The push and pull factors are economic. That is the primary one globally. When I arrived [in Ukraine], the average income was less than USD100/month. It has gone up considerably and is probably adjusting as a result of the financial crisis.
Opportunities were just not available for individuals. Ukrainians as a people – Moldovans are the same, Belarusians are the same – went outside, probably as much as 10% of the population here in Ukraine and in Moldova, around 30%.
But they do not have legal opportunities for migration … So we are stuck in this Catch-22 where there are no legal opportunities to go abroad but there is a need.
(J. Labovitz, former Chief of Mission, IOM Ukraine, 27 August 2009)
A widely-held assumption concerning victims of trafficking is that both poverty and lack of livelihood opportunities in the domestic labour market increase vulnerability to exploitative work abroad. A comment by Pierre Sané, Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences Sector of UNESCO, in a preface to a 2006 report, Poverty, gender and human trafficking in Sub-Saharan Africa: Rethinking best practices in migration management, illustrates the assumption that links trafficking and poverty. Sané in fact goes beyond the assumption and argues that there is a vicious cycle of ‘poverty – human trafficking – poverty’ involved:
Human trafficking, often qualified as the ‘modern day slavery’, is caused by human rights violations embodied in poverty while it also contributes to increased deprivation. In other words, poverty is one of the main factors leading people, especially women and children to fall preys [sic] to the traffickers. In turn, human trafficking locks up the trafficked persons in poverty through exploitation. This vicious circle ‘poverty – human trafficking – poverty’ denies individuals the basic right to education and information, the right to health, the right to decent work, the right to security and justice … Poverty and human trafficking will only cease when they are adequately addressed as two intermingled issues, which nurture each other and plunge vulnerable persons into deep deprivation and exploitation (Truong, 2006: 7).
Only a few studies question this link made between poverty and trafficking.
Even then, the analysis that has challenged this picture has largely been in the context of the movement of children and not adults.1
1 Several studies address the relationship between household circumstances, child labour and migration. See for example Rende Taylor, 2005. See also Mills 1999, and
Even in instances when extreme poverty is not assumed to be a cause of trafficking, studies link trafficking directly with a somewhat desperate search for work abroad in an effort to fill a gap in the opportunities available at home. Frank Lazco and Marco Gramegna, referring to a database of victims from South Eastern Europe, write that ‘[i]n most cases (over 75 per cent), the recruiter offered the possibility of finding work abroad’ (2003: 189). Vocks and Nijboer note about Central and Eastern European women that ‘[t]hey mainly chose to work abroad out of economic necessity, having an income equal or even lower than the minimum for existence’ (2000: 386). Discussing Ukrainian victims, Donna Hughes and Tatyana Denisova write, ‘[i]n agricultural areas, often there are no wages at all’
(2002: 44), with the result that ‘the recruiters are moving into the countryside to small towns and villages to recruit women for work abroad’ (2002: 43). Alexis Aronowtiz similarly argues about trafficking and smuggling that ‘[m]any who fall prey to smugglers and traffickers are usually those most disadvantaged in their own countries: those with poor job skills or little chance of successful employment at home. They are often women and children’ (2001: 167).
If we understand trafficking as sitting within a spectrum of migratory experiences and recognise the voluntariness often exercised by victims at the departure stage, a connection between labour market barriers and trafficking is logical. When compared to the other myths and misconceptions analysed in this book, it is unsurprising that there may be some connection between income levels, labour market experiences at home and trafficking into exploitative work abroad. Yet, despite the logical and the frequent associations made in the literature between trafficking and the pursuit of work, no known studies exist that explore the labour market situation of victims of trafficking prior to their being trafficked.
That is, there are no known studies that analyse whether or not victims faced barriers to the domestic labour market or sub-standard conditions of work before their departure and the extent to which either or both were factors that pushed them to seek opportunities abroad. By filling this gap, this chapter aims to make an important contribution to the current body of knowledge.
If we accept the assumptions outlined above, we could imagine two groups of individuals who are vulnerable to trafficking. First, it may be that people attempt to escape poverty and through that process find themselves in a situation of trafficking or trafficking-like conditions. Second, it may be that people are not satisfied with their work situation at home and pursue alternative employment abroad.
