Low-wage migrant workers commonly encounter abuses of their labor rights during the migration process. These abuses can include deceptive practices by recruitment agencies, underpayment, poor and unsafe working conditions, and other exploitative practices that may amount to criminal forced labor or human trafficking offenses.
Over the past five years, digital technology initiatives have been developed to inform, empower, and connect migrant workers in new ways. These include consumer reporting platforms that pool data on migrants’ experiences with recruitment agencies, within supply chains, and more. Technology offers the promise that the worker’s voice is central to their migration and employment decisions, and allows them to share their experiences in order to reduce exploitation.
This report examines five areas in which digital platforms are being developed to protect and empower migrant workers, and considers practical, legal, ethical, and technological implications, and the risks associated with them.
The report concludes that digital technology cannot fix structural inequalities, missing institutional capacity, or a lack of political will to address labor exploitation. But when used responsibly and with worker protection and outcomes as a priority, it offers new and amplified opportunities for migrant worker empowerment and justice.
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Transformative Technology for Migrant Workers: Opportunities, Challenges, and Risks (911.91 Kb pdf file)
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Voices
How New Technologies Can Help—and Hurt—Migrant Workers
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Technology has enormous potential to improve the situation of the most disadvantaged workers, particularly migrants and refugees in low-wage jobs. But it can also exacerbate power imbalances that lead to worker exploitation.
Refugee Leadership
Rising from the Ashes of Adversity
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A UN advocate for refugee rights is forced by violence to seek refuge herself. How that experience helped build a vibrant global refugee group—and how funders can help refugees overcome barriers to success.
Finding Hope in Diaspora
“Cry, Scream, But Be Strong”: Stories of Afghans in Exile
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Afghan Voices of Hope has spent the two years since the Taliban retook control of Kabul capturing the rage, helplessness, and hope of those displaced and struggling to survive as refugees. These are their stories.