‘They think you belong to them’: migrant workers’ perspectives on labour exploitation in Spain

ABSTRACT

Labour exploitation has long been considered from two opposing perspectives, either as an omnipresent feature in the employment market or as an extreme occurrence in labour relationships. Recent studies, however, claim that exploitation can be better understood as a continuum of heterogeneous practices. Our paper contributes to this debate by focusing on the case of migrant workers in Spain. The main objective is to access and bring to the surface the ‘hidden voices’ of migrant workers employed in four sectors: agriculture, construction, domestic service and hospitality. Using in-depth interviews and focus groups has allowed us to go beyond the dominant narratives on the phenomenon by embracing the privileged perspective of migrant workers on labour exploitation. This paper shows that labour exploitation cannot be fully understood without considering the relation that exists between two factors: the first operates at the structural level and relates to the extent to which discrimination, harm and exploitation of specific groups are intrinsic in the legitimate legal-economic system; whilst, the second factor revolves around migrant workers’ wilful agentive capacity for being recruited into exploitative situations and simultaneously their capacity for coping with exploitative practices and for working towards solutions aimed at improving their quality of life.

KEYWORDS:

• Labour exploitation
• migrant workers
• domestic workers
• Spain
• work-based harm

1. Introduction

The academic community has struggled to answer what leads people to migrate (Migali 2018). Multiple drivers – personal motivations, context opportunities, uncertainty, prospects and expected outcomes— underlie the decision to migrate. Thus, migration becomes a complex combination of demographic, economic, environmental, political, socio-cultural or structural factors.

Of all these determinants, the economic factors (including mainly labour migration) have attracted the most interest in the scientific literature (Czaika and Reinprecht 2022). Indeed, the segmented labour market theory, which divides the labour market in developed societies into primary markets (value-added jobs with recognised worker rights reserved for nationals) and secondary markets (low-skilled and ‘flexible’ jobs reserved for immigrants), continues to act as a pull factor in itself (Felbo-Kolding, Leschke, and Spreckelsen 2019; Fernández Marín, Riquelme Perea, and López Martínez 2020). As the educational attainment of host countries’ labour force arises, lower-skilled jobs become increasingly unattractive to native workers. Lower-skilled migrant workers are needed to fill these structural labour gaps, especially in the services, agriculture and construction sectors. In addition, the higher participation of women in the labour market has led to increasing demand for labour in the so-called ‘home production replacement activities’ (i.e. cleaning, childcare, meal preparation and care for the elderly) (Thomson 2015).

Regarding remuneration, working hours, leaves, safe environment and proper treatment, these sectors significantly deviate from the standard working conditions described in legal regulations. Furthermore, criminal violations —such as slavery, servitude, forced or compulsory labour, and severe exploitation within an employment relationship framework—occur in the labour environment. Migrant workers in these sectors often face severe labour exploitation (FRA 2019).

This duality in the labour market, characteristic of Southern European countries like Spain, Italy and Greece, has constituted the so-called ‘Southern European Model of Migration’ (King and DeBono 2013). The segmented Spanish labour market presents a high rate of precarity and informality —about 20% of the economy according to Sanz-de-Galdeano and Terskaya 2020— and an overrepresentation of migrants in some sectors prone to severe labour exploitation (De Hert, Gallala, and Prey 2015), like domestic services (Martínez-Buján and Moré Corral 2021), construction (Ramos 2021) and agriculture (Molinero-Gerbeau 2020).

In this article, we attempt to contribute to the debate on the exploitation of migrant workers in the labour market by providing a richer discussion of the complexities of labour exploitation and a solid starting point for future studies centred around the specific experiences of labour exploitation of migrant workers. Through our contribution, we seek to go beyond a narrow understanding of labour exploitation based on criminal law and embrace the fluid, complex and subtle nature of the panoply of exploitative forms embedded in the current labour configuration. To this end, we focus on a specific context drawing on a privileged perspective: the embodied experiences of migrant workers in the Spanish labour market.

The study is divided into six sections. The first section lays out the theoretical dimensions of the research. The second describes the methods used to give voice to the labour exploitation experiences of migrant workers. The third examines the drivers for migration and the factors leading to the acceptance of exploitation. The fourth section analyses migrant workers’ experiences of labour exploitation. The fifth deals with the actions taken by workers to improve their situation in the labour market. The conclusions summarise the results and discuss some implications based on the findings.

