Free Labor! A Labor Liberalization Solution to Modern Trafficking in Humans

Abstract

The buying and selling of people is a profitable business because, while globalization has made it easier to move goods and money around the world, people who want to move where jobs are face ever more stringent restrictions on legal migration. Perhaps the most profound challenge of all will be faced by citizens and policy-makers in migrant sending and receiving countries. Inhabitants of the latter will have to move beyond the state of denial that so often has characterized their approach to immigration policy to date. They must develop policies that recognize the inevitability of labour flows within a globalized economy characterized by well-established regional networks of trade, production, investment, and communications. Attempts to suppress population flows that are a natural consequence of a nation's insertion into these economic networks will not be successful, but they will present grave threats to individual rights, civil liberties, and human dignity.