Labor Recruitment and Human Trafficking: Analysis of a Global Trafficking Survivor Database

Over the past decade, third-party labor recruiters who facilitate employment for migrant workers across low- and middle-income countries have often been considered by counter-trafficking community as one of main entry points into human trafficking. In response, anti-trafficking prevention programs increasingly focused on addressing exploitative recruitment in migrants’ origin countries. Such may advocate increased regulation migration, greater enforcement actions against unlicensed recruiters, stricter ethical codes conduct employers, more pre-departure information about migrants. Yet, there remains limited research relationship between prospective migrants, trafficking, relative importance trafficking process. This Research Note draws world's largest database individual victims cases, International Organization Migration's (IOM) Global Victim Trafficking Database (VoTD), to examine role characteristics trafficked victims. The VoTD contains nearly 50,000 were registered assistance from 2002 June 2018. Our analysis shows that 94 percent recruited, a broad sense (i.e., not only intermediaries). Additionally, data presented here suggest is complex forced embedded within wider structural issues around low-wage migration lead work conditions. Interventions address will benefit strategies target systemic constraining or harming labor. Further, these findings highlight value large-scale administrative datasets research.