2. Theorising labour exploitation and quality of life

Although a myriad of conceptualisations and approaches have been generated around the notion of exploitation over the last two centuries (Yoshihara and Veneziani 2018), it is possible to isolate two main predominant perspectives: the Marxist theory of value, which conceives exploitation as omnipresent (Crocker 1972; Davies 2019); and the most contemporary theorising work in the legal-moral field, which considers labour exploitation as extreme and residual (Scott 2017; Van Nierop, Schönenberg, and Terziev 2021).

However, many scholars have opposed over the last years this binary approach and promoted a continuum-oriented framework instead. The main goals of what McGrath and Strauss (2015) call ‘the critical studies of unfree labour school’ is to capture the heterogeneous continuum of abuse running from criminal practices through to ILO’s notion of decent work and overcome the arbitrary simplification of the complexity of lived experiences of labour (Marconi 2021; Skrivankova 2010).

Ignoring the simultaneous presence, within the same labour experience, of choice and coercion and freedom and exploitation while focusing only on extraordinary cases of exploitation and calling them trafficking, reinforces the fallacious and dangerous idea that labour exploitation in its various forms is incompatible and external to the legitimate legal, economic system (Calvão 2016, 273). In her study on systemic patterns of migrant labour exploitation in Italy, Veronica Marconi (2021) notes that the structural presence of exploitation within the legal economy causes various forms of exploitation to become invisible, for exploitation occurs in plain sight, it is progressively normalised. Hence, discussing exploitation as a continuum of abuses within the legitimate and legal economic market allows us to consider how various practices, which do not fall into any extreme, can be exploitative, reducing the risk of overlooking or dismissing them as irrelevant and trivial and makes it possible to devise different forms of intervention based on their different characteristics (Davies 2019; France 2016; Scott 2017).

Yet, this perspective does not entirely solve the problem of the ‘hierarchy of suffering’, as Skrivankova (2010:, 4) defines it, given that some proposed conceptualisations of a continuum of exploitation maintain a hierarchal distinction of shades of gravity —as noted by Marconi (2021)— which unwittingly re-create deserving and undeserving groups of workers (Carchedi, Galati, and Saraceni 2017; Coghlan and Wylie 2011).

Two proposals can be isolated in the literature to address this problem; the first is based on the fact that the labour experience of a person is rarely static but is instead constantly transformed due to changes in the context (e.g. crisis, unemployment rate) and changes in the person (e.g. abilities, ambitions); in this way, this perspective, which we refer to as a fluid continuum of exploitation, intends to disengage with crystallised notions of gravity and deservingness (Marconi 2021; Skrivankova 2010). The second proposal revolves around work-based harm (Greenfield and Paoli 2013), whose definition necessarily involves reflecting on the notion of ‘unfairness’. A focus on work-based harm constitutes a way to consider the entire continuum of exploitation without neglecting unreported incidents or cases that fall short of arguably strict criteria associated with criminal-legal frameworks to attain full labour justice (Davies 2019; Paoli and Greenfield 2015; Scott 2017).

It is precisely through this conceptualisation of exploitation, centred on the notion of work-based harm, thus on processes and consequences, rather than criminal intent, that we can access the ‘hidden voices’ of labour exploitation to bring them to the surface and demonstrate how the disadvantage, discrimination, harm and exploitation of some groups of people are intrinsic in the legitimate legal-economic system. In other words, by embracing in this article, a theoretical perspective that is centred around the various forms of work-related harm experienced by workers rather than the malicious motivations behind labour exploitation, we shift our focus towards the lived experiences of workers with the ultimate objective of deepening our understanding of the phenomenon of exploitation in the labour market; through this theoretical approach we can focus on the development of effective exploitative practices —yet not necessarily detected by the criminal justice system— as well as the effects that different forms of exploitation have on workers.

One of the social groups that are more prone to experience severe labour exploitation is migrant workers. This is due to socio-economic but also legal factors. The first refers to the high incidence of poverty and low income among migrants, which lead them to accept the poorest paid and most arduous jobs in the segmented labour market (De Trinidad Young et al. 2018). Yet this condition is linked also to their legal status, notably when compared to their autochthonous counterparts, and the implications this has on their reduced bargaining power in the labour market (Sayad 2004). This situation helps explaining why there is a high concentration of immigrant workers in sectors like agriculture (Sajir, Molinero-Gerbeau, and Avallone 2022) or domestic work (Martínez-Buján and Moré Corral 2021), which benefit from a workforce wishing to accept harsh conditions to receive earnings and renew their documents. This subjection of migrant workers towards their employers often leads to exploitation in the abovementioned terms.

