"Thailand Bound: An Exploration of Labor Migration Infrastructures in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Lao PDR", May 2019

The risks to migrant workers using informal and unregulated labor migration channels are well documented: forced labor, including labor trafficking; debt bondage...Yet despite these well-documented risks and efforts to curtail recruitment abuses, informal recruitment channels continue to thrive; a remarkably high number of workers are still using informal means to enter and work in Thailand.

Verité conducted an exploratory study of the recruitment practices in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Lao PDR for workers destined for Thailand to map the critical intervention points in these sending countries where the risks to jobseekers begin...They examined the linked institutions (government, commercial and community actors, and technologies) that mediate labor migration, and the relationships among various recruitment actors (private recruitment agencies, labor brokers, subagents and other intermediaries, and employers) in all the phases of recruitment, transportation, and placement of foreign workers to Thailand.