Las prácticas son la experiencia más valiosa en la formación

One important outcome of qualitative research has been examining more closely the issues of coercion, consent, and control, which are central to the UN’s definition of human

trafficking. Coercion, consent, and control can each have continuums within a relationship, but can also be shaped by personal, social, and structural factors (Dewey, 2014). Coercion to engage in unwanted sex, for example, can be influenced not only by individuals but by social norms and pressures about sexuality including the media’s portrayals of gender and relationships, as French and Neville (2016) found in their study with young women in the USA. They found that these high school students consented to unwanted sex in part due to the sexualisation of women and the portrayal of frequent sexual activity as “normal” (French & Neville, 2016, p. 391). Researchers have also found that workers in Italy and Argentina remained in exploitative labour because of their migration status which limited their options, challenging the dichotomy of forced or free workers with regards to labour exploitation and control (Bressán & Arcos, 2017). Others have found that Nigerian women “trafficked” into the sex industry in Europe did at times know what kind of job was

waiting, although the conditions were unknown, blurring the definition and role of consent (Awad, Drasbeck, Vezelyte, Holm, & Jensen, 2015; Mai, 2016). Warden (2013) found that her participants in Central America often saw little difference between trafficking

experiences and “normal” financial exploitation and abuse that they faced as sex workers. Ikeora (2016), Nagle and Owasanoye (2016), and Heil (2016) drew on court cases to point out the ways that spiritual means rather than physical force alone have been used to control and coerce people in trafficking. They found that traffickers’ tactics included ritual curses to control by fear, and manipulations of religious beliefs about duty and loyalty. These accounts suggest that control, abuse, exploitation and coercion can take many forms, and go beyond questions of individual choice and consent to the social contexts that shape people’s lives (Peters, 2014; Yea & Chok, 2018)

Universal models of human trafficking, such as the UN’s encompassing definition, have been frequently based on Western assumptions about the freedom of individual choice

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(Bernat & Winkeller, 2010, p. 188). For example, there have been legal cases where victims have had to prove not just the coercion required by the UN’s definition, but force and a complete inability to leave a situation (Bernat & Winkeller, 2010, p. 190; Brennan, 2014b). Brennan (2014b, p. 118) in particular cites cases from the USA’s legal system where obvious coercion and threats were insufficient to prosecute traffickers as

theoretically the victims could have escaped. Although the UN definition acknowledges both coercion and abuses of power, its role as a primarily legal device has shaped its applications toward concrete legal definitions which hinge on victim-perpetrator

distinctions (Lobasz, 2012, pp. 13–15; UNODC, 2006,p. 51). Emphasising this distinction has led to false dichotomies between freedom or force, and victimisation or agency, which reduce complex situations to questions of individual choice (Burke, 2015, p. 620; French & Neville, 2016, p. 369; Martins, 2016, p. 385; Valmond, 2015; Vijeyarasa, 2013a, p. 51). In this thesis, I explore the nuances of choice and agency amid control and coercion, but in the context of wider pressures such as family relationships, gender roles and economics.

Coercion and control are central to understanding human trafficking, but cannot be fully understood under a binary dichotomy between freedom and non-freedom.

As a response to the legal and moral emphases on this “free versus forced” dichotomy, the idea of agency has emerged as one of the central theoretical concepts in the human

trafficking literature. Research which has focused on the actual people who have

experienced trafficking, including their accounts and active roles in choosing courses of strategic action in response to experiences of trafficking, has provided a much-needed critique of the “victim or perpetrator” and “innocent or guilty” dichotomies which have shaped the human trafficking discourse (de Angelis, 2012; Tigno, 2012; Wijers, 2015). A common theme has been identifying both coercion and agency in trafficked persons’ accounts, such as de Angelis’s (2012) research which revealed the ways that formerly trafficked women from various countries then in the UK adapted and worked to maintain their well-being amid abusive circumstances (Aluko-Daniels, 2014; Gearon, 2016; Long, 2004; Syamsuddin & Azman, 2015; Wijers, 2015). The imagined tension over sex workers as either exploited or freely choosing, for example, is also disrupted by the accounts from sex workers themselves in North America, Africa, and Europe who have often cited both agency and constraint in coming to sex work, such as choosing to seek work but

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discovering what type of work was offered only on arrival, but remaining in that work due to a lack of other options (Day, 2010; Kim & Jeffreys, 2013; Schuler, 2016). The question of a person’s relative agency, and challenges to that agency amid experiences of control and coercion, is an ongoing theme in this thesis. However, recognising that victims can have a degree of agency and choice does not negate the necessity of exploring the social contexts which shape their choices, the constraints which frame them, and people’s diverse experiences.

