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SWOP-USA

Desiree Alliance

Best Practices
Policy Project

Bayswan

This study examines the factors that lead to the exploitation of trafficked women and children. It assesses attitudes of employers of domestic workers in Sweden, Thailand, India and Italy and clients of sex workers in Denmark, Thailand, India and Italy.

The report suggests that three related factors are key to explaining the exploitative conditions experienced by many migrant domestic and sex workers: the unregulated nature of the labour market segments in which they work; the abundant supply of exploitable labour; and the power and malleability of social norms regulating the behaviour of employers and clients. It emphasises that the continued expansion of any unregulated market is likely to require and facilitate the exploitation of vulnerable labour.

Policy implications include:

• it is necessary to attempt to regulate markets and also address areas of vulnerability, such as immigration and citizenship status, lack of access to support networks and economic status
• states can significantly change markets and the possibilities for exploiting unfree labour, for example through steps to limit workers’ dependence on employers for the right to stay. Expanding opportunities for women to legally migrate would help to reduce the “push” into the domestic and sex sectors. Non-state actors also have a role to play in networking and facilitating the organising of migrant women in these sectors
• policy makers need to pay much closer attention to the unintended and negative consequences of legislating prostitution or of regulating (or the lack of it) domestic work and care services, and of immigration and citizenship laws for different groups involved. There is a need for coordinated thinking across different policy areas.