In terms of the autonomy associated with those decisions, there are clear differences between these two scenarios. Theoretically, the latter involves a higher degree of autonomy when compared to the decisions of those living in extreme poverty. In simple terms, the first group of potential victims seek work abroad as a question of survival and hence their real options are severely limited. We can define this as absolute poverty. According to the World Bank, absolute poverty is Muecke 1992, both of whom, like Rende Taylor, shed doubt on the view that children are sent to work abroad simply as a question of economic survival.
understood to mean the absolute standard of what households should be able to count on in order to meet their basic food and non-food needs in order to survive.
The second group of victims, on the other hand, could be better described as ‘pursuing a more satisfying life’. This may be captured in the phrase relative poverty, a measure which looks at income inequality in comparative terms rather than absolute material deprivation or hardship. The mainstream trafficking framework, as it is normally presented, refers more often to the former group, commonly using the language of ‘desperation’ to describe ‘immense poverty and desire for survival’ (Nadaswaran, 2012), this ‘economic desperation’ and poverty
‘facilitating’ the recruitment of women (Raymond and Hughes, 2001: 10).
In this chapter, I first explore the extent to which poverty appears to drive human trafficking. Secondly, I turn to the question of individual livelihoods and the extent to which a search for individual betterment, when compared to fellow countrymen and women and/or citizens living abroad, constitutes a push factor in migration and the willingness of victims to risk exploitative work abroad. The particular vulnerability of youth and the impact of gender-segregated domestic labour markets are discussed at length.
My findings suggest that rather than being desperate or deprived non-autonomous individuals, victims are often searching for an opportunity abroad that they believe will offer them more than the opportunities available at home, aligning with the second category described above. That is, although relatively poor, victims of trafficking are not among the poorest in their communities. This chapter therefore highlights the relevance of relative poverty to understanding trafficking. In reality, there is a range of scenarios that fall in between these two neat abstract categories.
Throughout this chapter, I use the language of ‘irregular’ migration rather than trafficking and I draw extensively on literature addressing irregular migration broadly as well as trafficking specifically. This chapter focuses on the pre-departure situation of victims and the extent to which domestic labour market conditions act as a push factor. At the pre-departure stage, what is revealed by my findings are the ways in which the pre-migration experience of victim of trafficking is largely indistinguishable from the broader category of irregular migrants. This accords with earlier arguments that, at the pre-departure stage, all potential ‘voluntary’
migrants fall within one large pool. These individuals have not yet become victims of trafficking, nor can any of these individuals be classified as actual migrants.
They are all potential migrants and/or victims.
A further factor in choosing to engage with the broader literature on irregular migration (although not migration at large), is the inherent heightened risk of unsafe migration when the movement is undertaken through irregular means. As this type of migration frequently involves the status of undocumented or illegal in the destination country (Bogusz, Cholewinski, Cygan and Szyszczak, 2004: 324–5;
Kelly, 2002; Cholewinski, 2005: 20), we often seen a relationship with trafficking
identified in the literature (Saari, 2006; Uehling, 2004; Webber and Shirk, 2005).2 Finally, before continuing, it should also be noted that the majority of trafficking literature that links poverty and trafficking focuses on income poverty, despite the fact that the development community increasingly adopts a broader definition of poverty that extends beyond the question of income levels.3 An income-poverty focused definition has similarly been applied in this chapter.
Defining Absolute Poverty’s Relationship with Trafficking
Are Victims of Human Trafficking the Poorest Citizens?
In this section, I address the links, if any, between absolute poverty and human trafficking. To what extent are the poorest of society most vulnerable to trafficking and exploitative labour abroad? Despite what is frequently a lack of solid evidence of a relationship between the two, a connection is often assumed and anti-trafficking initiatives are regularly designed on this basis:
Poverty and human trafficking will only cease when they are adequately addressed as two intermingled issues, which nurture each other and plunge vulnerable persons into deep deprivation and exploitation. (Pierre Sané cited in Truong, 2006: 7)
My own field experience suggests that poverty continues to be perceived as a driver of human trafficking by many stakeholders working in the field. This was most evident in Ghana, perhaps unsurprising given its level of development compared to Vietnam and Ukraine. Ghana ranked 135th on the 2013 UNDP Human Development Index,4 as compared to Vietnam which ranked slightly higher at 127 and Ukraine at 78 (UNDP, 2013).
