By Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

  Modern slavery is everywhere. From the construction of FIFA World Cup stadiums in Qatar to the cotton farms of Uzbekistan, from cattle ranches in Paraguay to fisheries in Thailand and the Philippines to agriculture in Italy, from sweatshops in Brazil and Argentina to berry pickers in Sweden. The production chains of clothes, food and services consumed globally are tainted with forced labour. The world is three times richer in terms of global GDP than it was 30 years ago yet we have historic levels of inequality. Eighty percent of the world’s people say that the minimum wage is not enough to live on, work is more insecure with a predominance of short term contracts or other non-standard forms of employment and both informal work and modern slavery are not only growing but increasingly prevalent in the supply chains of large corporations. In the global private economy, the ILO calculates forced labour generates $150 billion each year but it could be even higher. In all countries, unscrupulous employers and recruiters are increasingly exploiting gaps in international labour and migration law and enforcement. After drugs and arms, human trafficking is now the world’s third biggest crime business.

New York: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 2017. 30p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

The present issue paper explores the extent and circumstances under which different forms of marriage may fall within the scope of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. It combines research methodology and legal analysis to arrive at policy recommendations for countries to consider. The primary data collection was based on 75 expert interviews, involving almost 150 participants from nine countries.1 The interview tool was constructed in a deliberately broad manner to elicit conversations that would capture the reality of these phenomena, which manifested themselves differently in every country, and not to rush to conclusions about whether the conduct fell within the scope of the Trafficking in Persons Protocol…..

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  Out of the almost 150 people who participated in the interviews, the great majority knew about or had direct experience of cases involving certain types of marriage and trafficking in persons. However, others had not made any connections between marriages and trafficking in persons in their line of work or had not encountered any relevant cases. In the cases presented during the interviews, it became apparent that trafficking in persons was most often linked to cases of marriage that showed signs of force, abuse or exploitation. Thus, these characteristics could be recognized as initial indicators for consideration of trafficking in persons. Experts, including from non-governmental organizations, who had interacted with victims noted that there was a low level of reporting of trafficking cases in general, but also of trafficking cases involving elements of marriage.

Vienna: UNODC, 2020. 116p.

By Tadesse Simei Metekia

Based on extensive interviews and field research in Ethiopia, this brief puts forward actionable recommendations. Ethiopia has recently brought perpetrators to justice for trafficking Ethiopian immigrants and subjecting them to various forms of exploitation in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and Libya. The state has also demonstrated a growing political will to prevent and prosecute transnational forms of trafficking in persons. Yet, effective prosecution will elude Ethiopia unless it removes the impediments that are limiting its ability to ensure witness availability and bring more masterminds to justice.

ENACT (Africa): 2022. 16p.

By Arezo Malakooti

A number of policy and security changes in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Sahel over the last five years have led to a decrease in mobility options towards Europe. The study aims to measure whether the pattern of vulnerability towards trafficking has shifted for migrants in light of the increased difficulty in reaching Europe. This is achieved through an innovative methodology where a 1600-person survey was conducted with migrants along the routes to North Africa and proxies were used to gauge changes in patterns of vulnerability. Respondents’ experiences with trafficking were also tracked, thereby creating a new set of data in relation to trafficking along routes to Europe.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2020. 108p.

By Christopher Paolella

Human trafficking has become a global concern over the last twenty years, but its violence has terrorized and traumatized its victims and survivors for millennia. This study examines the deep history of human trafficking from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. It traces the evolution of trafficking patterns: the growth and decline of trafficking routes, the ever-changing relationships between traffickers and authorities, and it examines the underlying causes that lead to vulnerability and thus to exploitation. As the reader will discover, the conditions that lead to human trafficking in the modern world, such as poverty, attitudes of entitlement, corruption, and violence, have a long and storied past. When we understand that past, we can better anticipate human trafficking’s future, and then we are better able to fight it.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 280p.

By Amy D. Lauger, Danielle Kaeble, and Mark Motivans

This report describes BJS’s activities during 2021 and 2022 to collect data and report on human trafficking as required by the Combat Human Trafficking Act of 2015 (34 U.S.C. § 20709(e)). It details ongoing and completed efforts to measure and analyze the nationwide incidence of human trafficking, to describe characteristics of human trafficking victims and offenders, and to describe criminal justice responses to human trafficking offenses. Additionally, it provides information on human trafficking suspects referred to and prosecuted by U.S. attorneys, human trafficking defendants convicted in U.S. district court, and admissions to state prison for human trafficking.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics,. 2022. 6p.

