Exploitation in migration: unacceptable but inevitable.

AuthorGallagher, Anne T.
PositionForced Migration

For the millions of people who want or need to move, migration has become progressively more expensive and perilous. Legal access to preferred destinations is now an option only for the privileged few. The rest are forced into the arms of those able to help them circumvent ever-increasing controls and deterrents. Migrant smuggling, the business of moving people across borders for profit, is a sordid and dangerous enterprise, often placing lives and well-being at serious risk. And the dangers do not end there. Many of the world's migrants find themselves deeply in debt to recruitment agencies, brokers, and sometimes their own employers before they even start work. In too many cases, these asymmetrical arrangements reach the level of human trafficking: Victims are tricked or coerced into situations of exploitation from which they cannot escape. This article argues that such practices, while unacceptable, are also inevitable. Without profound reforms to global migration regimes--and indeed to the organization of the global economy--there is likely no effective solution to migration-related exploitation. But important steps can be taken, even within the limits of current political constraints, to minimize vulnerability and harm. These include promoting political and legal acceptance of basic rights for all migrants, developing quality control systems for international labor recruitment, eliminating recruitment fees and sponsorship schemes, and co-opting civil society in an effort to increase transparency and accountability of governments and business activities.

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In October 2013, an overcrowded fishing boat, carrying smuggled migrants from Libya to the Italian coast, was set on fire to draw the attention of rescuers. (1) Over a hundred passengers were rescued after the vessel capsized, but more than 360 women, men, and children perished. It was alleged that vessels in the area ignored distress signals and failed to come to the rescue of drowning passengers, perhaps fearing prosecution for abetting migrant smuggling. Investigations revealed that some of the passengers had been subject to severe exploitation and that many had been forced to pay smugglers for their

freedom from a detention center in Libya and the onward journey to Europe. (2)

Each month, tens of thousands of Nepali citizens travel to the Gulf countries for work, contributing to remittances that make up close to a quarter of Nepal's gross domestic product (GDP). (3) The costs are high. A "ladder of intermediaries," essential to navigating the complex emigration and placement process, ensures that most migrants are heavily in debt before even leaving home. (4) At their destination, they are at high risk of exploitation and physical and sexual abuse, routinely excluded from the protection of national labor laws, and prevented from changing jobs without the permission of their employers. Whether abroad or back home, there is no effective access to justice for even the very worst cases of exploitation. (5)

The overland routes from Central America and Mexico to the United States expose migrants to "disproportionate levels of risk of human rights violations, disappearance, and death." (6) Organized criminal gangs extort fees from their "human cargo" for safe passage through Mexico and across the U.S. border, sometimes also forcing them to carry narcotics. Those who cannot pay are frequently injured or killed. The Mexican Human Rights Commission has estimated that around 20,000 migrants are kidnapped for ransom each year, sometimes with the complicity of national authorities. (7)

Over the past decade, Yemen has emerged as a major transit point and destination for smuggled migrants from the Horn of Africa, many of them Somali and Ethiopian asylum seekers. A recent meta-analysis of available information confirms that throughout their journey and at their destination, these migrants are highly vulnerable to physical violence, sexual assault, extortion, trafficking, and detention by national authorities. (8) The journey of female migrants is particularly hazardous. Many thousands have disappeared, presumably abducted for purposes of exploitation. (9)

For the millions of people who want or are forced to move, international migration has become increasingly expensive and hazardous. This is not surprising. Contemporary migration regimes deliberately aim to restrict the ability of individuals to secure legal access to preferred destinations. This forces migrants, including refugees who are compelled and have a legal right to seek asylum, into the arms of those who are able to help them circumvent ever-increasing controls. Migrant smuggling, the business of moving people across borders for profit, is reported to be one of the fastest-growing and most lucrative forms of organized criminal activity. Smugglers crowd their human cargo into shipping containers and onto boats and trucks. Many arrive safely and consider the investment well spent.

But migrant smuggling is a dirty business. Criminality and excessive profiteering routinely place lives and well-being at serious risk. Each year, thousands of smuggled migrants drown trying to get into Europe across the Mediterranean, cast adrift on unseaworthy vessels once they had paid for their passage. (10) Similar stories are told of those trying to get into Australia from transit points in Indonesia and into the United States across its vast, hostile southern border with Mexico. (11)

Smuggling fees are just one way to make a profit out of the very human desire to better one's life through migration. Debt-financed migration, the only way many people will ever be able to afford to move, is closely linked with highly exploitative labor. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of migrants, are currently working to pay off grossly inflated debts that are imposed by recruitment agencies, brokers, and sometimes their own employers. In too many cases, these arrangements reach the level of human trafficking: Victims are tricked or coerced into situations of exploitation from which they cannot escape, laboring for months or even years in brothels and factories, and on fishing boats and construction sites, under terrible conditions for little or no payment. (12)

Despite a growing awareness of the scale and seriousness of exploitation in migration, the international response has been piecemeal and inconsistent. Widely accepted treaties impose obligations on states to criminalize trafficking, and those who have been trafficked are generally entitled to immediate protection and support, at least in theory. Current estimates, almost of all them empirically feeble, speak of 30 million or more victims of trafficking. (13) But the number of migrants formally identified as trafficked remains stubbornly low and, despite strong laws, prosecutions for trafficking-related exploitation are rare in all parts of the world. (14) Other treaties oblige states to criminalize migrant smuggling. But members of this group are considered to be somehow complicit in their own misfortune and thereby not to be "victims" deserving of protection and support. The issue of exploitation through debt-financed migration is not even on the table: Too many states benefit from the current arrangements to create and sustain a momentum for change. Even international human rights law provides precious little comfort. States have been very careful over the years to restrict the rights of migrant workers--particularly those in an irregular situation. And states are not averse to using the specter of exploitation in migration to justify increasing securitization of their borders, often to repel asylum seekers who, if able to reach their borders, would be entitled to seek and obtain protection from persecution.

In this article, these complicated matters are considered through the lens of the two practices identified through the introductory case studies: migrant smuggling and human trafficking. How do they happen, to whom, and why? Where are the distinctions and the overlaps? This analysis also considers the responses of states and the international community, interrogating underlying motives and the effectiveness of current responses in addressing the real drivers of exploitation in migration. After concluding that exploitation is an inevitable consequence of the tensions between immigration restrictions, pressures to move, and relentless demand for cheap, flexible labor, a number of potential opportunities are identified to break the current deadlock.

MIGRANT SMUGGLING

The term "migrant smuggling" refers to the unauthorized movement of individuals across national borders for the financial or other benefit of the smuggler. (15) This definition, which was agreed upon by the United Nations (UN) in 2000 in the context of establishing a uniform criminal offence, deliberately excludes those who are helping to move people purely for humanitarian reasons. (16) But it remains sufficiently broad to apply to a wide range of facilitators of irregular migration including recruiters, organizers, transporters, and providers of fraudulent travel and identity documents. The identity of the smuggled migrant is not relevant: The cross-border movement of refugees is still considered "smuggling" when it involves a financial or other reward.

Attempts to estimate the number of migrants smuggled each year are stymied by the absence of reliable data. But it is reasonable to presume that most of the world's 30 million or so irregular migrants have used the services of smugglers at one or more points in their journey. (17) That presumption is based on our imperfect but improving understanding of how irregular migration actually works in practice: It seems to be near-impossible for an undocumented migrant to make the trip across the Mediterranean from North Africa to Southern Europe without the help of a paid intermediary. (18) Accordingly, it is likely that most, if not all...

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