Labour Migration and Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia: Critical Perspectives

Unlike most other books on human trafficking, which focus on migration which is clearly illegal and on the policies established by governments and international agencies to counter such illegal migration, this book both considers labour migration in its totality, showing how the divide between illegal and legal migration is often blurred, and also examines how governmental and international measures to counter illegal migration are translated into action on the ground, and what impact on all kinds of migration they have in practice. Based on extensive original research, the book discusses labour migration flows in a wide range of examples from Southeast Asia, outlining how local officials, border guards, migrants themselves and others actually behave. One important conclusion of the book is that legal, temporary migration is often made much more difficult by the way anti-trafficking initiatives are implemented.