Migrant worker exploitation

Migrant workers face structural exploitation at every stage: in recruitment, placement, employment conditions, and termination.

Deceptive recruitment practices are among the key drivers of their vulnerability: migrants may pay exorbitant fees to intermediaries or brokers, accrue debt, and then find themselves compelled into exploitative conditions to repay those debts. In the WRC’s Aseel Universal Garments investigation in Jordan, we identified several forced labor indicators: confiscated passports, isolating workers, withholding wages and severance, and employers exploiting migrants’ irregular status to evade obligations.

Once work is secured, migrant garment workers often endure lower wages, excessive deductions, longer hours, and weaker legal recourse than local workers. They may also face xenophobic or ethnic discrimination, language barriers, limited access to justice, and fear of deportation if they file complaints, and they frequently don’t have union rights.

Migrant workers are often working abroad for the purpose of sending remittances to support families back home who heavily depend on this to survive. The pressure to maintain income across borders often forces them to accept extreme working hours or unsafe conditions.

Millions of workers also migrate within their own countries to garment hubs—such as rural-to-urban migrants in Bangladesh or workers from northern India employed in Tiruppur. These internal migrants often come from marginalized communities, face language barriers, and depend on employers for housing or transport, leaving them vulnerable to control or even forced labor. Debt-based recruitment and wage advances can deepen their economic precarity, while discrimination and isolation make it harder to report abuse. Like international migrants, internal migrants form a vital part of the garment workforce yet remain at heightened risk of exploitation and forced labor.