Mapping Vulnerability Amid Mixed Migration Flows. The Reality of Severe Labor Exploitation from a Human Rights Perspective

Migrants in mixed flows suffer severe conditions of exploitation as a result of multiple factors. These include experiences of indebtment, violence, forced labor and prostitution in countries of origin and transit, and dangerous and traumatic migration journeys. Legal and political restrictions on their status and rights limit their freedom of movement, reducing their individual social capital and resources at all stages of migration, particularly in countries of destination. Immigration policies have enormous human costs. One of these is represented by the pervasive reality of exploitation. Mixed migratory flows have challenged the idea that trafficking victims are a specific group of migrants and made evident the transversal nature of severe exploitation. Labor exploitation in particular is emerging in the current period with a different attention not only in the public agenda but also in the institutional one.

However, whilst sexual exploitation of migrants has been widely researched, labor exploitation, particularly of women, has not received the same attention; probably for reasons related to the economic dynamics of some sectors of the labor market and mobility in migrant-receiving countries that reproduce gender division of labor and social roles. Practically, there is still not enough research on the linkage between the legal or the irregular status of migrants and their insecurities. In particular, there is a gap in research on the ways in which gender inequalities intersect with “insecurities” and isolation in the countries of destination, reproducing a sexual division of roles also in the conditions of exploitation. The lack of assistance and the important shortcomings in the integration mechanisms, together with the difficulties in obtaining a legal residence status, continue to result in a lowering of standards where exploitation and systematic violation of basic human rights create or increase vulnerability. Vulnerability may be intensified by restrictive migration laws and policies, lack of knowledge on rights in the host country, limited possibility of employment or income generating opportunities resulting in poverty and economic insecurity, poor housing and accommodation, and restricted access to social services and benefit.

This Research Topic seeks both empirical and theoretical articles on labor exploitation, addressing public policy restrictions on migrant movements and their outcomes. Submissions should consider the gaps in knowledge concerning the linkage between the different positions in terms of legal or illegal status of migrants, the barriers they face in achieving a resident permit, the failure of intervention in terms of support and social integration and more generally the failure in fully respecting their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and their need to live their lives in safety and dignity. In other terms the Research Topic seeks articles focused not only on the breakdown of sociological and legal distinctions which migrants are labeled, but also on the paths that, once they arrive in the destination countries, are granted to them precisely on the basis of the status recognized during the identification process. In fact, serious labor exploitation seems to be a transversal experience beyond all differences and labels.