Human Trafficking

A Complex Phenomenon of Globalization and Vulnerability

Natividad Gutiérrez Chong, Jenny B Clark

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317373117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In the post-Cold War era, economic globalization has resulted in the buying and selling of human beings. Poverty, social instability, lawlessness, gender biases, and ethnic hostility have entrapped millions in the world of modern day slavery, with the result that human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal industries in the world. Every year, men, women, and children from across the globe are transported within or across borders for the purpose of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Despite the plethora of journalistic articles written on human trafficking there is a need for more rigorous academic analysis of the phenomenon.

Although groups from many different ideologies have embraced policies to end human trafficking, there are still many gaps and unanswered questions, particularly with regard to the amount of, and nature of the phenomenon. This book provides an insight into the complexity of human trafficking by addressing both how the scope of globalization impacts the sex industry and forced labor, and how vulnerability is a growing cause of human trafficking, affecting traditional diasporic and migratory patterns. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies.

The Forces Driving Global Migration

Stephen Castles

Movements of people are a crucial element in global integration. Most destination countries favour entry of the highly skilled, but restrict entry of lower-skilled workers, asylum seekers and refugees. A major cause of migration is the growing inequality in incomes and human security between more- and less-developed countries. Further driving factors include uneven economic development; rapid demographic transitions; and technological advances in transport and communications. Increasingly migrants do not shift their social existence from one society to another, but maintain transnational connections. The global economic crisis since 2008 has brought a hiatus in some of these factors, but has not undermined their long-term significance. Australia’s traditional model of permanent-settlement migration needs to be adjusted to the new realities of global mobility and connectivity.

Global Migration Trends

UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) data indicate that there were some 214 million international migrants worldwide in 2010. This compares with just 156 million migrants in 1990. However, since global population has grown at the same time, the share of migrants in the world population has not changed much increasing from 2.9 per cent in 1990 to 3.1 per cent in 2010 (see Appendix Table 1).

What makes international migration highly significant in economic and political terms is its concentration: certain locations have become major emigration areas (such as the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka), while other locations have become major poles of attraction, such as South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore – and of course Australia, which, with 27 per cent (at the 2011 Census), has the highest overseas-born share in its population of any immigration country (apart from the special cases of Israel and the states of the Arab Gulf).

The UNDESA figures (see Appendix Figures 1 and 2) show that migrants are highly concentrated in the more-developed countries (MDCs) and much less so in less-developed countries (LDCs). In 1990, 53 per cent of international migrants were to be found in the MDCs, which, however, were only home to 22 per cent of the world’s people. By 2010, 60 per cent of migrants were estimated to be in MDCs, which then accounted for only 18 per cent of the world’s people. To put it differently, 10 out of every 100 persons in MDCs were immigrants in 2010, compared with 1.5 per 100 in LDCs. With regard to refugees, the picture was very different (see Appendix Table 1 and Figure 3). Global refugee numbers declined from about 18 million in 1990 to under 14 million in 2005, only to increase to over 16 million in 2010. Today, over 85 per cent of the world’s refugees are concentrated in LDCs, and only 14 per cent in the richer MDCs.

For many years now, the UN Population Division (which is part of UNDESA) has been arguing that international migration is growing only slightly faster than world population, but that migration from LDCs to MDCs is growing much more rapidly. Neo-liberal globalisation since the late 1970s has been linked to a significant increase in international migration. This is often regarded as South–North migration, but the South–North breakdown is too crude to capture the very significant economic growth that is taking place in many areas that were once considered part of the Global South. Indeed, migration within the Asian region is very much the result of uneven processes of economic development, with migrant workers moving from countries with strong demographic growth but slower economic growth, to emerging industrial economies, which are often already experiencing a rapid demographic transition. However, a great deal of migration is not primarily economically motivated: forced migration remains widespread, and people also migrate for purposes of family reunion, marriage, education and lifestyle.

In addition, focusing just on international migration can give a deceptive picture. Many people move within their own countries. Internal migration attracts less political attention, but its volume in population giants like China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Nigeria is far greater than that of international movements, and the social and cultural consequences can be equally important. In China, the ‘floating population’ of people moving from the central and western provinces to the new industrial areas of the east coast numbers at least 100 million, and many of them experience legal disadvantage and economic marginalisation very much like international migrants elsewhere (Skeldon 2006). It is impossible to know the exact numbers of internal migrants, although the UN Development Program estimated some 740 million in 2009 (UNDP 2009).