My Ghanaian informants saw poverty as not necessarily linked to the trafficking of adults but rather as a driver of child trafficking. Several informants argued that the selling of children is a consequence of both ‘poverty resulting from lack of employment and ignorance on the part of families’ (Dr M. Sackey, Former ILO-IPEC, Ghana, 22 July 2010). Two different informants, one representing a
2 As noted earlier, however, trafficking can result from regular migration.
3 For example, the Swedish policy document for poverty reduction, The Rights of the Poor – Our Common Responsibility, describes poverty as a multi-faceted phenomenon.
Poverty is not just a matter of income; to live in poverty is also to lack political influence, security, opportunities for social participation and access to health care, education and other social services (Government of Sweden, 1997: 12–13).
4 The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic used to rank countries by their level of ‘human development’ by comparing data on life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living.
faith-based NGO and the other, the Ghanaian Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare, made similar comments connecting the sale of children by parents with both poverty and the need to supplement family income. An officer from a faith-based NGO argued that parents are frequently coerced into selling their children into the fishing sector because ‘they are not really told what the children will do’, ‘they are poor’ and perceive this as ‘someone helping them’. Mawutor Ablo, Deputy Director of Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare, in similar terms argued: ‘ … the underlying issue here is poverty. This is what is normally the cause. People are poor. They want to supplement the family income with children’s labour’. He went on to note the efforts of the Ghanaian Ministry of Agriculture to support families involved in farming through the development of services that help create some type of wage labour for parents.
The apparent role of extreme poverty in the migratory movement of Ghanaians is also supported by the secondary data (although recent literature is limited). The World Bank Voices of the Poor report argues that young urban and rural Ghanaians feel they have no choice but to leave home in search of work, since successful generation of remittances is likely to make the difference between food security and lack of it for their families (Kunfaa, 1999: 36), although the comment refers largely to internal migration. Discussing regular and irregular migration and the role of remittances, a later study (Higazi, 2005) similarly referred to remittances as a household support strategy. According to this report, ‘[w]omen were more likely than men to have been influenced by their families in their decision to migrate.
Remittances were usually expected by the family and were a key reason for the initial migration decision of family-induced migrants’ (Higazi, 2005: 12).
Some Ukrainian informants similarly referred to grave economic circumstances in Ukraine as a driver and described the search for work abroad as being more than a search for a better life. For example, Dr Lysenko, psychologist at the IOM Rehabilitation Centre in Kyiv, contended that it is not education levels that correlate with trafficking but rather ‘economic reasons why people are going abroad’. She noted how ‘young girls go abroad looking for work and are somehow involved in sexual exploitation’. She referred to the ‘economic hole in their families’ that girls feel compelled to fill (20 August 2009). Lysenko further noted the difference between those citizens residing in the capital, Kyiv, where the economic situation
‘is best’, from where they ‘do not really have victims [ … ] because you can find jobs’, and other parts of Ukraine. Her view contradicted that of other informants who instead suggested that trafficking results simply when ‘people are not satisfied with their standards of living’ (T. Ivanyuk, Counter-Trafficking Programme Specialist, IOM Ukraine, 3 September 2009). According to Lysenko, ‘[i]f there is a possibility to find a job in Ukraine, which is enough for them – ordinary things, money for food and to live – they will not go’ (20 August 2009).
Referring to the economic crisis following Ukraine’s independence, Lilia Koveshnikova, director of the NGO Women of Donbass located in the Lugansk
Oblast in the country’s east, also framed trafficking as involving a response to the most extreme living conditions:
The economic crisis that hit Ukraine immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union was undoubtedly one of the primary factors for the proliferation of trafficking in women and children. Massive unemployment affected women, savings were lost to hyperinflation and those who had a job received minuscule wages, far below the cost of living and often after months of delay. All this led to impoverishment of the vast majority of people. (Trans., Email comm., 29 July 2009)
Her view is clearly supported by the secondary literature which indicates how following the transition, various factors, including hyperinflation and dramatically reduced economic output, lowered living standards in Central and Eastern Europe (Corrin, 2005: 545–6). As a result, feminisation of unemployment and poverty emerged (Malynovska, 2006). The increased cost of social services, deterioration in the quality of medical care and commercialisation of education also placed additional social responsibilities on women (Zhurzhenko, 2001: 37).