By Lucia Bird

Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including literature reviews, national surveys and key informant interviews, this exploratory research points to some level of internal and/or external human trafficking in all the countries studied. Victims of human trafficking in the Caribbean region were found to be men, women, boys and girls from the Caribbean as well as from countries outside the region. These victims were found in multiple forms of exploitation including sexual exploitation, forced labour and domestic servitude. This Exploratory Assessment (second edition) was primarily a qualitative exercise and not intended to supply statistics as to the numbers of trafficking victims within each country. The purpose of the research was to provide a starting point for the participating countries to examine human trafficking within their local context and to encourage dialogue about how to combat this crime within the region. Human trafficking exists at some level in the eight countries that participated in this study. The potential for human trafficking to grow makes a strong, pro-active approach to addressing the crime an important issue for the nations of the Caribbean and the region as a whole.

Geneva: International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2010. 268p.

By Beth Mullan-Feroze and Kamena Dorling

The Home Office routinely detains people who are subject to immigration control only to release them again back into the community,1,2 causing them significant harm in the process.3 This includes survivors of trafficking and slavery.4 Survivors are detained either after imprisonment, with many having been wrongly convicted for offences they were forced to commit by their traffickers, and/or because they do not have permission to remain in the UK and have not received the support necessary to enable them to disclose that they have been trafficked. For example, many survivors of trafficking are detained for removal after being picked up during raids on brothels, nail bars and cannabis farms. 1 See Immigration Detention in the UK - Migration Observatory - The Migration Observatory. 2 Out of the 25,282 people who entered detention in the year ending March 2022, there were only 3,447 enforced returns (14%) - Home Office National Statistics, How many people are detained or returned?, May 2022 3 Helen Bamber Foundation, The impact of immigration detention on mental health – research summary 4 The terms ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’ are used interchangeably throughout this report, with the primary term being ‘trafficking’. ….

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  The term ‘survivor’ is used throughout this report unless specific reference is being made to Home Office policy, where the language is mirrored and ‘victim’ is used. 5 The Modern Slavery Act 2015 section 49 Statutory Guidance on Identification and Care recognises the impact of trauma and lists the reasons why a person may not self-identify and/or be reluctant to disclose their situation of exploitation. 6 These include the 2016 Shaw Report, the 2018 progress report also undertaken by Stephen Shaw, and the 2019 reports by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and by the Home Affairs Select Committee. 7 Home Office, Draft revised guidance on adults at risk in immigration detention, February 2021 8 Home Office admits new immigration plans may see more trafficking victims locked up | The Independent 9 Home Office National Statistics, How many people are detained or returned? , May 2022 It is well recognised, including in the UK Modern Slavery statutory guidance,5 that survivors can be highly traumatised, and afraid of sharing their experiences of trafficking and exploitation for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to: shame, fear of stigmatisation, and threats from traffickers who may still be controlling them. Survivors are often fearful of authorities and those authorities frequently fail to identify trafficking indicators, or to act appropriately when such indicators are apparent. Numerous government-commissioned or parliamentary reports and inquiries have already highlighted that the Home Office is failing to identify vulnerable people, or even to release people from detention once identified as vulnerable or trafficked.6 Instead of taking urgent steps to address these existing problems, the government has introduced changes to law and policy over the past year that have worsened the situation. While previous Home Office policy stated that victims of trafficking (among other vulnerable groups) were only suitable for detention in exceptional circumstances, in 2021 survivors of trafficking were brought entirely under the scope of the controversial ‘Adults at Risk’ (AAR) policy,7 despite the government recognising that this would result in more survivors of trafficking being detained.8 Under this policy, being a potential and confirmed victim of trafficking is only an ‘indicator’ that someone is an adult at risk who is more vulnerable to suffering harm in detention. The Home Office has stated that this policy should strengthen this presumption against the detention of those who are particularly vulnerable to harm in detention. However, it has actually increased the detention of victims of trafficking who now face increased evidential requirements to show the harm that detention is causing them. In addition, their immigration and criminal offending history, which could be linked to their trafficking experience, is more likely be weighed up in favour of their continued detention rather than understood in the context of the exploitation they have suffered.

London: Helen Bamber Foundation, 2022. 31p.

