Recruitment and preparation
Deceptive offers, hidden fees and misleading contracts can create debt and dependency before departure. Rights information and early evidence preservation help workers recognise and report risk.
Our focus
Where labour migration meets trafficking.
Labour migration should create opportunity, not vulnerability. GJK focuses on the point at which recruitment and employment practices become coercive, exploitative or connected to human trafficking—and on the justice barriers that allow those responsible to profit.
Recovery and remedy for survivorsAccountability for perpetrators and profiteersStronger systems and safer migration
Understand the overlapUnderstanding the overlap
Migration is not trafficking. But unsafe systems can turn opportunity into exploitation.
People migrate for many legitimate reasons, including decent work, financial security and opportunity for their families. GJK does not treat migration itself as a problem, and not every breach of labour law, contract or immigration procedure amounts to human trafficking.
The overlap emerges when deception, abuse of vulnerability, coercion or control is used for exploitation. GJK therefore examines the full migration pathway, the means used to recruit and control a worker, the severity of the harm and the actors who enabled or profited from it.
Across the migration cycle
Risk can arise before departure and continue long after return.
Effective protection and accountability require continuity between prevention, urgent intervention, repatriation, legal action and survivor restoration.
Work, control and exploitation
Withheld wages, confiscated documents, isolation, threats and restricted movement may be used to control workers. GJK supports safe documentation and legal options across jurisdictions.
Protection and repatriation
Safe return may require coordinated public and consular action. Repatriation begins a longer justice process; it does not replace recognition, recovery or accountability.
Remedy, recovery and reform
Returnees may come home without wages, documents or redress. GJK connects recovery with legal claims, economic justice and reforms that prevent repetition.
Explore our focus
Explore priority issues and the concepts behind them.
The risks facing migrant domestic workers and barriers to remedies across borders require focused analysis. Clear public understanding helps communities and institutions identify the right response.
Migrant Domestic Workers
Explore how women working in private homes may face isolation, employer dependence and gender inequality that increase exposure to abuse and make violations harder to identify, document and remedy.
Explore this focusCross-Border Justice and Effective Remedies
Examine fragmented jurisdiction, hidden evidence, prohibitive case costs, responsibility across recruitment chains and the pursuit of compensation and accountability after return.
Explore remedy pathwaysUnderstand the Issues & FAQs
Learn the differences between human trafficking, modern slavery, severe labour exploitation and poor working conditions—and what effective remedy and responsible business practice require.
Explore the learning hubHow GJK responds
From protection to enforceable remedies.
GJK connects rights information, survivor-centred documentation, protection and safe return with legal representation, strategic litigation, recovery and institutional reform. Individual cases generate evidence that can strengthen justice pathways for others.
See how GJK advances migrant-worker justicePartner on migrant-worker justice
Help build remedies that work across borders.
Foundations, universities, legal practitioners, public institutions and international organisations can support comparative research, survivor case costs, legal innovation, institutional capacity and the testing of cross-border remedy pathways.