In countries like Spain, where both sectors are fundamental for the national economy, there is a considerable share of migrant workers performing this kind of work. In the case of agriculture, the development of performative agroindustry responsible for producing more than 40% of the fresh fruits and vegetables sold in the EU and the UK (Molinero-Gerbeau 2020) implied an increased demand for labour that was satisfied by migrant workers. While nationals did not want to do an arduous and low-paid job, migrants found in this industry a way of establishing themselves in the country of destination, earning a salary and obtaining legal documents.

Domestic work, in turn, is a fundamental element in the definition of the Mediterranean Welfare States (Ambrosini 2015). Precisely, in the Spanish context, the personal care system has depended mainly on the unpaid work of female caregivers in households, with very little intervention by the public social services and the progressive privatisation of the sector through female migrant domestic labour. Female migrant domestic workers often suffer from deplorable working conditions, coming up against sexual harassment whilst falling outside the scope of the law on the prevention of occupational risks, which ultimately increases their vulnerability and defencelessness in the labour market (Chulvi 2020; Martínez-Buján and Moré Corral 2021; Martínez-Virto et al. 2021).

3. Research methods

The data presented in this paper stem from qualitative fieldwork conducted between April and August 2017 in two Spanish regions: Madrid and Castilla La Mancha, selected for the importance that the labour sectors examined in this study have in both territories.

According to the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE 2018), Madrid is the third wealthiest region regarding household income. It is the third most populated region hosting about 14% of the Spanish population. It is mainly an urban space as nearly 50% of its 6,507,184 inhabitants in 2017 lived in the city of Madrid, while the other 25% resided in the ten biggest surrounding towns. Madrid is the second region of the country in terms of migrant population (17% of the total) and has two of the four state reception centres for refugees.

Castilla la Mancha is the third lowest household income region. Even if it is the third most extended region of the country, it only hosts 4% of the Spanish population. It is an eminently rural region and Albacete is the only city with more than 100.000 inhabitants. Although the region only hosts 4% of the immigrants residing in Spain, they represent nearly 10% of its total population.

The disparate structure of both regions allowed us to identify different profiles of migrants and asylum seekers working and residing in urban spaces in Madrid and rural spaces in Castilla la Mancha.

The research was built around the selection of 20 interviewees and the organisation of two focus groups with 9 participants. As Nicholas De Genova (2002) points out, many studies on migrants often promote the state's perspective but rarely that of the migrants themselves. Migrants’ direct accounts grant us a unique opportunity to explore the intricate details of their exploitative experiences, as well as gain greater insight into how the structural characteristics of the labour context contribute to shape these conditions (Marconi 2021).

Based on the objectives of this study, the choice of participants responded to three fundamental criteria: the sector where they worked, their legal condition and their experience as victims of severe labour exploitation. In order to collect a heterogeneous sample based on these criteria, participants were contacted through intermediaries: a national trade union (Comisiones Obreras), eight NGOs¹ and several academic experts.

As a result, two focus groups were carried out, one with five participants working in the domestic sector, all women from Peru, Paraguay and Colombia and another with four participants working in construction and agriculture, being two men and two women from Cameroon, Senegal, Burundi and Guinea Conakry. Each focus group lasted for two hours. In addition, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted, four with seasonal agricultural workers, all men, two from Romania and two from Morocco, three with applicants for international protection, one man and two women, one from Ukraine, one from Venezuela and one from Colombia, 11 with irregular migrants (working in domestic work, construction, and hospitality), three men and eight women from Venezuela, Iran, Mali, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia and two with permanent EU residents working in construction and other jobs in the third sector, two men, one from Guinea Bissau and one from Philippines (see Table 1).

Table 1. Profiles of participants in the fieldwork.