By Mark Micallet and Matt Herbert

Irregular migration and human smuggling through the Sahel and North Africa are often assessed and framed through the metric of arrivals in Europe by migrants on boats. According to that metric, 2021 was an important year. On the three major routes connecting Africa to Europe – through the Central Mediterranean, the Western Mediterranean and via north-west Africa – 108 541 migrants arrived in Europe that year. This was the highest number witnessed since 2017, when there was a dramatic collapse in arrival numbers following the rapid growth seen between 2013 and 2017.1 Data for the number of migrants intercepted prior to arriving in European waters is not as comprehensive, but likely to be high, with Tunisia and Libya alone recording 54 512 disembarkations in 2021, the highest levels ever recorded by both countries.2 However, focusing only on the metric of disembarkations of migrants in Europe is problematic. Assessed alone, these figures skew the perspective of what is a highly complex situation. Disembarkation levels, while measuring success or failure of a migrant’s journey, otherwise speak to little, if anything, of how the human smuggling ecosystem in North Africa and the Sahel is changing. Moreover, these statistics obscure the significance of dynamics and shifts in zones of both embarkation and transit, which are

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 46p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

This is the fifth global report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), mandated by the General Assembly through the 2010 Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons. The report comes at a time when global suffering has vastly increased vulnerabilities to trafficking. Extreme poverty is expected to rise for the first time in decades, with the continuing COVID-19 crisis casting a long shadow over our societies and economies. With many millions more women, men and children in every part of the world out of school, out of work, without social support and facing diminished prospects, targeted action is urgently needed to stop crimes like trafficking in persons from adding to the pandemic’s toll. In order to act, we need to understand better the factors that facilitate human trafficking. It is in this spirit that I present to you the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2020. The report draws on data from 148 countries and explores issues of particular relevance in the current crisis, including the impact of socio-economic factors, drivers of child trafficking and trafficking for forced labour, and traffickers’ use of the internet.

Vienna: UNODC, 2021. 176p.

By Tallis, Heather M. Olander, Lydia; Laymon, Krystal

From the Executive Summary: "On Day One of his Administration, President Biden joined global leaders in committing to limit global warming through the Paris Climate Agreement [hyperlink]. Nature-based solutions are key to reaching this goal. America's forests absorb carbon dioxide at a rate equal to 10% of U.S. annual greenhouse gas emissions. Some researchers estimate that nature-based solutions can boost progress towards our climate goal by up to 30%. Despite the potential for nature to be an ally in the fight against climate change, nature is in decline. This loss of nature moves us away from climate goals and the other benefits of a healthy natural environment. [...] On Earth Day 2022, the President made nature-based solutions a national priority. In Executive Order 14072 [hyperlink], the President made a broad call for the accelerated deployment of nature-based solutions to tackle climate change and adapt to impacts already underway. The President also called for a report identifying key opportunities for greater use of nature-based solutions across the federal government. The White House's Council on Environmental Quality, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Office of Domestic Climate Policy, in consultation with federal agencies, have responded. This report marks the first time in history that the federal government has taken a hard look at what is needed to ambitiously scale up nature-based solutions. [...] 'This report provides a roadmap with five strategic recommendations for federal agencies to unlock the potential of nature-based solutions and highlights bold Executive Office of the President actions designed to pave the way.'"

Council On Environmental Quality (U.S.); White House Office Of Domestic Climate Policy (U.S.); United States. Office Of Science And Technology Policy. 2022.

By Thomas Pearson

This dissertation consists of three chapters concerning migration and immigration policy. The first chapter studies how increased U.S. deportations affect Mexican labor markets using variation in migrant networks and Secure Communities (SC), a policy which expanded local immigration enforcement. I show that in the short run, deportations increase return migration and decrease monthly earnings for local Mexicans with less than a high school degree. Deportations also increase net outflows within Mexico and emigration to the U.S. The negative short run effects are not driven by falls in remittance income or increases in crime as deportations increase both the share of households receiving remittances and the total amount received and they do not affect homicide rates. The results instead point to increased labor market competition as a result of return migration. Lastly, I show that the negative short run effects of this labor supply shock are larger in localities with worse infrastructure and less access to the financial sector. These results help explain the large negative effects on earnings as many migrants return to less developed regions where these frictions are prevalent. The second chapter studies how immigration status affects crime reporting and victimization. I focus on Deferred Action for Early Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy that temporarily protects youth from deportation and provides work authorization. For identification, I compare likely undocumented immigrants around the policy's age eligibility cut-off over time. DACA eligibility of the victim increased the likelihood that the crime was reported to the police, which is consistent with DACA reducing fears of deportation. DACA eligibility also decreased victimization rates for women. Overall, the results suggest that immigrant legalization increases engagement with police and reduces the likelihood of victimization. The third chapter provides a novel perspective on the Great Migration out of the U.S. South. Using a shift-share identification strategy, my coauthors and I show how millions of Southern white migrants transformed the cultural and political landscape across America. Counties with a larger Southern white share by 1940 exhibited growing support for right-wing politics throughout the 20th century and beyond.

