Special Issue on Migration and Exploitation in Employment: Editorial Introduction
本特刊探讨移民工人在就业中的剥削问题，涵盖概念、实证研究及公民社会回应，旨在为政策辩论提供参考，尤其关注合法移民中的剥削现象。
This special issue addresses exploitation in the employment sphere involving migrant workers. The authors explore concepts and patterns of labour exploitation, empirical research on the experiences of migrant workers, and civil society responses to exploitation. This choice of theme is intended to contribute to policy debates concerning regular migration under restrictive regimes, forced labour, labour trafficking and the vulnerability of migrants. The premise of this special issue is that there is a large spectrum of experiences between ‘decent work’ and ‘forced labour’ that have not yet been adequately explored. Exploitation at work can be commonplace for different categories of migrant, including many who work lawfully. Migrant workers often work in low-wage employment with comparatively poor conditions, while being unable to avail themselves of their full legal rights and protections for a variety of structural and individual reasons. The term ‘exploitation’ is prevalent in academic and policy debates relating to migrant labour, but the presumed relationship between the sphere of employment and migration control needs to be further interrogated, explored and theorized. Taking this as the starting point, the contributors to this special issue seek to expand and refine our understandings of labour exploitation as it relates to migrants. The first paper undertakes a theoretical inquiry into different concepts and contexts of exploitation and asks, can consent ever legitimise labour exploitation? Maayan Niezna does not seek to answer this question definitively, but instead offers theoretical insights by examining the way distinct accounts of exploitation in political philosophy—and different legal interventions in response to exploitation—understand and approach the question. She begins with accounts of exploitation that emphasize taking unfair advantage, violation of dignity and coercion. She then connects these theoretical accounts to how different legal interventions in the context of labour law, criminal law and public law, understand consent. It becomes clear that the starting point chosen for an assessment of whether consent to labour exploitation is permissible—be it fairness, coercion or autonomy and choice—determines the conclusion. Her paper concludes that in the context of labour exploitation, consent is a necessary, but an insufficient, condition for legitimizing labour relations. The next article in this issue examines how the design of migration and employment law regimes can influence the likelihood and nature of labour exploitation. Arwen Joyce considers the operation of the main low-wage visa schemes in South Korea and Thailand, two of the seven biggest destination countries for low-wage labour in Asia. Perhaps surprisingly, these two countries, which differ greatly in their economic, political and geographical contexts, pursue a similar ‘government managed’ approach to low-wage labour migration. By this, Joyce means that the governments of South Korea and Thailand take a more active role than most other destination countries and territories in the region in managing the recruitment and stay of low-wage migrant workers. As a result, she argues, outcomes for low-wage migrant workers in both countries are better than those experienced by their counterparts elsewhere in Asia in ‘employer managed’ regimes. Drawing on legal and empirical data from these two case studies, the article demonstrates how low-wage visa schemes in Asia and beyond can be reformed to improve outcomes for low-wage migrant workers. In the final paper, Natalie Sedacca turns to migrant workers in the UK and the work-related and gendered harms of the ‘hostile environment’. Her article examines factors that can make women susceptible to irregularity and exposure to hostile environment measures, and distinctive forms of gendered harm such as workplace sexual harassment. Sedacca argues that the detrimental impacts of the hostile environment contravene international and regional human rights obligations. While it is a hopeful sign that the UK has recently ratified the Council of Europe’s ‘Istanbul Convention’ and ILO Convention 190 on violence and harassment at work, she finds that the universalistic potential of these instruments is undermined by the government’s continuing commitment to creating a hostile environment for anyone who cannot prove their legal status. Earlier versions of these papers (among others) were presented at a workshop at the University of Leicester in September 2022, called ‘Migration and Exploitation in Employment: Concepts, Designs and Responses’. We are grateful to the Modern Law Review for its financial support for the workshop, and to all the academic and civil society participants who contributed to our discussions.