The Elements of Trafficking: Labour, Coercion and Exploitation of Non-citizen Workers in Israel

The question this research aims to answer is what is trafficking, what are the elements that make it. What is trafficking is both a conceptual and contextual, or empirical, question. It is a conceptual question in interrogating the concepts and ideas that explain what is trafficking for labour exploitation, the elements that combine to make the phenomena understood as trafficking. It is also an empirical question, asking what are the policies and practices that result in trafficking. The Conceptual section of the research identifies key elements of contemporary understandings of trafficking for labour exploitation, analysing and deconstructing them. By ‘trafficking for labour exploitation’ I include slavery, servitude, forced labour and trafficking in persons. I conclude that cases of trafficking for labour exploitation are characterised by the convergence of three elements: violation of dignity; violation of autonomy, and exploitation. The different understandings of each of these elements distinguishes between a narrow framework focusing of exceptional crimes, and a broad one focusing on structural factors. The Contextual discussion relies on empirical research, using documents and qualitative interviews to consider concrete developments in the responses to trafficking for labour exploitation in Israel over the past two decades, concerning two groups of non-citizen workers: migrant workers and Palestinian workers, employed in the agriculture, care and construction sectors. This section considers concrete developments in three main policy areas that reflect the application of a structural paradigm to trafficking for labour exploitation: tied visas and restricted access to the labour market, the role of brokers and recruitment fees, and inhumane or exploitative conditions in sectors with poor enforcement of labour laws. The discussion of these policy areas demonstrates the way legal frameworks and the state’s own policies construct power and dependency that private actors might exploit.