No. That's the problem with the definition of “trafficking”. None of us can agree about what is happening.
It's very easy if we just say that people are kidnapped, forced into work, sent abroad, and enslaved. That's a very small instance, unless you believe all prostitution is forced, that people are forced into prostitution. That's one side of the debate for which trafficking is very easy.
Understandably, there are horrible things happening to migrant workers, which include being held in bondage, being forced to pay back debts, having their passports taken away, and being told they must work for free. These are all things that are happening to migrant workers in agriculture, but in the sex trade as well.
When we talk together about trafficking, some people say, “See, that's trafficking, the removal of the right of a worker to consent.” But then it gets confused with the issue of prostitution, where people see it as slavery in and of itself. So it becomes hard to identify what the issue really is.
If the issue is prostitution, if you see all prostitution as slavery, then all entry into prostitution is trafficking. It's very simple. If you talk to people who work in the sex trade industry, the vast majority of them say, “Hey, this may not be the job I wanted, but it's the best I could do under these circumstances to make a lot of money.”
I spent a year in Thailand talking to outreach workers and sex workers, and that's what they said. They said, “I can work in a factory, where I get paid nothing, and I'm locked in at night and my rights are abused, or I can work in sex work and make some more money and some day become a hairdresser. Those are my choices. I have decided to work in sex work. They may not be great choices, but those are the choices I have.”
If you then consider that same woman who said, “Hey, those are my choices” as being trafficked, then the police would come in and say, “Out you come. You're a victim.” And she would say, “No, I'm trying to make some money here. What's going to happen to me is you're going to send me back to my village, and I will have no job, no money. I'll be in debt. And I've just been rescued. That's not rescue to me.”
What other people, including the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration, have tried to do is identify not the people but the acts that constitute trafficking, and that includes taking advantage of people who are in fact trying to migrate for work. The vast majority of migrant workers today, who aren't part of some special program, have to use helpers to get them across borders. And those helpers will say, “I've got a job for you in Canada or in the United Kingdom.” They may or may not lie about that job, and they may or may not take advantage of people. But some of them do--and that's trafficking.