The Neglected Norm: Trafficking for Forced Labour

Abstract

One criticism of the norm literature in IR is that it tends to avoid discussion of ‘the norm that failed’ (). This chapter addresses this oversight by analysing the reasons for the relative neglect of the issue of trafficking for forced labour in anti-trafficking activism. As has become clear in preceding chapters, the work of anti-trafficking moral entrepreneurs, transnational socialisers and domestic adopters has, for one reason or another, been overwhelmingly concerned with the issue of trafficking for sexual exploitation. While lip service is paid to the other exploitative ends that can result from human trafficking as defined in Palermo, such as forced labour, this chapter will explore why this element of the anti-trafficking norm has failed to emerge, cascade and internalise to any great degree.

Although there are NGOs and intergovernmental organisations that lobby on issues of forced labour, they are outnumbered but also much overshadowed by the heightened moral proselytism surrounding ‘things that involve sex’ (Peters, Anthropological Quarterly, 86(1), 221–256, 2013). However, there are other reasons for neglect of this facet of the anti-trafficking norm. These include the gendering of ideas about human agency, which consign women to victimhood and innocence while expecting agency and rationality of men. Men are therefore much more likely to be deemed ‘smuggled migrants’ (and so agents in their own irregular border crossing) than women who are recognisable as ‘trafficking victims’. Importantly too, the chapter also reverts to arguments about state interests and norm acceptability. Contemporary neo-liberal economic globalisation is built on a great contradiction: the free movement of everything except people (Munck, Third World Quarterly, 29(7), 1227–1246, 2008). Yet, at the same time the developed world relies on immigrants from the poorer parts of the world to undertake the ‘3D jobs’ of the ‘liquid world’ (Baumann, Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Cambridge: Polity, 2004). In this contemporary capitalist context states are chary of agreeing to a norm defining what constitutes ‘unacceptable’ exploitation or ‘decent work’. This chapter therefore provides analysis as to why a norm might flounder in the lifecycle when it lacks moral sponsors and fails to garner state interests.