Drivers of International Migration

Global economic integration is an important factor encouraging international migration, but a purely economic understanding of migration can be misleading. This article, therefore, reviews a range of drivers or causal factors and examines the linkages between them. ‘Drivers’ refers not only to factors that encourage cross-border mobility, but also to factors that help shape the forms taken by movements. The term does not imply determinism: except in the case of emergency migration to escape violence or disaster, there is always an element of choice or agency in the decision to migrate – after all, the majority of people chose not to do so. I see ‘drivers’ as factors that increase the likelihood that people will decide to leave their homes in search of a better life. The following factors will be discussed here: neo-liberal globalisation and social transformation; inequality; state security and human security; technology; labour demand; demographic changes; politics; law and governance; the social dynamics of migration; and the role of people who make their living by facilitating migration (sometimes called ‘the migration industry’).

Since each factor is highly complex and linked in manifold ways to the others, my treatment here will inevitably be rather brief and superficial. The article will conclude with some speculations on possible future perspectives in international migration. The article does not address internal migration, but that does not imply that it is in any way less important than international movements.

Neo-liberal Globalisation and Social Transformation

The industrial revolution that took place in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries was linked to an agricultural revolution resulting from the growth of commercial farming and the enclosure of arable land for pasture. The shift from traditional to commercial farming was in itself partly a result of the re-investment of superprofits made in the colonies through plantation agriculture based on slavery. The displaced tenant farmers moved to emerging industrial towns where they were available as workers for the new factories. They were soon joined by destitute artisans, such as hand-loom weavers, who had lost their livelihood through competition from the new manufacturers. This ‘primitive accumulation’ as Karl Marx called it (1976, pp. 873–876) lay the basis of the new ‘free’ working class which was crucial for industrialisation.

Today, one can observe similar processes taking place on a global scale. As LDCs in Africa, Asia and Latin America are drawn into global economic linkages, powerful processes of social transformation are unleashed. Neo-liberal forms of international economic integration undermine traditional ways of working and living (Stiglitz 2002). The ‘Green Revolution’ (i.e. increased agricultural productivity based on use of chemicals, irrigation and machinery) displaces people from the land. Displaced farmers migrate into burgeoning cities like Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Calcutta or Jakarta. It is estimated that 95 per cent of future population growth will take place in the urban areas of LDCs, about half of it in slum areas, leading to forecasts of some ‘2 billion slum-dwellers by 2030 or 2040’ (Davis 2006, p. 151). In future, climate change may exacerbate the situation: possible declines in rural productivity due to drought or extreme weather events may encourage mobility, but the destination areas – often poor areas of low-lying cities on coasts or river-deltas – are frequently themselves highly vulnerable to changes caused by global climate change (Foresight 2011, Piguet et al.2011).

The move to the cities is driven not only by loss of rural livelihoods, but by the hope of better opportunities and higher incomes in urban settings. Many rural–urban migrants do in fact benefit – at least in the long run – by getting better jobs, becoming entrepreneurs or securing improved education and health services (Saunders 2011). Others find themselves caught in a cycle of unemployment and insecure informal sector work. There are few formal sector jobs for the millions of newcomers. Standards of housing, health and education are poor, while crime, violence and human rights violations are rife. Such conditions are powerful motivations to seek better livelihoods elsewhere, either in growth areas within the region or in the Global North.

Indeed, it is often people with more resources – whether financial or educational – who are able to move internationally and particularly over long distances. Migrants often come from middle-income backgrounds. Typically, the most impoverished people in less-developed cannot migrate internationally, because they cannot afford the costs of mobility. The migration of middle-income people is driven partly by the hope of better livelihoods elsewhere, but also by lack of opportunities at home. The structural adjustment programmes imposed on many southern countries by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have extended the crisis to middle-class occupations, by forcing states to drastically cut education, health and welfare. This has caused many administrators and professionals to migrate – conveniently providing highly skilled personnel for the North (see Adepoju 2000).

