Societal and Economic Elements of Trafficking in Human Beings into the European Union

The European Union (EU) is an early signatory of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. During the past decade, the EU has been undertaking various measures to conform to the "Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons". The mitigating strategy has been largely based on the enforcement of existing and new laws, inside as well as outside of the EU. To date, the results have been largely ineffective. Addressing the societal and economic elements of home and host countries could be a more enduring means to alleviate the problem of trafficking in human beings.


Introduction 1
Trafficking in Persons is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.
- Article 3,paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, adopted by General Assembly resolution 55/25 of 15 November 2000.
Trafficking in human beings (THB) is a heinous crime.Its many manifestations have become an acute societal problem with the advent of the modern age of international commerce.In essence, THB epitomizes unfettered international trade in which a commodity (viz., humans) is moved from one geographic location to another geographic location, even though the practice embodies many criminal elements of the above-cited UN Protocol.
Defining such terms as fraud, deception, etc. in the 2000 United Nations (UN) protocol is elusive.Society has varying views of these practices at different times.The fundamental issues are what constitute human trafficking and how the practice could be abated.This study examines the underlying societal and economic issues of human trafficking, from historical and socialeconomic perspectives, particularly within the European Union (EU) context.

Societal dimensions
In the broadest term, legal or clandestine movement of people has become a business like any other "supply and demand" commodity business.Money is paid, in cash or by credit, for services rendered or goods delivered.Terms and conditions of fee-for-service agreement to recruit and to deliver labourers can vary widely, among the purchasers, brokers and sellers.In some instances, there is vertical integration by one or more business participants improve supply chain management.
Figure 1 illustrates two basic models of the THB trade.The distinction between the two basic THB business models is often blurred.Public-private partnership also occurs frequently.Trafficking in humans is categorically "legal" if it is sanctioned by the State.In this instance, malpractice in recruitment and abuses in the work place are often ignored by the State, for reason of national interest (Escobar 2004;KMU 2011).As in any other businesses, the State or private "THB corporation" will strive to increase profit above everything else (Bakan 2004).This profit-seeking objective becomes a natural pathological pursuit.In the State enterprise, the State also gains in direct and indirect taxes when the home-country workers are remitting money from overseas.Some examples of State complicity in the perpetuation of THB activities are described below:

Establishing national wealth
In the 19 th century, the colonial European states actively promoted the importation of indentured labourers from India into the Caribbean region to replace newly-freed slaves working in sugar cane plantations (Brereton 1989;Burac 1995).Recruitment practices were deceptive.The actual working conditions were harsh, and the terms of indenture were often so onerous to result in unending servitude.The subsequent human suffering and labour servitude of the practice is conveniently ignored by the State.The purposeful outcome of THB was to continue the uninterrupted provision of economic wealth for the European colonial masters.The consequence of this past practice of THB (meeting all criteria of the UN Protocol) is still apparent today in the Caribbean region.

Social-economic adjustment policy
An example of non-trade based human trafficking was the exportation of more than 100,000 children from England to Canada and Australia for work and education between 1870 and 1938 (Harrison 1997).It was a "legallyenacted" social-economic adjustment policy of the State.In practice, these children were indentured labourers with virtually no pay except for food and lodging.Many were abused physically and over-worked.The promise then was a better life away from England.This State-promoted program of exportation of children would have easily met the UN criteria for THB.

Economic expansion of the host country
In the 1960s, rapid economic growth in (West) Germany created an acute labour shortage.Moreover, as Germany became more prosperous, its citizens do not wish to perform manual tasks of sweeping streets and cleaning public toilets any longer.Migration brokers and labour recruiters in collaboration with the West German and Turkish governments were deployed to supply unskilled workers as "gastarbeiter" for the lowest level jobs in German manufacturing and service industries (von Weizsäcker 2008;Danisman 2011).This action led to the development of the modern German industrial state.The willing Turkish workers were commonly misled to sign onerous contracts with the labour recruiters, for an opportunity to work in wealthy Germany.Abuses in the work place were frequently ignored by the State.It was only in the 1990s before the imported Turkish workers and their German-born descendants were granted some basic citizens' rights.Today, there are about 4 million Turkish-origin persons living in Germany, about 5% of the total population (Prevezanos 2011).
The development of the modern state of Singapore depends on, among other things, domestics (essentially young females) imported routinely from the Philippines and Indonesia to serve the Singaporeans who are busy making money in international trade and commerce.The recruiters frequently publicized the opportunity of good pay with good working conditions.In reality, these domestics are treated largely as lowly-paid slaves (Hodal 2011).For example, they are required to work 10 to 12 hours per day and 7 days per week without any time off.In many instances, these domestics are physically abused at the whims of their masters and mistresses.They are frequently locked in at night to prevent any sexual activities that might cause troublesome pregnancies.And when the contract is over, they are sent back immediately to their home countries.In essence, it is another form of human trafficking as defined by the UN Protocol which is in practice openly and unabashedly.Notes: (1) Strip-mining of highly skilled workers from the home country is often promoted as a progressive policy by the host country (Payton 2011).
(2) Non payment of borrowed money means lives of family member will be threatened in the home country (Werner 2011).(3) "Illegal" immigrant workers are working under constant threat of exposure to government authorities for deportation.The onerous payment terms remain unchanged, even if the person has been deported back to the home country (Walia 2006;NOII 2011).( 4) More than 100,000 "unaccompanied" children were exported from Britain to Canada and Australia as indentured labourers between 1870 and 1938 (Harrison 1997).( 5) Twenty-first century example: exportation of skilled and unskilled Filipinos to work as domestics in many high-income countries around the World, with remittances accounting for nearly 10% of Philippine GDP in 2010 (NOVA 2005; de Guzman 2011).

