Human trafficking for forced labour along the East Africa to the Gulf Cooperation Council labour migration corridor: A case of Kenya, Uganda and Qatar

Temporary labour migration between East Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council states have increased since the early 2000s. Particularly, Kenya and Uganda have implemented deliberate policies of labour migration to the GCC states in response to growing domestic unemployment and to benefit from a growing migration economy. Similarly, countries in the GCC, such as Qatar rely primarily on labour migration for a functional labour force. Within this burgeoning migration corridor, reports of trafficking of migrant workers dominate United Nations specialised agenices’, media, and civil society reports. Trafficking of migrant workers occurs despite intensified efforts to arrest the issue since the adoption of the 2000 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons and the 2014 Protocol to the ILO Forced Labour Convention. This thesis sets out to understand why this is so. It applies a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) lens to critically analyse the relationship between labour migration and trafficking of migrant workers along the East Africa to the GCC migration corridor. Employing TWAIL lens through comparative international legal research, socio-legal inquiry, critical historical analysis, and doctrinal examination, this thesis critically examines the development of a fragmented approach to anti-trafficking within labour migration contexts. It examines the relationship between this fragmented development and international migration law. Within this context, this thesis contends that the colonial foundations of anti-trafficking, anti-slavery, and anti-forced labour influences contemporary approaches to anti-trafficking on the international and domestic plane. Within the context of Kenya, Uganda, and Qatar, the thesis argues that colonial legacies impact trafficking of migrant workers for forced labour as well as responses. This thesis contends that the colonial influence on anti-trafficking has resulted in manufactured ambiguities that obscure accountability for recruitment violations that lead to trafficking and entrenching legal uncertainty. It introduces the concept of transnational elite solidarity that perpetuates racialised labour hierarchies, externalising risks to migrants while securing capital and developmental benefits for states and intermediaries. Finally, legacies of colonislaisation in anti-trafficing results in a false universalisation that masks racial undertones and neglect legacies of exclusion.

Publisher

University of Galway

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CC BY-NC-ND

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University of Galway Theses (PhD Theses)