Trafficking, Scandal, and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Argentina and the United States

• Author: Denise Brennan
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716213519239
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• Date: 01 May 2014

ANNALS, AAPSS, 653, May 2014 107

DOI: 10.1177/0002716213519239

Trafficking,

Scandal, and

Abuse of

Migrant

Workers in

Argentina and

the United

States

By

DENISE BRENNAN

519239ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYMigrant Workers in Argentina and the United States

research-article2014

This article examines the varied consequences that the

label “trafficked” holds for migrants and for the organi-

zations that assist them. In the case of migrants from

the Dominican Republic to Argentina, threat of U.S.

economic sanctions prompted the two governments to

document incidents of trafficking by labeling all forms

of migrant labor exploitation as trafficking. Collapsing a

range of coerced and noncoerced labor experiences

under one label has muddied the definition of traffick-

ing. In contrast, U.S. trafficking policy systematically

ignores significant exploitation of labor migrants, in

part because of the volatile politics of immigration in

the United States, and because of the conflation of sex

trafficking with trafficking. The article uses these two

examples of the effects of labeling exploited workers as

trafficking victims to draw attention to the politicization

of the term “trafficking.”

Keywords: trafficking; forced labor; exploitation;

Argentina; United States

To warn women about the potential dangers

that accompany international migration

for work, a nongovernmental organization

(NGO) in the Dominican Republic adopted

the slogan “Don’t Believe the Stories.” It was

a tough sell. Throughout the island nation,

nearly every community, no matter how

remote, shows signs of money earned by

women and men who have migrated for work

abroad. Newly built and brightly painted

cement houses, or sturdy additions put on old

ones, stand out in communities where houses

are made of wood, corrugated tin roofs, and

have no “extras” such as paint. Migration off

the island for work is a frequent solution for

Denise Brennan is an associate professor and chair of

the Department of Anthropology at Georgetown

University. She is the author of Life Interrupted:

Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States

(2014) and What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational

Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic

(2004), both with Duke University Press.

108 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

those who have few opportunities to make economic gains on the island. They

want to “believe the stories.”

Patterns of migration for economic mobility are not new or unusual in the

Dominican Republic’s history. A long-standing practice of searching for riches off

the island has dominated the Dominican Republic’s relations not only with the

United States but also with countries in Europe and Latin America. In the early

2000s, however, the issue of trafficking into forced labor began to change the

Dominican migration experience, as it has for migrants throughout the world. In

response to U.S. pressure, the Dominican government undertook a campaign

that ostensibly sought to protect Dominican women working overseas (Chuang

2006). Applying a liberal definition of “trafficking,” this effort returned women to

the Dominican Republic who had experienced coerced labor as well as those who

had been less severely exploited. This article examines the consequences of the

Dominican campaign and how it responded to the emergence of trafficking as an

issue within the international diplomatic arena following the passage of legisla-

tion in the United States—the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000

(TVPA)—and the launch of the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report

(TIP report; various years). The first part of the article explores the differences

in the resettlement process for returnees to the Dominican Republic, who told

stories of trouble making ends meet in Argentina (whom I call “exploited”

migrants), and for returnees who told stories of extreme exploitation and, in some

cases, physical abuse and rape (whom I call “trafficked”). I focus on the ways both

groups trust and are trusted in their home communities—processes that are criti-

cal to their well-being. The second part of the article then contrasts the

Dominican response to the politics of trafficking in the United States. Pressured

by the TIP report to demonstrate a commitment to fighting trafficking, govern-

ments the world over have scrambled to pass antitrafficking legislation, prosecute

traffickers, and find and protect victims. The article considers the consequences

that the label “trafficked” holds for the Dominican returnees and for the organi-

zations that assist them, as well as for migrants in the United States.

The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork with some of the first-desig-

nated Dominican trafficking victims, Dominican women who had been living and

working in Argentina. These women may or may not have been trafficked into

forced labor. What is certain is that by labeling them as “trafficked,” the Argentine

and Dominican governments were able to use their identification as trafficked to

improve their standing in the TIP report.1 Travel brokers had told the women

whom I met in the Dominican Republic that they would make good money work-

ing as housekeepers or childcare providers for middle-class and wealthy families

in Buenos Aires. The primary difference between these women’s stories of migra-

tion and those of the thousands of Dominican women who migrate off the island

every year for work lies in the determination by the International Organization of

Migration (IOM) that these women had been trafficked.2 Some fifty Dominican

women who received this trafficking designation were sent back by the IOM to

the Dominican Republic between 2002 and 2003.3 Upon hearing the Dominican

returnees’ stories, however, I realized that not all their accounts align with com-

mon definitions of trafficking.4 While some stories of extreme exploitation