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  Racial animus, religious conservatism, and localist attitudes among the Southern white diaspora hastened partisan realignment as the Republican Party found fresh support for the Southern strategy outside the South. Their congressional representatives were more likely to oppose politically liberal legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and to object to the Electoral College count in 2021. These migrants helped shape institutions that reinforced racial inequity and exclusion, they shared ideology through religious organizations and popular media, and they transmitted an array of cultural norms to non-Southern populations. Together, our findings suggest that Southern white migrants may have forever changed the trajectory of American politics.

Boston, MA: Boston University, 2022. 255p.

By Christian Ambrosius and David Leblang

What causes the demand for entry into the United States? We demonstrate the existence of a vicious cycle of deportation policies and migration between the United States and countries from Latin America and the Caribbean. Our argument is simple: deportation of convicts from the United States leads to violence in the deportee’s home country which, in turn, increases the demand for that country’s natives to seek entry in the United States. We test this argument utilizing a nested research design based on both cross-country data as well as subnational data from the case of El Salvador. For both samples of data, we first estimate the effect of deportations on home country violence. In the second step, we show that the predicted level of home country violence helps explain the demand for entry into the United States.

Unpublished report, 2019. 40p.

By Christian Gunadi

The implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012 grants undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children a temporary reprieve from deportation and authorization to work legally, potentially increasing their opportunity costs of committing crimes. In this article, I examine the impact of DACA on crime. The analysis yields a few main results. First, at the individual level, comparing the difference in the likelihood of being incarcerated between DACA-eligible population with its counterpart before and after the implementation of DACA, I fail to find evidence that DACA statistically significantly affected the incarceration rate of undocumented youth. This result is robust to controlling for the differences in characteristics associated with DACA eligibility, such as age and age at arrival. Second, using the variation in the number of DACA applications approved across the U.S. states, the evidence suggests that DACA is associated with a reduction in property crime rates. An increase of one DACA application approved per 1,000 population is associated with a 1.6% decline in overall property crime rate. Further analysis shows that this reduction is driven by the decline in burglary and larceny rates. This finding suggests that policies that expand the employment opportunities of immigrants may reduce crimes committed for financial gains that often do not lead to incarceration.

Unpublished paper, 2020. 61p,

By The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

The detention of immigrants has skyrocketed in the United States. On a given day in August 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held over 55,000 people in detention – a massive increase from five years ago when ICE held fewer than 30,000 people. Unsurprisingly, the United States has the largest immigration incarceration system in the world. What’s more, the federal government spends more on immigration enforcement than for all principal federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. As of April 2019, Florida had the sixth-largest population of people detained by ICE in the United States, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. On a daily basis, ICE currently detains more than 2,000 noncitizens in the state, mostly in South Florida, which is home to four immigration prisons: Krome Service Processing Center (Krome), owned by ICE; Broward Transitional Center (Broward), operated by GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based for-profit prison corporation; and two county jails, Glades County Detention Center (Glades) and Monroe County Detention Center (Monroe). Despite the fact that immigrants are detained on civil violations, their detention is indistinguishable from the conditions found in jails or prisons where people are serving criminal sentences. The nation’s immigration detention centers are little more than immigrant prisons, where detained people endure harsh – even dangerous – conditions. And reports of recent deaths have only heightened concerns.

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019. 104p.

By Tess Hellgren, Rebecca Cassler, Gracie Willis, Jordan Cunnings, Stephen Manning, Melissa Crow, and Lindsay Jonasson

Since its creation, the contemporary immigration court system has been perpetually afflicted by dysfunction. Today, under the Trump administration, the immigration court system—a system whose important work is vital for our nation's collective prosperity—has effectively collapsed. This report explains how the collapse came to be and why the immigration court system cannot be salvaged in its current form. Decades of experience incontrovertibly demonstrate that the immigration courts have never worked and will never work to, as Chief Justice John Roberts says, “do equal right” to those who appear before them. The immigration courts will never work because the structure of the immigration system is fundamentally flawed. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the attorney general of the United States is required to craft a functioning immigration court system: a system that provides genuine case-by-case adjudications by impartial judges who apply existing law to the evidence on the record following a full and fair hearing. Yet every attorney general has failed to do so. Despite the life-or-death stakes of many immigration cases, the immigration court system that persists today is plagued by decades of neglect and official acquiescence to bias. These trends have created a system where case outcomes have less to do with the rule of law than with the luck of the draw. And under the Trump administration, the attorneys general have gone even further by seeking to actively weaponize the immigration court system against asylum seekers and immigrants of color.