Temporary domestic labour shortage
In the 1990s, Canada had a foreign worker visa program based on sectoral domestic labour shortage.There was an apparent shortage of burlesque (nude) dancers in Eastern Canada (Struck 2004).Free-enterprise commerce always emerges to fill the service demand in the form of immigration lawyers, employment agencies and manpower brokers.Enterprising entrepreneurs were able subsequently to obtain numerous work visas for young girls recruited from economically-poor villages in Romania.Business is business.Because the supply exceeded demand, the labour-supply brokers could set severe terms and conditions freely.The primary enticement for these women was an opportunity to gain bountiful economic wealth in Canada, after they have paid off the costs of travel, lodging and administration incurred by the labour supply agency.In reality, the earned income was so meagre that the enormous debt for the work opportunity in Canada could never be paid off even with the imported dancers taking additional side employment of prostitution.This mundane labour-supply scheme was operated very efficiently in a transparent fashion under State guidance.Business is business.Because of the prevailing commodity economics, there was no market force to provide better working conditions, e.g., higher pay, for Romanian burlesque dancers in Eastern Canada.

Unintended policy consequences
In 2008, the EU had mandated the use of 10% biofuel in transportation fuels by 2020.To date, the implementation of this policy has resulted in, among the things, the virtual enslavement of penurious people in northeastern Brazil to toil in newly developed sugar cane fields (Wong 2009;Wong 2010).The cane sugar is being produced solely for the production of ethanol for the increased demand of biofuel in Europe.The exploitive labour indenture meets the criteria of the UN protocol unequivocally.

Economic dimensions
EU member state with an acute labour shortage for certain low-paying unskilled jobs that its own nationals do not want promotes the formation of THB practices.THB becomes legalized human migration into the EU under such regimes as "cheap" Turkish Gastarbeiter in German industries (Danisman 2011), "cheap" Chinese workers into Italian garment workshops (Ceccagno 2003;Ehlers 2006;Donado 2010), and "cheap" African migrant workers in the Spanish agricultural sector (Bozonnet 2010;Lawrence 2011).The appalling conditions of mass deployment of migrant workers, legal or illegal, in the Spanish agricultural sector would certainly meet the definition of THB of the UN Protocol (Lawrence 2011).
"Low pay" in the EU means very "high pay" in the low-income home countries.The unskilled labour pool for the EU is Africa, Asia, Latin America as well as countries on the "new" eastern frontier of the EU, viz., Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.
At present, a practical index to quantify the extent and propensity of THB activities has yet to be developed.Comparative economic status of a country is a convenient proxy indicator for the characterization of THB activities.Figure 2 illustrates the gross economic deprivation of selected home countries with high THB activities.It is particularly important to note that the average gross national income per capita (GNI) comprising all incomes including remittances from abroad was used to illustrate economic disparity relative to the EU.Furthermore, because of the highly distorted income distribution pattern in most of these cited home countries, the actual per capita GNI may be considerably worse for a large part of the population.Increased THB activities can thus be expected out of people's desperation.
With the combination of unmet underlying demand for unskilled labourers (in the EU) and continuance of gross economic disparity, people will seek whatever means to reach the EU.People are desperate (Govan 2008;Short 2009).The social consequences of penurious migrant workers to home country families are enormous (Delgado-Wise and Guarnizo 2007; Anon. 2011a;McGuinness 2011).As economic deprivation of the home-country citizens becomes the principal driving force behind migration, free-market capitalism will inevitably cause the emergence of profitable THB businesses.
Similar migration patterns induced by extreme economic deprivation exist elsewhere regionally in the World.Figure 3   Any delineation of "illegal immigration" and "human trafficking" is futile.Throttling the inflow of foreign workers often drives the labour-supply business into "illegality" and THB will always re-emerge in still more despicable forms.For the penurious people, it is nearly always credit payment for services rendered, i.e., buy now and pay later.The credit payment terms and conditions are usually very onerous to result in virtual slavery for the person seeking a better economic life in the host country.It may be noted even as the guest workers are regularized with legal work permits, substantial instances of exploitation exist in "advanced" countries such as Canada, UK and USA (Anon. 2006;Vogel 2007;Parkes 2008;Clancy 2011).
It is instructive to note that emigration of relatively wealthy people from the home country to the EU has never been a problem.Cash can be paid up front for services rendered by immigration lawyers and similar commercial entities.It is instructive to note that at the same time, many wealthy countries thrive on strip-mining the best educated and wealthy people from the home country (Castro Ruz 2011;Payton 2011).This government policy leads inevitably to the severe depletion of talented people in the home countries where trained leadership and technical skills are acutely needed.