Consequently, by 1992, a sense of ‘nostalgia’ emerged among the poor and working poor of Central and Eastern Europe for the state subsidies lost during the early 1990s, with women’s hard work no longer rewarded by ‘the institutional services and benefits that they had come to see as their entitlements under socialism’ (Gal and Kligman, 2000: 116). It is therefore unsurprising that some Ukrainian informants noted a link between trafficking and ‘living in an economically depressed region, rural area or a small town … living in conditions of extreme poverty (literally, with no money to purchase food, clothing, personal hygiene items, medicine or pay for other family members’ expenses)’ (Victoria Ostapchuk, Director, Avenir (NGO), Zhytomyr Oblast, Trans., Email comm., 13 August 2009; see also Vijeyarasa, 2012a: 55).
With these comments in mind, we can reflect upon the data I collected regarding household size prior to the departure of victims. These data were collected with the goal of assessing the extent to which large household sizes related to questionnaire respondents’ views that their household income was insufficient to cover their own expenses and those of the household. In response to my question concerning the number of people living with the victim prior to their departure (Question 17), more than half of the respondents were living with two (31.7 per cent) or three (21.2 per cent) other household members. The detailed description of the number of members living with each respondent, shown in Table 6.1, indicates that 15.4 per cent of respondents were living with 4 members, 13.5 per cent were living with 1 other member and only 3.8 per cent were living alone.
Number of household members in
addition to victim Frequency Percentage of
questionnaire respondents
0 4 3.8
1 14 13.5
2 33 31.7
3 22 21.2
4 16 15.4
5 9 8.7
6 1 1.0
7 1 1.0
Victims living at boarding school 3 2.9
Missing data 1 1
The average household size, counting the victim, was 3.7 members. Interestingly, household sizes in Ukraine are on average relatively small – 2.5 persons according to the 2007 Demographic and Health Survey (Ukrainian Center for Social Reforms, State Statistical Committee of Ukraine and Macro International, 2008: 2). The possibility of a correlation between household poverty – deriving from higher household expenses that result from larger household sizes – and trafficking is raised by these data. Additionally, there were some particularly extreme cases within my sample, with 11 respondents living with five or more other individuals.
High household living expenses may explain why poverty was labelled a factor in Ukraine. There was, nonetheless, a distinct divide between my Ukrainian informants who, like the Vietnamese ones, saw trafficking as a result of a failed search for ‘more’ (whether better pay or working conditions) and Ukrainian informants such as Lysenko who identified the process of irregular migration into trafficking-like conditions as involving only those who could not even obtain a basic income in Ukraine needed for survival and therefore migrated out of economic desperation.
The Costs of Migration
While links are frequently drawn between absolute poverty and trafficking in the literature, there is some recognition that ‘victims of trafficking are not always the poorest and most vulnerable’ (Shelley, 2010: 292). From a practical perspective, the process by which people move abroad in many instances involves considerable expenses, especially to fund visas or transport. Such funds are only accessible in the global south to individuals with access to significant sources of income, whether their own or through their inner circles – mainly families. Some note that it is those who are affluent who may be able to pay smugglers to move them and Table 6.1 Household structure of questionnaire respondents
their children, creating the risk of an exploitative end result (Shelley, 2010: 292).
The inference is that the poorest are not able to engage in such movement.
On this basis, during the course of my research, one Ghanaian informant disputed the idea that poverty is connected with trafficking. The informant noted the scope of the resources – particularly financial – needed to support people’s initial exit from Ghana:
… The poor people, most of them, they want to go, but because of extreme poverty, they cannot afford the costs. Sometimes they use other means like connection men
… The poor people, most of them, they want to go, but because of extreme poverty, they cannot afford the costs. Sometimes they use other means like connection men