The idea of exploitation is at the heart of anti-trafficking protocols and legislation. It is the reason why people are said to be trafficked, and without it human trafficking cannot be shown to exist. Yet there is no agreement on what exploitation actually is – it remains undefined in law and discretionarily applied in practice. So what does it mean? Instead of grappling with this question in the abstract, I speak here from Caribbean experience.
Severe exploitation created the Caribbean, as we know it today. European colonisers conquered the region, appropriated its land and plundered its wealth. They massacred and enslaved its first peoples, the Taino and Kalinago, and imported millions of enslaved Africans as well as European and Asian indentured labourers to work on their coffee and sugarcane plantations. Under colonialism, the land was further exploited for its gold, bauxite and timber, and the climate prized for its health benefits for Europeans. For centuries the Caribbean has provided the raw human and natural resources from which other nations, especially in the global North, have not only economically profited but relied upon for their social and political well-being, prosperity and identity.
The tourist industry is the postcolonial plantation, and Caribbean peoples in many of the islands have few alternatives to working in it for paltry wages under weak health and safety regulations, and with little job security. In tourism, Black and Brown workers provide service labour predominantly as housekeepers and hotel maids, administrative, technical and clerical personnel, gardeners, water-sports operators, cooks, bartenders, waiters, cruise-ship dock workers, taxi drivers, sex workers and entertainers. And they labour within an industry that is designed for the pleasure of visitors from the global North and, by and large, owned and managed by white and foreign corporations.
