On the 13 May 2024, FRC member Nadine El-Dekmak presented her PhD research on “The Legal dynamics of tied visas and exploitative recruitment practices: Analysing their impact on labour exploitation of migrant workers” at BIRMM Research Day.
Presentation abstract
Labour migration plays a significant role in shaping the global economy and filling labour shortages in markets. As human history has shown, this type of migration represents both a golden opportunity for workers to escape certain situations in their home countries; as well as a bundle of challenges in the destination countries that include legal barriers, exploitation, discrimination, and others[1]. In a perfect world, labour migration is free of human rights violations and governed by policies, laws, and mechanisms that ensure the total respect of the rights of migrant workers while also addressing the needs of the labour market. The recent global image draws a different scenario as the world is witnessing an erosion of labour exploitation cases of migrant workers amounting to human trafficking.
Taking into account the scale of the problem around the world, the news has recently put under the spotlight different cases from different countries: The Borealis-Kalo case in Belgium (2022), The Amazon warehouses case in Saudi Arabia (2023), The FIFA World Cup in Qatar (2022), The First criminal case filed by Ethiopian domestic worker M.H against her sponsor in Lebanon (2021)[2], and The EU Plants Ltd case in the UK (2023), among many others. Most of these groundbreaking cases have common dominant subjects represented as migrant workers employed by private recruitment agencies (PRA) in destination countries that have adopted tied visa schemes. These challenges are complemented by weak or non-existing accountability mechanisms for violations of human rights by legal entities such as PRA.
In an earnest bid to ameliorate these systemic shortcomings, the need for a human rights approach in the legal responsibility of legal entities has been recognised by international organisations such as ILO, UN, OECD, and the EU which have introduced human rights due diligence (HRDD). In this context, the research focuses on a comprehensive and systematic study on the impact of tied visas on migrant workers employed by private recruitment agencies and how can legislation be further amended to hold these legal persons accountable through human rights due diligence by conducting three case studies: Belgium, Qatar, and the UK.
[1] See International Labour Conference, ‘Resolutions and Conclusions Concerning Fair and Effective Labour Migration Governance’ (ILO, 2017).
[2] جودي الأسمر، "استعبدوها لكنّها نجَت وتكلَّمت... أوّل عاملة منزل أجنبيّة في لبنان تقاضي كفيلتها" (جريدة النهار، ٢٠/١٠/٢٠٢١)
Joudy Al Asmar, ‘They enslaved her, but she survived and spoke…The first foreign domestic workers in Lebanon to sure her sponsor’ (Al Nahar Newspaper, 20/10/2021) (unofficial translation)