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The last two decades have witnessed shifts in official representations of women's international migration in Bangladesh. An historic preoccupation with risk/danger, in which (poor) women's international mobility was presented as synonymous with "sex trafficking" has latterly been superseded by more "positive" images. More recently, the government has taken steps to actively promote women's migration for "low-skilled" labour to, primarily, the Middle East. This shift is mirrored in a reconfiguration of awareness-raising and training initiatives targeting aspiring women migrant workers. The "counter-trafficking" programmes that once dominated, with their focus on risks/dangers, have begun to be supplanted by curricula representing women's international migration as "a legitimate and respectable option." This, new, pro-female-migration, stance presents a widening of women's opportunities – and an overt challenge to the stigmas tainting female transnational mobility in "good society," yet its progressive goals are partial and unstable. While restrictions on women's mobility are demonstrably harmful, it does not follow that the active promotion of international migration – as a disciplined and devalued labour force – is progressive. This article explores these tensions based on 18 months of qualitative and ethnographic fieldwork following women participating in one such "new generation" anti-trafficking initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of spatial mobility on international professionals' experience of place belonging. Drawing on qualitative research carried out in the Wroclaw subzone of the Walbrzych Special Economic Zone in Poland, the article explores the question of the identity of migrant professionals in the context of their connection with places. It analyses how migrant professionals perceive both their place of origin and the place they currently inhabit and considers the specific practices migrants engage in to strengthen old bonds and establish new ones. Despite their high mobility, migrant professionals cannot always be described in terms of placelessness belonging. On the contrary, migrant professionals show a relatively strong connection to their place of origin and some of them attempts to form ties with their current place of stay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporary migrants play an important role in Australia's workforce and student population. Little is known, however, about the migration mechanisms temporary migrants use and the associated risks these may involve. This paper examines the role of migration brokers in alleged and finalised cases of migrant exploitation ranging from low pay and hazardous working conditions to more severe forms involving debt bondage, forced labour and other slavery-like practices. This paper presents a typology of two kinds of migration broker—the migration facilitator and the labour supplier—developed from these case studies. Points of intervention are discussed with reference to these types, as is the effectiveness of various responses to the actions of migration brokers in preventing and detecting human trafficking, slavery and slavery-like practices. These responses may overlap with responses to other serious crimes such as immigration fraud, corruption, extortion and people smuggling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of the financial crisis upon Italy's migrant population as of 2013, with information on the fragmented political conflict and opposition in response to the country's economic instability. Topics include the occurrence of racist violence against immigrants and the political demonstrations in response, the economic context of migrant conflicts and their incorporation into the Italian labor market, and examples of the mobilization of seasonal and migrant workers including strikes and protests.

In this article the author discusses aspects of the drug war in Mexico current during January 2011. The article notes a dispute between the U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Felipe Calderón, the president of Mexico, over the degree of drug trafficking in the country. A number of topics are addressed including the report of a massacre of more than seventy migrant workers by drug dealers, the significant internecine conflicts among the dug gangs, and and the operations of the drug cartels.

The paper addresses a number of issues regarding the extent to which trafficking may be applied to migrant domestic workers who enter under the kafala system of sponsorship in the Middle East. Migrant domestic workers are the most numerous of those mentioned in reports on trafficking for labour exploitation in the region. The discussion seeks to determine whether “trafficking” can be ex post facto, rather than ex ante? In other words, can the label of trafficking be attributed only after the worker has arrived in the receiving country and is victimized according to the principles of trafficking protocols? In addition, must there be a proven intent to traffic by agents, or can employers who harm and/or exploit them be considered as traffickers alone? Should the harm done to workers on arrival at their place of work be classified (and assisted) as victims of trafficking, or as exploited workers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary debates regarding sex work in Cuba pose a simplistic opposition between pre-revolutionary prostitution before 1959 and Special Period jineterismo in the 1990s, obfuscating the links between these periods and denying the legacy of the Cuban state's discipline of women's bodies. This article situates jineterismo amidst a historical context to explore the phenomena as a continuous practice of state regulation of sex work and women's bodies in Cuba. Despite the structural changes initiated by the Revolution, I demonstrate the persistence of state forms of bodily regulation both ideologically and materially from the colonial and republic period, early revolutionary campaigns, through contemporary Cuba. I highlight how notions of morality and honor, dependent on particular invocations of race, gender, and sexuality, have fueled state regulatory projects before and after the Revolution in Cuba. Cuban women's bodies were/are pathologized and constructed as deviant and in turn policed by the state, both materially and discursively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws from interviews with formerly trafficked persons who have resettled in the USA. It has not been easy finding trafficked persons in the USA. The author contends that this is due, in part, to a focus of most antitrafficking activities on one industry - the sex industry - to the exclusion of investigations into exploitation of migrant workers in other labor sectors. At the same time, undocumented workers stay quiet about workplace abuses because of a fear of deportation. ICE raids on workplaces where undocumented migrants may labor and the passage of local ordinances that empower local police officers to enforce immigration laws (287g agreements), have increased distrust between law enforcement and migrant communities. Forced underground, migrants working in vulnerable situations will be harder to find and to assist. This environment of threat shapes the resettlement of formerly trafficked persons since they typically enter the same low-wage, insecure and possibly exploitative work after being trafficked. More meaningful rights-based alliances with community-based organizations that focus on migrants' rights is a critical step to preventing forced labor and to assisting formerly trafficked persons. The fight against trafficking is a fight for migrants' rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines a temporary migrant worker's ability to make a complaint of sexual harassment in Australia. Topics discussed include challenges temporary migrant workers face in accessing labour standards protection in Australia; exploitative treatment at work; and laws related to temporary migrant workers who bring claims of sexual harassment.

In this article the author replies to the report "Employers and Domestic Workers: A Confucian Approach," by Daniel A. Bell, which appears elsewhere in this issue of the publication. In the piece Bell used Confucian ethics to defend the practice of hiring foreign domestic workers in Asian countries. In this critique the author faults Bell for not acknowledging aspects regarding Confucianism and individual rights. The author also examines the poor treatment of foreign migrant workers in Hong Kong, China.

This study examined experiences with intimate partner violence in 292 Latina women classified as U.S. born, immigrant, or migrant-seasonal workers. High lifetime rates of violence were found, with 33.9% reporting physical violence, 20.9% reporting sexual coercion, and 82.5% reporting psychological aggression. Rates of violence in the preceding year were also high, with 18.5% experiencing physical violence, 14.4% experiencing sexual coercion, and 72.6% experiencing psychological aggression. Participants' marital status and partners' substance use were associated with victimization. The present findings suggest the need for screening for intimate partner violence and associated risk factors in settings that serve Latina women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]