Human trafficking for labour exploitation: The survivors’ perspective
| Published date | 01 May 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02697580231167907 |
| Author | Carolina Villacampa |
| Date | 01 May 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02697580231167907
International Review of Victimology
2024, Vol. 30(2) 240 –260
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/02697580231167907
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Human trafficking for labour
exploitation: The survivors’
perspective
Carolina Villacampa
Universitat de Lleida, Spain
Abstract
Despite being the second most prevalent form of human trafficking, human trafficking for labour
exploitation remains a victimisation process that has received little scholarly attention. This
qualitative study, based on data from in-depth interviews with labour trafficking survivors in
Spain, seeks to apprehend how they experienced that situation while giving them a voice and
adopting a survivor-centric approach to the phenomenon. To this end, it first analyses from
their perspective the process of their enslavement, as well as the feelings it engendered: from
recruitment, to transfer, to exploitation, including the objective circumstances and means used. It
then analyses the essential aspects of the process leading to their liberation, examining how the
situation was ended, the type of assistance received and desired, and the recourse they had to a
criminal law response. It concludes with a series of proposals for how labour trafficking should be
institutionally addressed in view of the survivors’ suggestions.
Keywords
Labour trafficking, labour exploitation, liberation, survivors, experience
Introduction
Trafficking in human beings (THB) for labour exploitation (LE), or labour trafficking (LT), is the
process described in international law by the Palermo Protocol (Article 3), the Council of Europe
Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings or Warsaw Convention (Article 4), and
Directive 2011/36/EU on preventing and combating THB and protecting its victims (Article 2).
This process includes the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of persons, by
coercive, fraudulent, or abusive means, for the specific purpose of exploiting the victims through
forced labour or services, slavery, or practices similar to slavery.
LT is the second most prevalent form of THB, after sex trafficking (ST), if not the first, based
on the most recent estimates. The latest statistical reports on THB show that LT ranks second in
Corresponding author:
Carolina Villacampa, Department of Law, Universitat de Lleida, Jaume II, 73, 25001 Lleida, Spain.
Email: carolina.villacampa@udl.cat
1167907IRV0010.1177/02697580231167907International Review of VictimologyVillacampa
research-article2023
Article
Villacampa 241
percentage of victims, accounting for 38% of all victims, according to the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime (UNODC, 2020), or 22%, according to the European Union (European
Commission-Migration and Home Affairs, 2020). However, in its most recent estimate, the
International Labour Organization reports that modern slavery has increased globally in recent
years and that most of the people subjected to forced labour in the world are subjected to LE (17.3
million) as opposed to sexual exploitation (SE) (6.3 million) (International Labour Organization,
2022). Yet despite its prevalence, to date LT has received less scholarly attention than ST. A 2018
review of empirical studies on LT published between 2000 and 2015 found that the existing litera-
ture is limited, fragmented, and underdeveloped; meets minimal academic standards; is highly
descriptive; and involves the collection of evidence of little value (Cockbain et al., 2018). Hence,
the calls for empirical research to focus on this type of trafficking (Russell, 2018).
Field studies conducted in the United States and, especially, Europe, particularly in the last
decade, show LT victimisation processes in several productive sectors characterised by low profes-
sional training requirements and high seasonality. These include agriculture and domestic service
(Correa da Silva and Cingolani, 2020; Murphy, 2014; Villacampa, 2022a; Villacampa et al., 2023),
hospitality (Ollus et al., 2013; Van Meeteren and Hiah, 2020; Van Meeteren and Wiering, 2019),
the food industry (Davies, 2019, 2020a, 2020b; Skrivankova, 2014), construction (Skrivankova,
2014; Vandekerckhove et al., 2003), and cleaning services (Davies and Ollus, 2019; Jokinen et al.,
2011; Ollus, 2016).
While empirical studies on this form of THB are still scant, studies conducted with data obtained
directly from the accounts of people who have actually experienced this type of victimisation are
even fewer. The complexity of gaining access to victims (Fernandes et al., 2021a, 2021b) or even
the difficulties they exhibit in recognising themselves as such (Van Meeteren and Hiah, 2020) may
explain the scarcity of such analyses. However, in a regulatory context in which the international
legal instruments created to combat trafficking, especially the Warsaw Convention, adopt a human
rights perspective to approach this reality and highlight the need to address it from a victim-centric
perspective, giving a voice to THB victims is essential. This is because such a strategy aims to
address the phenomenon holistically and eradicate its causes, devising a response to it based on
what is known as the ‘3P policy’, that is, prevention, protection, and prosecution, which prioritises
protecting victims and their welfare over prosecuting crimes (Obokata, 2006; Villacampa, 2012).
Making this approach effective requires placing victims, and the recognition of their rights, at
the centre of the institutional response to THB. Ultimately, it calls for going even further, not only
giving a voice to those who have been victimised by such processes to understand what we are
facing (Murphy, 2014), but also adopting what has been called a survivor-centric, rather than vic-
tim-centric, approach to managing this reality (Nicholson, 2019). This means assuming a model
that, far from offering a paternalistic response to human trafficking and exploitation, chooses a
cultural and contextual one (Mishra, 2015), an approach to these phenomena and to the institu-
tional responses offered centred on the perspective of survivors, whose voices must become central
to setting the anti-trafficking and anti-slavery agenda (Nicholson, 2019).
As noted, to date, few field studies have reported on the process endured by the people subjected
to this type of victimisation or how it has been institutionally addressed. On the rare occasion that
access has been gained to victims, as is customary in other trafficking-related field studies, the
focus has been on ST victims (Murphy, 2014; Russell, 2018). The few existing narratives of survi-
vors of LT or the forced provision of services have focused on giving an account of the trafficking
process – from recruitment, to transfer and, ultimately, exploitation – and the means and
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