Exploring Links between Trafficking and Migration - Global Alliance ...

Exploring Links between Trafficking and Migrationtrafficking measures can give them an exception to deportation asundocumented migrants. Anti-trafficking flips the migrant from being a“law violator” to a “victim”, deserving justice, assistance and compensation.We argue for anti-trafficking measures when justice, assistance andcompensation most likely can be won in a rights-enhancing and empoweringmanner that the trafficked person herself wants. But we must also recognisethat sometimes using the anti-trafficking framework to gain assistance oraccess to justice can come at a cost. For instance, a person might not wantto claim a “trafficked person” identity, but has to do so to get the assistanceor compensation on offer.Looking more broadly, anti-trafficking measures might provide specificprotections for individuals but those might be at a cost to migrant workersgenerally. For instance, some governments claim to be doing enough formigrants by putting in place measures for trafficked persons and refugees,and because they are protecting some people (trafficked persons andrefugees), they justify restriction, detention or deportation of all othermigrants.There is a cost of the anti-trafficking framework to other groups. Thequestion for us as advocates is: What strategies do we have to offset thesecosts of the anti-trafficking framework?Specialisation Can Cause ProblemsWhile a few people benefit from anti-trafficking measures, anti-traffickingalso creates a kind of ranking among migrants in terms of who deservesmore help. Other migrants also suffer exploitation, but do not quite meetall the criteria in the definition of a trafficked person, and therefore do notreceive assistance. For instance, they may be in a forced labour situationbut not have been moved by a third party for that end. Or their “exploitation”experience may not have been “exploitative enough” (i.e. their situationnot bad enough) to count as trafficked (for more discussion on the term“exploitation” and dilemmas around defining it, see the GAATW WorkingPaper on Links to Labour 55 ).Some migrant women tell GAATW that they do not understand the divisionsthat categorise them and feel they are unjust. Why should one woman getto stay in a country because she testified against a trafficker, while anotherdid not, or did not meet the trafficking definition? Why is one migrationabuse worthy of attention, when another is not? Why should women becalled “trafficked” and allowed to take a case to court with some stateassistance, while trafficked men are deported without access to justice?Why are brothels raided and sex workers detained, while flagrant abuses atfactories employing “cheap labour” go unmentioned? 56In the boxes below, we see that at an advocacy and legislative level, weneed to consider some of these questions. We need to be able to payattention to both migration and trafficking measures to make sure thatwhile one group is included, another is not excluded. In the first examplebelow, anti-trafficking legislation improved in a bill that also made migrationlaws more restrictive. In the second example, the migration law took priorityover the anti-trafficking one, resulting in detention and almost indeportation.20