Tricked and Trapped: Human Trafficking in the Middle East, ‎pdf 4.1 MB

3.1.2. Recruitment of domestic workers
Voluntary recruitment
The first process of human trafficking for forced domestic labour involves
migrant workers who voluntarily decide to find work abroad. Those
interviewed spoke of multiple channels, regular and irregular, that could
be used to this end. Some relied on family members or friends who had
contacts with a recruitment agency or with a prospective employer in the
country of destination. An Ethiopian domestic worker said: “I had a friend
who was working in Lebanon. I sent her a copy of my passport and she
gave it to a recruitment agency in Beirut. I was then selected by a family.”
Another experience of a Kenyan domestic worker highlighted the informality
of the recruitment process: “The girl I met in Kenya told me I only needed a
passport and did not need to pay anything. She told me I could earn US$350
a month. I gave her my CV and after three days, I received a phone call from
a man who said he was calling from Lebanon and had a job to give me to look
after his sick mother.”
Although personal contacts did help a few individuals to secure employment
abroad, 1 the majority of domestic workers interviewed were aided by PEAs,
which they contacted through brokers in the villages, advertisements in the
newspapers, radio broadcasts or by visiting their offices in the big cities. 2 A
domestic worker from Madagascar in Lebanon recalled: “I heard on the radio
of girls talking about working abroad and adverts saying they were recruiting
girls. My family didn’t refuse, so I applied.” Another Nepalese domestic
worker said she visited an agency in Kathmandu, where she was told: “You
can go abroad, you will be a domestic worker, and every Sunday is free.”
A domestic worker from the Philippines interviewed in Jordan explained
that in order to migrate, “you first go through the recruiter from the village,
someone you trust. All are then connected with a recruitment agency in the
1
Some argue that recruitment through personal contacts is safer, since the person who
arranges the job knows the foreign sponsor under whom the worker is contracted to
work. By contrast, others argue that finding a job through personal contacts is more risky,
as there is no responsible registered party to whom recourse can be had in the event of
exploitation of the worker. Furthermore, a personal intermediary can usually expect
to collect a very high recruitment fee after the worker arrives in the host country. See
L.K. Ruhunage: Recruitment practices of employment agencies recruiting migrant workers
(Colombo, Nov. 2011), pp. 18–19.
2
In many countries of origin, PEAs remain the major actors in recruitment. For
example, the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Agency (SLBFE) showed that in
2010 PEAs were responsible for 60% of workers recruited for employment abroad
(Ruhunage, Recruitment practices of employment agencies recruiting migrant workers, p. 16).
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