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.
The Responsible Mining Index (RMI) supports the principle that minerals and metals mining should benefit the economies, improve the lives of people and respect the environments of producing countries, while also benefiting mining companies in a fair ...Read More
This Occasional Paper highlights the importance of addressing the demand that fosters trafficking for sexual exploitation, in particular the exploitation of the prostitution of others. In doing so, it puts a spotlight on the role of demand in encour...Read More
There is no systematic use of child labour in the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan and significant measures to end forced labour are being implemented. The annual cotton harvest in Uzbekistan is a unique large-scale effort. In 2017, an estimated 2.6 mil...Read More
The unprecedented crisis that COVID-19 has suddenly unleashed upon the. world is affecting all aspects of society and is likely to have an effect on the routes and characteristics of both regular and irregular migration. Smuggling of migrants and tr...Read More
2025 © Copyright, RESPECT International. All Rights Reserved. Website Disclaimer | Privacy Policy
