1. Status matters? Precarious lives
and forced labour
Defining forced labour
‘All work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty
and for which the said person has not offered himself [sic] voluntarily’ (ILO Convention
No. 29, 1930).
Developed into six elements of forced labour:
- Threats of actual physical or sexual violence.
- Restriction of movement of the worker or confinement to a very limited area.
- Debt bondage, where the worker works to pay off debt.
- Withholding wages or refusing to pay the worker.
- Retention of passports and identity documents.
- Threat of denunciation to the authorities (ILO, 2005).
‘The reality of forced labour is not a static one, but a continuum of experiences and
situations... [and] a continuum should therefore be used to describe the complexity of
the exploitative environments and concrete individual situations of workers’.
(Skrivankova 2010 : 4)
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2. Forced labour and UK immigration policy:
status matters? (Dwyer, Lewis, Scullion, Waite, 2011 JRF)
Aims
• investigate the links between immigration status and migrants'
vulnerability to forced labour;
• explore how socio-legal status (specific rights to residence, work
and social welfare) impacts on migrants' risk of forced labour, and;
• review UK immigration policy, to assess how far it may reduce or
facilitate the use of forced labour.
Conclusions
Wider processes of migration can make some migrants particularly
vulnerable to forced labour, compounding the role of socio-legal
status.
http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/forced-labour-and-uk-immigration
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3. labour migrants
- EEA
- A8
- A2
Socio-legal status: complex and conditional rights
-TCNs
LABOUR
MIGRANTS
-EEA
-A2
-A8
-TCN
IREGULAR
MIGRANTS
AS/R
-Ireg. entry
-asylum seeker STUDENTS
-Trafficked
-Refugee, HP, -EEA
-Smuggled
DL -TCNs
-refused AS -Withdraw visa
-Overstayers
FAMILY
JOINERS
-EEA
-TCN
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4. Points of vulnerability
Prior to arrival After Migration
Poverty and debt Socio-legal status
Pressures to support family Lack of knowledge of rights
Low expectations of treatment Lack of access to information
at work Isolation from society
Lack of or low levels of Multiple dependence on
education employer
Low social position Loss of, or change in,
Mode of recruitment into employment
employment Debt accrued in migration
Mode of entry Pressures to remit
‘Loss of face’ in country of
origin
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5. Precarious lives: asylum seekers and refugees' experiences of forced
labour (Dwyer, Hodkinson, Lewis and Waite, 2011-2012 ESRC)
Precarity as an exploratory concept
Five linked objectives:
1. To investigate the key factors and processes that render AS/R vulnerable to forced
labour and consider how they might be challenged.
2. To explore the ways in which socio-legal status (i.e. 'asylum seeker', 'refused asylum
seeker', 'refugee' status) and gender may mediate both the necessity to engage in,
and the experiences of, forced labour.
3. To advance understandings of the notion of precarity and review its appropriateness in
respect of AS/R engaged in forced labour.
4. To consider different meanings and interpretations of forced labour.
5. To allow the voices of AS/R with direct experience of forced labour to inform debate on
appropriate policies and interventions designed to prevent forced labour.
Work is ongoing: see http://precariouslives.org.uk/
Funded by ESRC grant RES 062-23-2895
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