La institucionalidad somete

Despite the rapid increase of both academic and popular attention to trafficking over the last two decades, the ongoing problems of how to accurately and appropriately measure and define human trafficking have not yet been fully resolved. Trafficking is a clandestine activity, intentionally hidden from official systems, and as such the people affected are impossible to count directly. The impossibility of measuring the size of the problem or gathering accurate numbers, as well as differing methodologies and criteria for inclusion in global estimates, mean that “statistics on trafficking worldwide are notoriously unreliable” (Brennan, 2014b, p. 117). Human trafficking was initially defined as “forced movement” into exploitative labour, in an attempt to address transnational crime. However, current definitions in practice usually include the subsequent exploitation, and there is a great deal of overlap and confusion between the terms human trafficking, modern slavery, and forced labour (Allain & Bales, 2012; Choi-Fitzpatrick, 2015; Chuang, 2005; Musto, 2009;

UNODC, 2016, p. 15; US State Department, 2014, p. 29).11 _{The term “human trafficking”}

is important, however, not only because it is used to include other descriptors, but because it has been so widely ratified internationally through the UN Palermo Protocol, with a universal set of legal obligations under a single, shared definition (UNODC, 2000, 2016, p. 16).

The United Nations definition, from the UN Palermo Protocol, has now been generally accepted as the universal standard on which, in theory, most laws, policies and approaches are based. According to this definition, there are three criteria that must be met:

1. The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, 2. 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,

11_{The ILO’s (2017) recent document, for example, used the terms “modern slavery” and “forced labour”}

almost synonymously; their global overview, however, included only forced labour including sexual labour,

and forced marriage. Their exclusion of underage/“child” soldiers, which fall under the definition of human

trafficking, is relevant to this study and another reason I have referred to “human trafficking” rather than

24

3. 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 (UNODC, 2006, p. 51, numbering and emphasis added).

In this thesis I use the UN’s definition as the international legal standard, on which the Philippines’ legislation has also been based. However, in doing so, I also explore its

limitations and ambiguities in the context of actual experiences which do not necessarily fit neatly into the categories defined above.

Each of this definition’s criteria is open to a great deal of interpretation in law and practice. Researchers have explored some of the nuances and continuums of what can be considered “coercion,” “exploitation,” and “positions of vulnerability,” but these are difficult to define concretely under the law (Brennan, 2014b, p. 118; Bressán & Arcos, 2017; Bryant-Davis & Tummala-Narra, 2017; Fedina, Williamson, & Perdue, 2016; French & Neville, 2016; Heil, 2016; Sabon, 2016; Valmond, 2015; Warden, 2013). Although this definition as part of the Palermo Protocol had been ratified by 187 nations by 2016, what is more significant is how human trafficking is understood and addressed (or not addressed) in local law and approach (UN News Centre, 2016; Wooditch, 2012, p. 687). The focus of the protocol and of most national governments is on the role of the criminal justice system, which has been criticised for placing the needs of victims second to the rule of law (Brennan, 2014b, p. 118). In practice, human trafficking has often been limited to certain types of trafficking (usually sex trafficking) or treated as a secondary legal concern to the victim’s migration status (Alvarez & Alessi, 2012; Brennan, 2014b, pp. 117–118; Feingold, 2014, p. 94; Hameed, Hlatshwayo, Tanner, Türker, & Yang, 2010, p. 40; Plant, 2014).

Defining trafficking according to either universal or local indicators can be problematic in identifying and categorising exploitation as well as justifying intervention. For example, a migrant labourer from an Asian country working in Germany might agree to a wage that was less than that of a similar German worker, but far more than they would earn at home – the line where this situation would be defined as “trafficking” or “labour exploitation” is difficult to determine concretely (Martin, 2005). A child labourer in India might have worked long hours for low pay, but had more food, leisure time, and money than they

25

would at home with their family (K Das & Mishra, 2005). There have also been types of trafficking identified which do not fall into the recognised UN categories, such as kidnapping for ransom (Brhane, 2015).

A particular aspect of the UN definition is the universal identification of a child as anyone under 18 and whose consent is considered irrelevant in a trafficking case (UNODC, 2016, p. 15). This means that 17 year olds in voluntary sex work are classified as trafficked, which has given states grounds to forcefully remove them from the situation (Horning, 2013; Marcus, Horning, & Curtis, 2014). Solo child migrants have also been assumed to be trafficked as they cannot legally consent to travel alone (Derluyn, Lippens, Verachtert, Bruggeman, & Broekaert, 2009; Galloway, Smit, & Kromhout, 2015; Huijsmans & Baker, 2012). There is no clear line where child labour becomes damaging, exploitative, or

qualifies as human trafficking, and the work that children normally do varies greatly across the world. In the Philippines, child soldiers are generally defined as those under sixteen, and children are often expected to work in or out of the home to varying degrees. The experiences of those who have experienced human trafficking complicate “victim” stereotypes as well as the universal viewpoints on trafficking as a singular global phenomenon.

