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Human trafficking a focus of major study

January 12, 2006

Kaur.thumb.jpgThe trafficking of Asian women and children for sexual exploitation is one focus of a major research project under way at The University of New England.

“Such trafficking to Australia is on the increase,” said UNE’s Professor Amarjit Kaur (pictured here), who has been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant of $224,000 for the five-year project. “The young women often believe they’re coming here as students or to work as waitresses, and end up in city brothels.”

“One of the main sources of such trafficking is Thailand,” she said, “and Chinese women are also strongly represented. Thai women are trafficked to Bahrain, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Europe and North America, as well as to Australia, and the Thai Government has committed itself to making the fight against human trafficking a national priority.”

“According to one perspective,” she explained, “human trafficking is an offshoot – or ‘diversification’ – of the traffic in illegal drugs.” She drew attention to global data published by the US Department of State indicating that, of the 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children trafficked across international borders each year, 80 per cent are women and girls and up to 50 per cent are minors.

As a whole, Professor Kaur’s project (titled “Managing the Border: Migration, Security, and State Policy Responses to Global Governance in South-east Asia”) will examine international migration, security, and border-management strategies of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. (Indonesia and The Philippines, as labour-exporting countries, are also included in the study.) “The project, which aims to inform public discussion and policy development, will contribute to the process of safeguarding Australia through improved understanding of our neighbours’ State policies,” Professor Kaur said.

One of her post-graduate students, Melinda Sutherland, works in Canberra for the section of AusAID concerned with human trafficking, and is investigating the situation in Thailand as part of her PhD project. “Melinda, through her PhD research, may actually be able to influence Australian policy in regard to this issue,” Professor Kaur said.

“I’m very happy in this particular project,” she continued. “It allows me to get deeply involved in the subject I’m most passionate about: human rights.”

Amarjit Kaur, Professor of Economic History at UNE, is an international authority on many aspects of Asian labour systems – including women workers, child labour, labour migration, and labour law. Elected to the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2000, she was recently appointed Chair of the Academy’s Panel for Accounting, Economics, Economic History and Statistics. A workshop titled “Migration Challenges in the Asia Pacific”, to be held at UNE in November this year, will be the second UNE workshop she has organised with funding from the Academy. (Over the years, funding bodies including AusAID, the Fulbright Program, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Toyota and Japan Foundations, the International Institute of Social History, and the Wellcome Trust have supported her work.)

Professor Kaur is collaborating with colleagues in Canberra and Tokyo on another ARC-funded project that is developing a network of people involved in the study and administration of cross-border migration in the Asia Pacific region.


Media contact: Professor Amarjit Kaur, School of Economics, UNE (02) 6773 2874 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at January 12, 2006 04:30 PM