At the same time, globalisation leads to social transformation in the North. In the rich member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), industrial restructuring since the late 1970s has meant deskilling and early retirement for many workers. The new services industries need very different types of labour. But, due to declining fertility, smaller cohorts of young nationals are entering the labour market than in the past. As educational opportunities improve, few young nationals are willing to do low-skilled work. Developed countries have high demand for both high- and low-skilled workers and need migrants – whether regular or irregular.

This complementarity between processes of social transformation in LDCs and MDCs is a powerful driver of international migration (Castles 2010). Both public and policy discourses have tended to focus on the economic side of South–North differences. This is indeed important, but it is far from the only factor involved. People rarely leave their home communities just to gain higher incomes, as long as their ways of living and working are still viable. It is the undermining of these modes of existence that triggers departure.

A critique of 19th century liberal economic theories based on the idea of an economy ‘disembedded’ from society and efficiently regulated by the profit principle alone was provided by Karl Polanyi in his book on the ‘great transformation’ (Polanyi 2001). Today these theories have been revived in the form of neo-liberalism (Hayek 1991), providing an ideological justification for a process of globalisation based ostensibly on free market forces alone (Munck 2009). Even in triumphal periods of global capitalism, such as that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this ideology has caused massive damage (Stiglitz 2002). This applies even more strongly today, in the context of the global economic crisis (Phillips 2011b).

Inequality

A crucial claim made by advocates of neo-liberal globalisation in its boom years from the mid-1970s to 2007 was that that it would lead to faster economic growth in poor countries, and thus, in the long run, to poverty reduction and convergence with richer countries. In fact, the opposite was the case: according to a senior World Bank economist, global inequality by the mid-2000s was ‘probably the highest ever recorded’ (Milanovic 2007, p. 39). Rates of absolute poverty have been reduced in some places – particularly in China, South Korea and Vietnam, although sometimes inequality has increased at the same time. Yet the claim of reducing inequality was a main element of political legitimation, because it underpinned the principles of ‘open borders’ and ‘a level playing field’. Flows across borders – of commodities, capital, technology and labour – were meant to secure optimal allocation of resources and to ensure that production factors could be obtained at the lowest possible cost.

Liberalisation of flows was never complete – for instance rich countries protected their own agriculture while demanding the removal of barriers for others. But the hypocrisy was greatest with regard to flows of people, where control of movements across borders was often seen as an important part of nation-state sovereignty. Economists argued that the removal of restrictions on human mobility would lead to large increases in global income and would help reduce North–South inequality (Borjas 1989, Straubhaar and Zimmermann 1992). Politicians in labour-importing countries, however, were aware of popular suspicion of immigration, and responded with a rhetoric of national interests and control (see below). Governments around the world try to resolve the contradiction between strong labour demand and public hostility to migration by creating entry systems that encourage legal entry of highly skilled workers, while either excluding lower-skilled workers or regulating them through temporary employment schemes. Since labour market demand for the lower-skilled is strong, millions of migrants are pushed into irregularity (Castles et al.2013). Governments often turn a blind eye to this in times of economic growth, and then tighten up border security and deport irregulars in times of recession.

National migration rules differentiate people on the basis of origins, gender, human capital and legal status. International migration is thus more a result of inequality than a tool to alleviate it. The differences in income levels delineated by North–South borders (most dramatically perhaps that between the US and Mexico) are indeed enormous, but opportunities of crossing those borders are far from equal.

State Security and Human Security

Since the beginning of the 21st century, governments have increasingly portrayed migration as a threat to security. The terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001, the 2004 bombings in Madrid and the 2005 bombings in London led to a widespread belief that Muslim migrants...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Trafficking in Persons
• 1. The Forces Driving Global Migration
• 2. The Political and Economic Transition from Communism and the Global Sex Trafficking Crisis: A Case Study of Moldova
• 3. Vulnerability to Human Trafficking among the Roma Population in Serbia: The Role of Social Exclusion and Marginalization
• 4. Sex Trafficking and the Sex Trade Industry: The Processes and Experiences of Nepali Women
• 5. Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking of Women and Girls in Mexico: An Analysis on Impact of Violence on Health Status
• 6. The Forgotten Family: Labour Migration and the Collapse of Traditional Values in Thailand’s Tribal Communities
• 7. Human Trafficking and Sex Industry: Does Ethnicity and Race Matter?
• Index