Current remedial measures
Since 2000, the EU has been funding many programs for intensive training of border control officials, increase in capacity-building activities and enhanced incarceration would appear to be futile exercises.Table 1 shows the range of activities undertaken by several example EU member states currently.
Additionally, the European Commission has been funded several onpurpose programs to counter THB on a worldwide basis.The currently-active EU-funded anti-THB programs for African states are given in Table 2.Note that none of the program appears to be directed to addressing the fundamental THB issue of economic deprivation.The anti-THB funds have largely been expended on, among other things, the monetary enrichment of executives of quangos and charities of the host country and their compatriots in the home country.To a certain extent, anti-THB is becoming a "growth industry".
The effectiveness of these European anti-THB initiatives is also generally recognized to be beset by corruption in the home countries.Support funds expended in these activities "disappear" routinely through corruption.As shown in Figure 4, the correlation between the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and the per capita gross national income (GNI) suggests that rectification of economic deprivation might alleviate the underlying cause of endemic corruption (Wong 2012).Although there is a correlation between CPI and HDI (as well as inequality-adjusted HDI), GNI was deemed to be a better reflection for the defining element of modern capitalistic societies.Life expectancy and education attainment elements of the Human Development Index (HDI) are fundamentally no independent variables.In a cash economy, higher life expectancy (syn., better health care) and higher level of educational attainment can always be purchased with higher financial wealth, i.e., higher personal GNI.The case advocated by Zurlo (2006) of linking better education in Mexico to lower (im)migration to the USA is somewhat weak.On the contrary, the Zurlo selected data on Ireland, Mexico and South Korea actually indicated high rate of increase in per capita GDP to be inversely correlated to lower rate of legal migration to the USA.People will have obviously less reason to emigrate.
Note the clustering of African countries in the low HDI and GNI ranges in Figure 4. Correspondingly, corruption is correlated to be highest.It is recognized that correlation does not always imply causation.However, the needs of survival arising from economic hardship in any society based largely on monetarized commerce might be the driving force behind corruption at every level of society.This correlation provides a critical insight into the failure of the "money for law enforcement" in the home country to stop THB.
It is interesting to note that the latest justification of using developing countries as a base for ensuring unfettered consumption of resources in Europe is the construction of a 12-km 2 solar farm in the Moroccan desert (Hickman and Gersmann, 2011).It is claimed that this renewable energy project would help to "halt immigration into Europe" by lifting the region's youthful population out of poverty and unemployment.This claim would large work force.On the basis of past record, only the ruling elites of the home country will reap virtually all the benefits of economic collaboration with European businesses in this project.Economic deprivation of the home country will not be improved significantly.expresses the income accrued to the residents of a country including international flows such as remittances; it is considered to be an accurate measure of a country's economic welfare (UNDP, 2011).

Alternative remedial measures
To date, official EU actions against THB appear to have largely ignored the underlying driving force of THB (EU 2011).Increasing gross economic disparity is a major societal problem (Golpira 2011).As given previously in Table 1, virtually all major activities of the EU and its member states have been devoted to interception, investigations, law enforcement and meetings.None of the current anti-THB activities in Africa as funded by the EU could realistically be expected to curtail THB substantially as the underlying causes are not redressed.For example, "institution building" is somewhat unmeaningful as it would only establish costly government departments for enhanced law enforcement and more severe incarceration.Penurious people are still induced to migrate, by any means, for economic reasons.
There are at least three major remedial approaches which could be undertaken by the EU to address the THB problem directly:

