FROM BONDAGE TO FREEDOM 23 Also, looking at the trafficking from the perspectives of sending, receiving and transit countries, one finds that most of them have laws against these crimes. However, few traffickers are ever prosecuted or punished for any of the crimes listed above. More commonly, traffickers are punished under migration-related laws that are less serious offences, and carry less severe sentences. Additionally, traffickers who traffic women into the sex industry are prosecuted under laws relating to prostitution rather than laws relating to real and serious harm done to the victims. As a result traffickers are not deterred and carry on their work with impunity. 2. Trafficking as a Migration Problem The conflation of trafficking with migration has brought forth many undesirable consequences. This is largely due to the fact that as a part of the globalization process, the demand for cheap and irregular labour has risen leading to increase in irregular migration, which provide traffickers with a market for services, such as fraudulent documents, transportation, aided border crossings, and accommodations. But, instead of looking at this problem holistically, the developed countries in particular have put in place immigration policies that restrict free movement of labour, particularly of those who are most vulnerable to trafficking, i.e. women and children. Thus, woman’s right to migration is violated. Further, when they are thrown into the clutches of traffickers and left with no legal means to migrate, they take the help of smugglers or traffickers for transportation. The curbing of migration makes trafficking go underground, making these groups more vulnerable to abuses. Also, if the immigration officials catch them they are treated as violators of immigration laws and not as victims of crime and exploitation. 3. Trafficking as a Labour Problem Trafficking is essentially a labour problem for it is done for placing or holding a person, whether for payment or not, in forced labour or slavery-like practices which may be in the form of forced prostitution or working in a sweat shop, in a community other than the one in which such person lived at the time of being trafficked. Most of these people have to work without pay or on a low pay in bad conditions of work, with poor health and safety measures. They have to work for long hours without breaks and generally physically confined from outside contact. Their passports are confiscated, because of the money spent by traffickers on their transportation is added on to their costs, most of them end up