Ethnographic accounts of Filipina migrants in the nightclub industry in Malaysia and Japan have challenged the designation of such workers as “trafficked” where they have been portrayed as a unitary group, forced workers, sex workers, and victims (Hilsdon, 2007, p. 180; Parreñas, 2008a, p. 154). In the USA’s trafficking in persons (TIP) report, other

accounts of trafficking, and public opinion, Filipina hostesses, sex workers, and entertainers in this industry have all been frequently labelled as trafficking victims, which did not align to these women’s own perceptions of their situations (Lopez, 2012, p. 255, 2012, US State Department, 2006, 2014, p. 220; Yu, 2015, p. 53). Hilsdon (2007) and Parreñas (2010a, 2011) identified both coercion and agency as they investigated the nuances of Filipina club workers’ lives, highly sexualised emotional labour, and sometimes commercial sexual labour. Both studies explored how these workers adapted and existed in vulnerable positions, and concluded that they could not be described collectively as forced sex

26

definitional categories, but highlight the value of close studies in understanding human trafficking and related conditions to understand both experiences of trafficking and the limitations of universal definitions in local situations.

Definitions of human trafficking also determine how it is measured and quantified. Forced labour, forced sex work, exploitative child labour, forced and child soldiers are just some of the diverse situations that qualify. Each of these is further divided by regional variations, domestic or international trafficking, and the details and severity of each situation. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), there were 1150 victims of trafficking in the Philippines from 2010-2012 (Kangaspunta, Sarrica, Jesrani, Dijk, & Heijden, 2016, p. 24). Local government and NGO agencies reported that in the same period, social services had responded to over 1000 incidents involving child pornography in the Visayas alone (see Figure 3 for map of the Philippines), which may have been

prosecuted only as commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC)12 _{or child abuse}

rather than human trafficking,13 _{skewing the statistics overall. In the Philippines, offenses}

have often been prosecuted under other designations, such as labour standards violations or violence against women and children (VAW/C), where there may be greater chance of a conviction. In the Philippines and globally, statistics reveal that sex trafficking has been vastly overrepresented in official cases, suggesting that this is the primary emphasis for many local legal systems in their understandings of human trafficking (Aronowitz, 2010; Chawla, Me, & le Pichon, 2009; Goździak & Bump, 2008; Visayan Forum, 2016).

Fully engaging with the global and local statistics on human trafficking is beyond the scope of this thesis. Although I return to the issue of definition to point out the limitations of strictly delineating between forms of exploitation which do or do not qualify as human trafficking, defining trafficking or labelling my participants’ experiences is not the aim of this project. Instead, this study makes a case for the necessity of moving beyond debates over measurement and definition towards an understanding of the complex and disparate

12 _{Under the UN definitions, any commercial sexual activities involving children are also considered human}

trafficking.

13 _{See Ch.5 for further discussion of the lack of prosecutions compared to the scale of human trafficking in the}

27

social contexts for exploitation, through deep and analytical research (Brennan, 2015; Feingold, 2014, p. 95; van der Pijl, Breuil, & Siegel, 2011).

Early criticisms of the human trafficking literature recommended ethnographic insights based on in-depth field work, interviews, and participant observation as central to

developing a deeper understanding of human trafficking (Di Nicola, 2007; Laczko, 2005; Zhang, 2009, p. 192). Feingold’s (2003) research in Thailand, Long’s (2004) analysis drawn from her research with refugees on the Lao-Thai border, and Brennan’s (2005) work with formerly trafficked migrants in the USA, were among the first to specifically consider human trafficking from an anthropological perspective, and the rapid growth of this field over the last five to ten years has built on these foundations. Qualitative research with people who have experienced human trafficking contributes to a deeper understanding as well as challenging the prevalent stereotypical dichotomy between “innocent” victims and “guilty” illegal migrants, sex workers, and traffickers (Day, 2010; Fowler, Che, & Fowler, 2010; Wijers, 2015; Zhang, 2009).

Emerging ethnographic research confirms the value of an anthropological approach in dealing with the complexity and ethical challenges of research on human trafficking while valuing the experiences of trafficked persons (Aluko-Daniels, 2014; Aronowitz, 2009; de Angelis, 2012; Mai, 2016; Marcus et al., 2014; Parreñas, 2011; Peters, 2014; Turek, 2013; Valmond, 2015; van Schendel et al., 2012; Zheng, 2014). Researchers have explored the possibilities and limitations of participant observation with people who are at risk for trafficking in constrained or irregular migration (Holmes, 2013; Schmidt & Buechler, 2017; Vogt, 2012, 2013). Some have considered the nuances of agency and control in and beyond situations of trafficking through personal accounts (Briones, 2009a; de Angelis, 2012; Hilsdon, 2007; Warden, 2013). Others have explored the nuances and limitations of trafficking definitions in studies with participants such as sex workers and migrants whose experiences have demonstrated continuums of control, exploitation and abuse (Basnyat, 2017; Bernardo et al., 2016; Brennan, 2014b; Bressán & Arcos, 2017; Constable, 2003; Gutierrez-Garza, 2013; Huang & Yeoh, 2007; Zheng, 2014). In this thesis, I have drawn on these methodological and theoretical approaches to consider the relationships between

28

individual agency, control, and social processes through people’s lives and experiences of human trafficking.