The majority of ethnographic literature relating to human trafficking in the Philippines has been based on migrants’ experiences, which can include abuse, exploitation, and

trafficking, as well as success (Briones, 2009b; Domingo-Kirk, 1994; Lindio-McGovern, 2004; Liu, 2015; Lopez, 2012; Parreñas, 2008a, 2017; Strauss & McGrath, 2017; Tacoli, 1996; van der Ham, Ujano-Batangan, Ignacio, & Wolffers, 2014). Accounts of abuse, loss of status, constrained working conditions, social exclusion, and stresses highlighted the multiple and varied personal and structural factors that shaped migrants’ lives as Filipinos working abroad (Briones, 2009a; Domingo-Kirk, 1994; Huang & Yeoh, 2007; Parreñas, 2017; van der Ham et al., 2014). These researchers have identified sources of control and coercion which include employers but also various government policies that have limited migrants’ options and forced them to stay in peripheral and low-paid employment (Briones, 2009b; Lindio-McGovern, 2003; Lopez, 2012; Parreñas, 2017). Further, in-depth accounts of Philippine migration reveal the unique role of Filipino migration agencies rather than employers in situations of debt bondage in overseas migration, complicating the

“trafficker/victim” dichotomy as it is commonly understood (Parreñas, 2008a, pp. 147–150; Renshaw, 2016; Shin, 2015, pp. 765, 798). Filipino workers in many locations were

constrained in their access to alternative labour, rather than in the actual conditions of employment, and often by official and exclusionary government policy in the conditions of work visas (Lindio-McGovern, 2004; Paul, 2013, p. 732). Structural factors which

constrained migrants’ lives, both in domestic conditions and international policies, have been implicated in many accounts of human trafficking, suggesting the need to connect individual experiences with wider conditions.

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Questions around the relationships between agency and social structure in shaping people’s lives have been noted as particularly relevant to understanding the experiences of risk and choice (Abu-Ali & Al-Bahar, 2011; Brennan, 2014b; Briones, 2009a, 2009b; Poucki & Bryan, 2014; Warden, 2013). The Nigerian women in Mai’s (2016) study, for example, found the question of choice irrelevant to their circumstances where they had taken the difficult options available for survival in their paths to sex work in France. It is in this space that ethnographic research has been fruitful in providing grounded insights into personal experiences within constrained and even violent social conditions (Dahal et al., 2015; Ferolin & Dunaway, 2013; Holmes, 2013; Howard, 2014; Parreñas, 2011). One of the characteristics of ethnographic studies of human trafficking is that trafficking has seldom been the sole focus once the complexities of social life, individual choice and constraint, coercion, and continuums of exploitation are analysed through the perspectives of actual people’s lives. This is a strength of ethnography which also supports the design of this study in its close focus on the local social context, rather than human trafficking alone. Ethnographies have fruitfully explored the role of wider social factors within the nuances of personal experiences. Briones (2009b) specifically considered the complex questions of agency amid constraints and abuse in her research with Filipina domestic workers in France and Hong Kong. Her work adds considerable theoretical depth to the human trafficking and migration scholarship by identifying and attempting to overcome common dichotomies between agency and victimhood, and between individual agency and wider structural constraints, by focusing on workers’ capabilities within their situations (Briones, 2009b, p. 18). Parreñas (2011) took a similar approach in identifying the complex factors, from family pressures to visa limitations and the role of migration agents, that affected

entertainers in Japan. Some of her participants would be considered trafficked, and this is one of the few studies based on participant observation, where Parreñas worked in the bar alongside other Filipinas. Hilsdon (2007) employed similar methods in her anthropological study of entertainers and sex workers in Malaysia and, like Briones and Parreñas, devoted close attention to individual accounts and motivations, which revealed agency and choice even in limiting circumstances including human trafficking. In another study among Filipina domestic workers in Singapore, Arnado (2010, p. 142) highlighted that “much of agency work rests in the mind” such as maintaining a sense of control within their

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environments. As such, exploring emotional and mental adaptation and resilience demands this up-close perspective, which I have used in this study to consider both social factors and individual lived experience.

Ethnographic studies have revealed how dichotomies such as exploitation and agency are not necessarily contradictory, and workers can knowingly choose and gain benefit from conditions that can also be considered exploitative (Parreñas, 2011; Pun, 2005). These studies indicate the need to focus on agency even in the context of control and coercion and acknowledge people’s perspectives and choices. Pun (2005), for example, described how female Chinese factory workers knowingly accepted harsh, underpaid working conditions for the positive impact that the low wages would still have on their rural family. In-depth accounts, such as Hilsdon (2007) and Parreñas’ (2008a) research with “trafficked” Filipina migrant entertainers and sexual labourers in Malaysia and Japan, are beginning to provide analyses which acknowledge individual and collective agency as well as the positions and limitations of vulnerable groups in the global economy. These studies demonstrated that women deceived and coerced into sexualised adult entertainment often remained in that work due to a lack of other options, but also maintained some resistance to certain aspects of sexual labour in attempting to profit from their work. At the same time, individual experience is shaped by the social context and realities. This research has been designed to acknowledge and explore personal experience, but to move past questions of individual choice alone to also analyse how social and economic pressures affect individual lives.

2.3 Human trafficking in global context: causes of trafficking and