The Mekong challenge - underpaid, overworked and overlooked: the realities of young migrant workers in Thailand

Many migrants from Thailand’s neighbouring countries leave home in search of a better life – often crossing borders into Thailand in search of new horizons in this new and economically expanding frontier. But as this study discovers, rather than leading to a brighter future, the journey for cross-border migrants often leads down a one-way road to misadventure at a destination where deceit and exploitation await.

The following report has studied and found evidence of both human trafficking and labour exploitation of migrants in Thailand. It is one of the first of its kind to examine the exploitation in terms of the demand created in four employment sectors for 'exploitable” labour (agriculture, fishing boats and fish processing, manufacturing and domestic work) and how in many cases that exploitation is also definable in terms of forced labour.