Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine
Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance
Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History
Luxembourg Centre for European Law
Luxembourg Centre for Socio-Environmental Systems
The grim landscape of criminal offences against human rights has rapidly evolved with digital technologies facilitating surveillance, exploitation or trafficking. Dr Salomé Lannier, specialising in criminology and law, reviews challenges around workers’ exploitation and her research to support authorities and NGO’s to prevent and repress it.
Salomé decided early on to dedicate her life’s work to understanding human rights violations against vulnerable groups. Following an internship at an NGO advocating for women’s rights and assisting victims of sexual violence, Salomé Lannier focussed her Master’s thesis in criminal law on forced marriages and trafficking for sexual exploitation in Asia. Today, her expertise intersects between criminal, labour and digital law, and her research includes empirical methods from criminology
“Human trafficking is a criminal offence, connected to globalisation and capitalism. International law aims to combat processes leading people into exploitation. Ironically, the law is also used to criminalise certain groups, such as migrant sex workers,” she explains. This paradox triggered her interest: the law can protect one person but harm another.
PROTEX, a Young International Academics project by the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies, aims to contribute to improve the effectiveness of legal protections for victims and of labour standards for workers.
Your current research project, PROTEX, is about exploitation in the digital age. What exactly are you investigating? And how will the findings help law enforcement and workers’ protection agencies?
‟ To convict offenders, criminal law needs a precise, harmonised definition of the forms of exploitation. However, such a definition is missing.”
“Exploitation is a core element of the definition of human trafficking, one of the most serious offences under EU law. The concept of exploitation is what allows law enforcement agencies to differentiate between criminalised and legitimate forms of work.
However, neither the law nor courts provide a legal definition of exploitation. You see the conundrum: How can law enforcement and NGO’s efficiently work with different interpretations of a crime?
A lack of common understanding of exploitation results in different justice being provided to victims. Law enforcement agencies struggle to apply various offences related to exploitation, and national transpositions differ even within European countries. One particularly striking example is the qualification of human trafficking for labour exploitation among neighbouring countries. Belgian judges retain the qualification of trafficking despite the absence of violence or ill-treatment, while French and Luxembourg judges require proof of extreme work and accommodation conditions to qualify human trafficking for labour exploitation.
‟ In short, we want to understand how interpretations of exploitation contribute to clarifying the boundary between criminalised and protected working conditions in the labour market.”
This includes assessing the impact of digitalisation on situations where persons can be exploited for labour.
How does technology impact the context of exploitation and human trafficking?
“As a tool, here are two examples of how digitalisation has impacted working conditions: Workers in European e-commerce warehouses are constantly digitally monitored – their work pace, break duration, even the time they spend in the toilet. Sociologists denounce working conditions of digital labour as exploitation, but whether such situations are considered criminal from a legal perspective remains an open question. Meanwhile, illegal drug production networks recruit workers from Asia under false promises. These workers are confined to illegal labs, digitally instructed to produce drugs, and monitored by video surveillance from criminals, sometimes from other countries.
Digital tools can however also be used for investigation and forensics. When investigating locations, the police could for instance to film workers’ living spaces, so that judges could use virtual reality headsets to put themselves in the workers’ position and experience inhuman working and living environment.
When analysing court rulings of the four countries, I will search for indicators of digital influence, for instance digital monitoring or violence.”
- Analysis of around 350 court rulings from Luxembourg, Belgium, France, and Spain on exploitation offences (e.g., working conditions contrary to human dignity, pimping) and human trafficking,
- Probing for indicators used in these rulings such as working hours, salary, employment registration, access to safety equipment or digital violence and monitoring.
- Interviews with workers in at risk sectors and victims of exploitation.
An updated list of clear indicators would help front line responders (labour inspectorate, NGOs, health practitioners, lawyers, etc) detect victims and enable the police to improve investigations to secure convictions.
As part of her research and outreach, Salomé already regularly provides training and participates in events for practitioners in this field. She is also an expert for the new EU Anti-Trafficking Hub, which connects practitioners, researchers and policymakers.
The project is financed by the European Commission and the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies.