Human trafficking is the modern version of the ancient slave trade. This suspicion explains why French authorities detained a plane heading to Nicaragua at Vatry airport, 150 km from Paris, over the weekend and questioned its passengers before allowing it to take off. According to reports, the Airbus A340 that landed in France to refuel was a charter flight from Dubai carrying 303 people – mostly Indians – including 11 unaccompanied minors. The plane's owner, Romania's Legend Airlines, denied any involvement in the brawl and claimed the passenger list was checked by a “partner” company that rented the plane. Two men were reportedly taken aside for questioning by a French special force as apparent crime suspects. Reports also suggest that more than a dozen people from the plane have sought asylum in France. Since the details of the incident remain unclear and the motives unclear, we must also consider the likelihood that they were not smuggled as human cargo for exploitation, but were en route to America – with Nicaragua as a transit point – of their own accord a better life.
According to the 2022 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, while the number of reported cases of this scourge has declined during the Covid pandemic, the numbers remain alarming. The report finds that in 2020, the number of discovered victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation per million inhabitants worldwide fell to 3.7, the same level as the number of victims abducted for forced labor. In the peak year of 2019, this variable stood at 4.8 for the former offense and 3.9 for the latter, down from 1.5 and 0.2 respectively in 2003, when the UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol came into force. That no human being should ever suffer the imprisonment that this horrific practice entails is beyond doubt. However, it should not be confused with the phenomenon of voluntary illegal migration. This has seen such a surge that it has become a hot political issue in many Western countries, with campaigns to secure borders gaining strong support, particularly among conservatives. In the US, for example, Republicans tried to seal off Mexico so people couldn't jump over. And in the UK, the Tories have tried to deter would-be immigrants by threatening to deport them to Rwanda.
Sovereign nations have the right to determine who they admit, but their barriers typically distort labor markets. Rich countries often need workers from other countries to fill vacancies and achieve better balance, but many of them allow their policies to be dictated by an irrational opposition to cultural diversity. Indeed, a great irony of globalization is its determination to dissolve borders for capital and trade, but not for people. So while capital can largely maximize returns wherever it can, labor is largely trapped by a global standstill. This asymmetry not only exacerbates wage disparities, but also makes it impossible to test a truly common market for the benefits promised by market theory. Proponents of the postwar EU project had hoped that trade relations would in due course reduce conflict and loosen borders for all. However, at the global level, politics remained local while profits went global. This has not helped us globalize well. And now we find that even free trade has lost its great champion, a Cold War II has begun, and a planet with soft borders sounds beyond this world. Given the high level of mistrust, this seems a particularly bad time to advocate for freer movement of people. Nevertheless, it is still a good cause.
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Published: Dec 25, 2023 11:38 PM IST
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