Related Papers
Re-conceptualizing human trafficking: The experiences of Ethiopian returnee migrants
Waganesh Zeleke
Drawn from a large scale research on migration management, this study examines the experience of Ethiopian returnee migrants from the Middle East and South Africa to conceptualize the context in which migration turns into trafficking. Data were collected from 1078 individual returnees surveyed, using questionnaires. Also twelve focus group discussions were carried out with the returnees to gather field data on the process of their migration and the consequences of trafficking. In the Ethiopian context, a blended framework of economic vulnerability and social network approach seems to govern risky migration and the trafficking that follows it. Findings show that returnees experienced one or more forms of abuse both during their way to and arrival and stay at the destined places. The main exploiters are the employers who are unchecked due to the ‘kafala’ sponsorship system and poor support of migrants by agencies and embassies. Based on the findings, discussions are provided on how tr...
Irregular Migration from Ethiopia to the Gulf States
Bina Fernandez
Migrants from Ethiopia to the Gulf States become irregular in five ways: entry through unauthorised border crossings,“overstayers”on temporary or tourist visas, entry through “free visas,” through irregular employment, and at birth, when children are born to irregular migrants. This chapter seeks to critically examine recent policy developments that have impacted irregular migration from Ethiopia to the Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia. In October 2013, the Ethiopian government instituted a “temporary” ban on all migration to the Middle East, a ban that continues to date. This was widely considered a pre-emptive response to the imminent expulsion of over 163,000 undocumented Ethiopian migrants from Saudi Arabia in November 2013, after the expiry of an amnesty for undocumented labour migrants to correct their status. While the Ethiopian government ban and the Saudi crackdown had the effect of temporarily stemming the flow of irregular migrants across the Horn of African to Yemen during the early months of 2014, by the end of the year, there was a 40% increase in the number of irregular migrants reaching Yemen by boat, with the probable intention of moving on to Saudi Arabia to seek work. Around 80% (72,000) of these migrants are Ethiopian, and a significant number of them are circular migrants, including those who are returning after being deported. This chapter argues that the trends observed here are similar to patterns observed in other parts of the world; Ethiopian and Saudi Arabian policies intended to curb irregular migration have clearly had converse effects, and this is at the cost of migrants’ journeys becoming more dangerous and expensive. The chapter calls for a new politics of migration that protects rather than illegalises and endangers the lives of migrants.
Situations of Trafficking Women from Ethiopia to Sudan: Case of Metema Route
Shefan Ze Axum
Investigation and Prosecution of Transnational Women Trafficking: The Case of Ethiopia
Sel G.
African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal
The return migration experience of Ethiopian women trafficked to Bahrain: ‘...For richer or poorer, let me be on the hands of my people...’.
2015 •
Adamnesh Atnafu
Ethiopian female labor migration to the Gulf: the case of Kuwait
Fayz Jamie
International labor migration is one of the most salient features of the modern globalized world. However, the phenomenon has its roots in some earlier periods in human history. Africa is traditionally a sending continent of all types of migrations, voluntary or forced. This study examines the above-mentioned issues through the mounting phenomenon of migration of single independent women in search for better economic, social, or political conditions across the boundaries of their home countries. In the past, African women migrants were only spouses or dependent family members. But as modernity swept most African societies, with rising unemployment rates, there is evidence everywhere in Africa that women labor migration is a growing phenomenon that deserves to be understood in the context of current gender-related research. This work explores these issues further, focusing on the experience of Ethiopian women labor migrants to Kuwait, within Gulf Cooperation Council, an area with a shared socio-economic background. In addition to numerous difficulties already facing labor migrants, Ethiopian women suffered greater degrees of gender-based violence, underpayment, and trafficking, to mention only few aspects of human rights violations. This situation could be attributed to the fact that most of these women fall under the category of unskilled and/or illiterate migrants, as irregular migrants who are employed within the private sector, outside the purview any legal or labor regulatory authorities.
Public Anthropologist
Human Smuggling from Wollo, Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia: Askoblay Criminals or Enablers of Dreams?
2021 •
Priya Deshingkar
Sensationalist accounts of human smuggling from Ethiopia towards Saudi Arabia allege that operations are controlled by criminal networks who converge in a variety of illegal markets posing a threat to national security. Such convergence narratives construct Ethiopian human smuggling as an organized criminal business that extracts profits from and inflicts violence on vulnerable people seeking a clandestine passage to work in the Gulf States. Our ethnographic research in Wollo, Ethiopia, challenges these narratives by showing that smuggling networks are developed through personalised relationships, based on co-ethnic bonds rather than extended and complex criminal networks. Smuggling has emerged in a particular context of surveillance and enforcement and the motives of smugglers are complex, making simple characterizations difficult. Smuggling is enabled by ethnic links on either side of the border where earnings from facilitation boost incomes in an otherwise impoverished context.
Ethiopian female labor migration to the Gulf states: the case of Kuwait
Anwar Hassen
Child trafficking (modern slavery) in Ethiopia: Review on status and national response
Child trafficking (modern slavery) in Ethiopia: Review on status and national response
2018 •
Aden D E J E N E Tolla
This article dealing with the child trafficking as horrible and terrible trade manner. The issue of human trafficking huge concern for most nations including Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, trafficking in person has long been a common practice-a practice affecting individuals and communities irrespective of age, gender and ethnicity. Child trafficking in Ethiopia is one of the main social problems. This problem is aggravating by prevalence of poverty and traffickers' desire to exploit vulnerable individuals. It is also known that trafficked children experience physical and emotional abuse-exposed rape, starvation, and battery; and are deprived of their needs for normal development-no education, poor health and safety. Notably, children are trafficked both inside and outside of the country. It is extremely challenging to find out the extent and prevalence of this problem, which also complicates the search for an appropriate solution to the problem in Ethiopia. The focus of this secondary systematic review is to highlight and explore the nature and current situation of this problem by examining the profile of the traffickers, actors, associated factor and effect in the current scenario and national response on child trafficking in Ethiopia. The reviewed result from articles, researches and journals reflects that children from a poor family, broken family, living in poverty, persistent unemployment, low social infrastructure, minimum wages, inflation, and social insecurity has a high risk of being trafficked. Result revealed that trafficking has a negative impact on the country image, health and psychological behaviour of the trafficked person.
Tackling the root causes of human trafficking and smuggling from Eritrea: The need for an empirically grounded EU policy on mixed migration in the Horn of Africa
2017 •
Lucy Hovil
