Addressing labour exploitation and human trafficking as ‘sticky’ problems: The role of Southeast Asia’s political economy

Key Messages

Trafficking in persons and labour exploitation remain ‘sticky’ problems in Southeast Asia, despite the growing number of regional policies and domestic legislation to address these. Political economy factors in both countries of origin and destination contribute to sustaining conditions of labour exploitation and trafficking in persons in the region.
The model of export-led growth in destination countries in Southeast Asia has benefited from easy access to low-skilled and low-paid labour, and from poorly regulated working conditions. For countries of origin in the region, the benefits of remittances from their citizens who are working abroad leads to poor monitoring of how they are treated in destination countries.
Prevailing political coalitions of elite groups at national and subnational levels protect economic, state bureaucracy and military power interests. These benefit from the status quo – albeit not uniformly across the region – and thus contribute to sustaining conditions of labour exploitation among migrant workers.
Patronage politics and weak accountability create space for complicity and impunity, enabled by poorly embedded rule of law, rights and accountable governance. Governments are not primarily focused on meeting citizens’ needs, and even less so those of labour migrants and victims of trafficking.
Despite these challenges, there is scope to support the capabilities of labour migrants and victims of trafficking to better exercise agency in countering the power imbalances resulting from these political economy conditions. This will call for acquiring a deeper understanding of their perspectives, how they define their needs, and where they see opportunities for strategic change to address vulnerability to exploitation and abuse.
This thematic brief sets explores the political economy conditions that contribute to sustaining the vulnerabilities to different forms of exploitation experienced by labour migrants in Southeast Asia, and the implications for how to adapt efforts to respond.

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Authors

Pilar Domingo

Lisa Denney

Henrik Alffram

Sasha Jesperson

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