The risks to migrant workers using informal and unregulated labour migration channels are well documented: forced labour, including labour trafficking; debt bondage primarily due to high recruitment fees; child labour; excessive work hours; underpayment and withholding of wages; denial of social benefits; and unchecked health and safety hazards are all among the risks migrant workers face.
Regulation and explicit, enforced protections are widely recognized as critical to mitigating such abuses. Reforms have been urged by industry and NGO initiatives, and government actors have taken steps to make the formal, so-called Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) channel, more responsive, efficient, and effective.
Yet despite these well-documented risks and efforts to curtail recruitment abuses, informal recruitment channels continue to thrive; a remarkably high number of workers are still using informal means to enter and work in Thailand.
The focus of this paper is to explain why this is occurring.
Most in the anti-human trafficking and modern slavery community agree that trafficking activities are aided and facilitated by corruption. Yet research shows that the available data supporting this assumption is thin. More evidence is needed to bette...Read More
The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018 and is accurate as of July 25, 2019. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More
This report was prepared by Dr. Lisa Rende Taylor and Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw, Issara Institute. Issara Institute programming in Myanmar and Thailand over the past year has focused on driving more ethical recruitment systems, down to the ‘first mileâ...Read More
Edited by Joel Quirk and Genevieve LeBaron. This is the fourth volume of the series Beyond Trafficking and Slavery Short Course. Campaigners and governments leading the fight to end ‘modern-day slavery’ selectively appeal to history to h...Read More
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