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  Overwhelming evidence shows that the Office of the Attorney General has long allowed immigration judges to violate noncitizens’ rights in a systemic Was the Central American Migrant Caravan created in the United States? , pervasive manner that undermines the integrity of the court system. In speaking with immigration practitioners across the country, the authors of this report have heard first-hand accounts of how the attorney general’s unitary power shapes adjudication practices that are biased, inconsistent, and driven by politics: Judges fail to apply binding legal standards, make decisions based on illegally invented rules, engage in abusive treatment of noncitizens and their counsel, and even decide cases before holding hearings

Portland, OR: Innovation Law Lab; Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019. 40p.

By Ashley N. Muchow

Toward the end of the 20th century, the U.S. witnessed a wave of immigration made up of both legal residents and a large undocumented population that have since settled, started families, and developed strong community ties. Modern immigration policy has concentrated heavily on enforcement in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, and a growing body of research suggests these escalations may carry unintended social consequences.

This dissertation consists of three interrelated studies that seek to disentangle the structural factors that affect levels of economic and social integration of minority and immigrant populations. Using data from Los Angeles, this dissertation focuses on two aspects of public life critical to productive and healthy living: the labor market and public safety. The first chapter considers how undocumented immigrants fare in the labor market. The second examines whether recent escalations in immigration enforcement influenced the willingness of Latino immigrants to engage with the police. Finally, the third chapter evaluates the effectiveness of community policing in reducing crime and increasing police engagement in predominately-Latino neighborhoods.

Overall, this dissertation suggests that enforcement-focused immigration policy intensifies barriers to integration and may jeopardize public safety, but there are tools localities can use to improve conditions in affected communities. I find both real and perceived exclusions limit immigrants' access to the formal labor market and law enforcement, and conclude with evidence of a promising approach to improve public safety in minority communities. These findings stress the need for federal immigration policies that balance enforcement with maintaining resident confidence in public institutions and encouraging the well-being and advancement of vulnerable populations.

Santa Monica, Calif: RAND, 2019. 122p.

By Jane Kilpatrick, Chris Jones

The EU's proposed Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act aims to address the risks of certain uses of AI and to establish a legal framework for its trustworthy deployment, thus stimulating a market for the production, sale and export of various AI tools and technologies. However, certain technologies or uses of technology are insufficiently covered by or even excluded altogether from the scope of the AI Act, placing migrants and refugees - people often in an already-vulnerable position - at even greater risk of having their rights violated

London: Statewatch, 2022. 46p.

By The University of Nottingham Rights Lab

This report presents the findings and recommendations arising from an 18-month research project, conducted between February 2021 and July 2022, which used feminist, participatory, action research methods to investigate the vulnerability to modern slavery of paid, migrant, live-in care workers in London. Live-in care represents a specific segment of the adult social care sector in England. Live-in care workers stay in their client’s home and provide around-the-clock presence and personal assistance as required with activities of daily living (for example, getting around, dressing and washing) to enable people with care and support needs to live independently in the community or remain at home with intensive and often specialised support (as opposed to moving to a care home for example). Our research sought to understand better the risks and drivers of vulnerability to modern slavery and severe forms of labour exploitation. There have been long-standing concerns about severe forms of exploitation in the UK in the care sector. The Director of Labour Market Enforcement has identified adult social care as a sector where the danger of labour exploitation is high, with live-in and agency care workers believed to be at particular risk. A specialised form of domestic work, live-in carers delivering personalised care in the home are considered vulnerable. A total of 14 semi-structured peer interviews and two peer-led focus groups were conducted with live-in migrant care workers from Hungary, Poland, South Africa and Zimbabwe. An additional three practice interviews were carried out by peer researchers with each other, which informed the research but were not used in the analysis.

London: Trust for London, 2022. 43p.

By Global Detention Project

Australia has a severe and punitive immigration detention system. It’s: policy of mandatory, indefinite detention does not distinguish between adults or children, visa violators or asylum seekers. Dozens have languished in detention for more than a decade. Private contractors, paid billions to operate centres, have been continually criticized for abusing detainees and failing to provide services. Observers have repeatedly denounced the detention regime, including its offshore operations, as violating human rights and international law. The price tag for maintaining the system is astronomical: It costs nearly $400,000 per detainee/year compared to less than $50,000 for community housing. But the physical and mental costs are even higher: Experts have documented the devastating impact of prolonged detention on the health of detainees, which has led to high levels of self-harm, long-term illnesses, and severe psychological disorders like schizophrenia.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Detention Project, 2022. 58p.