Complete freedom of movement of people
This strategy is similar to the mobility rights of all EU citizens.There is no restriction of people moving from a low-income EU member state to a highincome EU member state.It may be noted that prior to the expansion of EU-15 to EU-25, THB was very prevalent in the former Soviet states.For example, Latvians and Lithuanians were migrating by whatever means available, including "illegal" fee-for-service operations, in desperation to seek a better life in wealthy EU-15 member states.However, after the formation of EU-25, clandestine THB operations in these new EU member states (former Soviet states) had dropped precipitously.Immigration became legal and "no one is illegal" anymore.
Implementation of this remedial strategy in the present EU would be very problematic (Hewitt 2010;Elliot and Kollewe 2011;Wasserab 2011), even though the EU is actively promoting the globalization of free trade in goods and services.Total free movement of people is surreptitiously excluded.This is a constant fear that free movement of people (especially those from outside the EU) would overwhelm the local population of the host country to result in massive social unrest (MIS 2010).Extreme xenophobia along racial and religious lines is always lurking just below the surface of a seemingly peaceful EU society.Witness the recent mass deportation of Roma (EU citizens!)from France to Romania despite its obvious contravention of several EU fundamental rights including the freedom of movement across the EU and no discrimination on ethnic grounds (Traynor 2010).One year later, rectification of this violation of EU human rights has been expediently shelved for political reasons (Anon. 2011b;Kostadinova 2011;Rettman 2011).It seems that many EU member states are in denial that Roma are real EU citizens.Similarly EU citizens of Islamic faith are targeted with new civil restrictions in several EU member states which would clearly abrogate their EU-guaranteed fundamental rights and freedom (MIS 2010).

Curtailing the demand in host countries
Inside the EU, there is at the ever present demand for "cheap labourers" for jobs that are dirty, dangerous and demeaning.For example, domestics in the hotel industry in Finland are now largely migrant workers imported from the Philippines, Ukraine and Russia.The Finns do not want to take these menial jobs.Because there is no state-mandated minimum wage scale in Finland, the employer (with employment agencies) is free to set wages at near or even below subsistence levels.But such low wages are many times higher than those could be earned in the home country of the migrant workers.Thus, this economic situation sets the platform for prospective migrants to pay whatever price to reach the "high-wage" countries so that their families could survive at home.If there is no demand for such labourers in the host country, then there would certainly be a significant decrease in the commerce of supplying labourers.It is a simple neoliberal economic theorem of supply and demand.
Realization of this remedial strategy is fraught with many practical problems.The social and economic expectations of EU citizens, especially those in the wealthier EU-15 member states, would need to be changed substantially.Voluntary abandonment of their accustomed extravagant lifestyles could not be expected.

Improving the economy of home countries
If the economy of the home country was improved substantially, there would be less incentive for people to emigrate.It is generally recognized that people would prefer to stay in their homeland for cultural and social reasons if there were no compelling economic circumstances to cause migration (Llana 2010).
An anti-THB strategy lesson may be learned from the pattern of intra-EU labour migration in the early years of accession of the "other EU-12".Many citizens from the low-income member states were migrating "legally" into the EU-15 to seek a better economic life (Fihel 2010;Kolyako 2011).However, as the economy of Poland improves during the past few years, many Polish migrants in the UK are returning "home" (de Quetteville 2008; Anon.2010).Indeed, it has become increasing difficult to hire Polish or Lithuanians to be minimum-wage domestics in Ireland.The Irish minimum wage does not provide a sufficient incentive for migration any longer.Note that there is virtually no significant migration of British to Gambia or French to Burkina Faso.The axiom is that citizens of wealthy countries do not migrate en masse to poor countries.
The present modality of foreign technical and financial assistance only perpetuates the fiscal enslavement of the home country.Financial debt of the home country becomes intolerably large to result in devastating economic collapse and further social upheaval, which in turn to result in more THB activities.At present, foreign aids are not provided generously and unconditionally.Most of the EU foreign aids are provided with the principal aim of furthering the converged geopolitical and economic hegemonies of EU states and big businesses.Regrettably, many member states include armament trade as a major component of foreign aid to the home countries.

Concluding remarks
Human trafficking is a manifestation of economic deprivation in the home country.People are desperate to find whatever means available to seek an opportunity for a better life elsewhere.It is evident that remedying the severe economic deprivation in home countries would be a major step forward in solving the human trafficking problem.The underlying issues of demand-side economics in the host countries should also need to be addressed concurrently.
No amount of armed interception, "capacity building and training", implementation of relevant laws, harsh incarceration and even execution could eradicate human trafficking.These means should only be considered secondary tools to combat THB.Intuitively, human migration, legal or "illegal", could be reduced if the economy of the home country could be improved.
In fulfilling its obligation to the UN Protocol against THB, the EU might undertake a global leadership role to revise the anti-THB strategy completely.EU as well as member states should re-assess and re-direct its policy and budget priorities, inter-linking, among others, agriculture, energy, environment, foreign aid, human resources, justice and trade, to provide unconditional generous technical and economic assistance to the home countries.In this fashion, significant progress in the mitigation of the global THB problem could be achieved progressively and enduringly.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Substantial economic disparity between home countries and the EU Source: UNDP, 2011

Table 1 . Example major external anti-THB activities undertaken by selected EU-15 member states
Adapted from Council of the European Union, 2011.