states see themselves as victims (of illegal
border crossing)
(difference between smuggling and trafficking – confusion over that)
2. human
rights angle
- focus on human rights of the trafficked
violence against women
victim support
labour rights (e.g. ‘sex work’ frame) = POST-MIGRATION
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Forced Labour
› not solely related to context of migration
› from work/employment perspective
- specific sectors:
• agriculture/plantations
• fishing
• cleaning
• hospitality
• domestic work
• construction
• manufacturing industries
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Forced Labour - advocacy
› Integrating Forced Labour into Forced Migration
- addressee: Global Migration Governance institutions/fora/discourse
• migration-development nexus
- actors:
• Migrant Forum in Asia (which is part of the PGA and the GCM) and
• global trade unions (esp BWI, ICTU – e.g. 2022 FIFA World Cup campaign)
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“Make migration a choice not a necessity”
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“right not having to migrate”/”right to remain”
› „..... the right not to emigrate should be in place in the
countries of origin. This implies creating the necessary
conditions that transform migration into a choice rather
than a necessity“
› (Final Declaration of the 5th World Social Forum on Migration, clause 31,
2012)
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Forced Migration frame…
…to address the “push” factors from a HR perspective
› Human rights as a core framework in development
› Right to Development (Declaration from 1986)
› Rights-based approach to development
› In context of labour migration:
- Right to Work/Decent Work and Right to Social Security/Protection ‘at home’ and
‘abroad’ – ICESCR
In context of critiquing the neoliberal growth-oriented model of development built on
privatisation, withdrawal of the state from providing public goods etc.
= specific gender implications (triple feminisation of work, migration and
poverty)
But: difficulties of addressing social and economic rights persist!
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Statement by President Benigno Aquino III….
……in his Social Contract with the Filipino People
Expressing the need to move from a
› “government that treats its people as an export
commodity and a means to earn foreign exchange,
disregarding the social cost to Filipino families to a
government that creates jobs at home, so that working
abroad will be a choice rather than a necessity, and when its
citizens do choose to become OFWs, their welfare and
protection will still be the government priority”
›
(Aquino, 2012)
› Blurring of citizenship and human rights by placing greater emphasis on
responsibilities to deliver migrant rights by origin countries…..
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Advocacy – Levels of Engagement
› Global and national level – how about regional (ASEAN)?
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The END
› Thank you for your attention!
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