Trafficking in human beings: human rights and ... - unesdoc - Unesco

measures. The question of whether or not a residence permit should be granted must
depend on migration law criteria only, including human rights considerations. 355
Traffi cked persons are among the most vulnerable migrant workers. They are generally
poorer, have a lower socio-economic status, are less informed about their rights and
existing legal opportunities for employment abroad, and often suffer gender, ethnic or
racial discrimination in their place or country of origin. Immigration restrictions in many
situations have inhibited regular labour migration to meet measurable labour demands.
Given these demands, employers and migrants are willing to pay increasingly higher
prices to meet each other in an internationalized labour market. Increased migration
control and restrictions contribute to making traffi cking and smuggling of migrant labour
very profi table for criminal intermediaries. Market pressures are refl ected in demand and
push factors for migration. In agriculture, food processing, construction, domestic help,
labour-intensive manufacturing, home health care, and other sectors that often involve
dirty, dangerous and degrading jobs, the demand for cheap, low-skilled labour acts as pull
factor. Push factors in countries of origin include decline of traditional industry, loss of
agricultural competitiveness, elimination of jobs and subsidies by structural adjustment.
ILO research has shown that access to fi nancial capital in order to pay for the journey
as well as access to reliable information can make a big difference in the way people
migrate. Improving migration management in order to make migration safe through
legal channels is therefore an integral part of programmes that aim at the reduction of
traffi cking in human beings. 356
The link and overlap between traffi cking and other forms of migration is so important
that they must be analysed together. 357 Economic considerations are central and it should
be noted that the growth in traffi cking has taken place during a period in which there has
been an increasing international demand for migrant workers. 358 People are not forcibly
relocated without a signifi cant profi t motive. That profi t motive occurs in the gains to
be made from providing low or no-wage labour in a competitive and globalised market
economy: Migration is a fact of a globalized economy. 359 If traffi cking is viewed from such
a perspective, then, the dominant representations of helpless ‘victims’ kidnapped and
forcibly relocated is only a partial picture. Recent qualitative research has already made
strides in challenging the ‘victim’ paradigm and, in doing so, has both reclaimed a degree
of agency for (forced) migrants and once again re-focused some anti-traffi cking attention
on structural conditions. Traffi cked persons are shown, very often, to have wished to
355 Ibid. p. 11-12.
356 ILO Actions Against Traffi cking, ILO 2008. p. 17.
357 Kaye, M. and Anti Slavery International (ASI), The Migration-Traffi cking Nexus: Combatting Traffi cking
Through the Protection of Migrants’ Human Rights (London: ASI, 2003).
358 Ibid p. 4.
359 Kapur, R.: Cross-border Movements and the Law: Renegotiating the Boundaries of Difference,
in Kempadoo, et al. Traffi cking and Prostitution Reconsidered. p. 28; Howard, N. and Lalani, M.:
“Editorial Introduction: The Politics of Human Traffi cking”. St. Anthony’s International Review.
Oxford 4:1 (2008): 5-15.
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