Labor Migration and Trafficking among Vietnamese Migrants in Asia

• Author: Danièle Bélanger
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716213517066
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• Date: 01 May 2014

ANNALS, AAPSS, 653, May 2014 87

DOI: 10.1177/0002716213517066

Labor

Migration and

Trafficking

among

Vietnamese

Migrants in Asia

By

DANIÈLE BÉLANGER

517066ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYShort Title: Vietnamese Migrants in Asia

research-article2013

Asia is known as a continent where human trafficking is

particularly prevalent. Departing from the bulk of

research on trafficking in Asia that focuses on illegal

migration and prostitution, this article examines the

embeddedness of human trafficking in legal temporary

migration flows. This analysis uses survey and interview

data to document the experiences of Vietnamese

migrants who worked in East Asian countries. It identi-

fies a continuum of trafficking, abuse, exploitation, and

forced labor, and examines how exploitation begins at

the recruitment stage with the creation of bonded

labor. Guest-worker programs in destination countries

put migrants in particularly precarious situations, which

do, in some cases, qualify as trafficking. I argue that

temporary migration programs may create the condi-

tions that lead to extreme forms of exploitation among

many legal migrant workers in the region.

Keywords: labor migration; unskilled labor; Vietnam;

Southeast Asia

In 2010, approximately half of all interna-

tional migrants migrated for the purpose of

labor (International Labour Organization [ILO]

2010). A significant proportion of these migrants

labored as temporary workers in unskilled or

low-skilled jobs. The ILO identifies these

migrants as a particularly vulnerable group,

along with migrant women, trafficked persons,

Danièle Bélanger is professor of geography at the

Université Laval in Québec, Canada. Her research

focuses on migrants in precarious situations, including

low-skilled temporary labor migrants, undocumented

migrants, and marriage migrants in Asia and North

America.

NOTE: Funding for this study was provided by the

International Research Development Agency of

Canada and by the Social Science and Humanities

Research Council of Canada. Data collection was con-

ducted in partnership with the Institute for Social

Development Studies in Hanoi, Vietnam. The author is

grateful to Nicolas Lainez, Victor Piché, and Guillermo

Candiz for their insightful comments on a previous ver-

sion of this article.

88 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

domestic workers, child migrants, and migrant workers with irregular status (ILO

2010). The vulnerability of temporary migrant workers needs to be situated in the

context of a growing two-tier global migration regime that sorts migrants into

rights-holders with access to social and legal citizenships and temporary workers

with very limited or no rights whatsoever (Piché 2012; Piper 2005). This two-tier

system is based on complex sets of policies and migration regimes that actively

seek to include or exclude migrants. According to Zolberg (1987, 37), imported

foreign labor “is not merely foreign, but representing for the receiving society an

undesirable ‘otherness.’” In addition, the import of foreign labor is characterized

by “mode of procurement, preference for certain places of origin and individual

characteristics, as well as sectoral allocation and mechanisms of labor control in

the place of destination” (Zolberg 1987, 37). In general, the forms of control over

low-skilled foreign labor include the impossibility of changing jobs, limited or no

freedom of movement outside the workplace, restrictions or prohibitions on

organizing, and considerable debt incurred to be able to work abroad. These

strategies of foreign labor control form the basis of systemic problems that lead

to workers’ exclusion, exploitation, forced labor, and, in some cases, trafficking.

Temporary legal workers migrating and laboring within Asia, along with work-

ers in Middle Eastern countries, are among the most susceptible to exploitation

in the world (ILO 2010). Research underscores the highly commercialized and

privatized system of recruitment and placement that manages workers as a par-

ticular feature of this region (Hugo 2005). The high degree of commercialization

would be responsible for both the efficiency of the system in moving a large

number of workers across borders and the high frequency of fraud and abuse,

“making migration a risky and costly undertaking” (ILO 2006, 43). Asis (2005, 18)

argues that “the scheme has given rise to irregularities and abuses at all stages of

the migration process, exacting costs to migrants and their families.” Rather than

singling out brokers as the evils of an imperfect system, these problems must be

situated within the structure of guest worker programs, including modes of

recruitment, modes of placement, the management of workers abroad, and work-

ing conditions abroad.

Based on survey and interview data collected in 2009, this article examines

how various forms of exploitation are situated within labor migration flows, with

specific reference to Vietnamese migrant workers in labor-importing Asian coun-

tries (Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and Taiwan). The focus is on labor, excluding

entertainment and sex work. I build on previous work, arguing that human traf-

ficking needs to be reframed as a labor migration issue (Kempadoo, Sanghera,

and Pattanaik 2012; Parrenãs 2011, 2012), and migration and trafficking cannot

be studied as independent processes. Critical to this argument is the role of state

policies and state actors in creating conditions whereby workers may be exploited.

Situating coercion, exploitation, and trafficking as labor migration issues calls for

transforming the “trafficked victim” into a “rights-holder labor migrant” (Chin

and Finckenauer 2012; Ford, Lyons, and van Schendel 2012; Kempadoo,

Sanghera, and Pattanaik 2012; Parrenãs 2011). To put negative experiences in the

broader context of this migration flow, I also discuss the link between returnees’

experiences abroad and their postmigration self-assessment of their labor