Interviews
Labour sector	Legal Status	Nationalities	Male	Female
Seasonal Agriculture	Legal residents	Romania (2) Morocco (2)	4	0
Domestic (8), Construction (2) and Services (1)	Irregular	Venezuela (3) Iran (1) Mali (1) Ecuador (1) Colombia (2) Chile (1) Bolivia (2)	3	8
Construction (1) Hospitality (1) and Call Center (1)	Applicants for international protection	Venezuela (1) Ukraine (1) Colombia (1)	1	2
Construction (1) and Services (1)	Permanent Residents	Guinea Bissau (1) Philippines (1)	2	0
Focus Groups
Domestic	Irregular (1) Ex-irregular (1) Legal Resident (3)	Peru (2) Paraguay (2) Colombia (1)	0	5
Construction, Agriculture and Services	Applicant for international protection (1) Legal Resident (1) Irregular (2)	Cameroon (1) Senegal (1) Burundi (1) Guinea Conakry (1)	2	2

A single ‘outline’ of the topics to be covered during the conversation was employed in both cases to get comparable information between all the participants while allowing them to express their views and interests around topics that the research team may not have considered in the design phase.

Several difficulties were faced during the fieldwork. First, as subjects of severe labour exploitation, participants were not easy to reach, as many of them resided in slums or, in the case of some agricultural workers, in the farm’s accommodation. Hence, the fear of being identified by their employers difficulted their participation. Their situation, as well, hindered them from having the time available for the interviews and groups to take place, and when this was possible, it was also hard to create a climate of trust with researchers who were unknown to them. Additionally, most were understandably reluctant to register the interviews with recorders for fear of being identified. Although the language was also a barrier, as an imposition of the project was to carry out the interviews and groups only in Spanish or English, most of the participants were from Latin America, so Spanish was their mother tongue. For the other participants meeting all the previously mentioned characteristics with an understandable knowledge of Spanish became a challenge that, in addition to the others, fortunately, researchers could overcome.

It is also essential to highlight the contemporaneity of this research as migrants’ views over their experiences of severe labour exploitation are not specific to the moment when the fieldwork was carried out but are somewhat archetypal of the ‘Southern European Model of Migration’ mentioned above. Hence, although the fieldwork was conducted before the pandemic outbreak, the results produced by this study are informative of the current state of labour exploitation migrant workers must face in Spain. Furthermore, as explained in section 6, the experiences recorded through the interviews and focus groups are not understood as one-off events but as lived experiences extending over time.

Table 1 offers an overall picture of the labour sector, legal status, nationalities and gender of the interviewees and participants in the focus groups. These elements will be examined in detail in the subsequent sections.

All interviewees’ names have been anonymised to protect their identities; thus, a system of codes will be used when quoting them.

4. ‘Necessity looks like a dog’: the main risk factors for labour exploitation

The study allowed us to identify nine factors that are more likely to lead to labour exploitation, as perceived by migrant workers. Table 2 contains a typology of the identified experiences with the number of participants who expressed having lived these situations of exploitation.

Table 2. Types of risk factors connected with labour exploitation.

Type of problem	Number of interviewees who experienced it	Number of focus group participants who experienced it
Physical integrity; danger of death	5/20	1/9
Poverty: precarious economic situation	17/20	8/9
Lack of knowledge about language	7/20	4/9
Economic sector (agriculture, construction, domestic work, Hospitality)	20/20	9/9
Irregular administrative situation	11/20	8/9
Being foreign/migrant	15/20	9/9
Low education level	17/20	9/9
Being older than 50	10/20	2/9
Being a woman (especially if employed in the domestic service)	10/20	7/9

As shown in the table above, some participants consider physical integrity and the danger of death to be one of the reasons why they decided to leave their country of origin and one of the main factors that left them more vulnerable to exploitation in the labour market of the country of arrival.

Once in the destination country, most participants referred to poverty, notably their precarious economic situation, as a relevant risk factor that limited their options in the job market and increased their vulnerability to labour exploitation. ‘There’s a saying in my country that goes ‘necessity looks like a dog’ (beggars can’t be choosers). You can’t choose when you are in need; you’re forced to accept anything’ (female, international protection, working in the hospitality sector, ES_IP_2). ‘I’m from Mali, from a poor but noble family[…] I studied up to A Levels, but necessity prevailed […] I arrived here on a dinghy […]’ (Male, irregular migrant working in the construction sector, ES_IR_6).

Interestingly, as shown in the table, language proficiency is insufficient to protect against the risk of suffering labour exploitation. Although some of the people who participated in the study were Spanish speakers, they stated they had suffered from labour exploitation experiences on their arrival in Spain. Nevertheless, not being proficient is perceived by migrant workers as one of the main determinants of labour exploitation. As shown in Table 2, many participants consider their lack of proficiency in Spanish as one of the leading causes of their labour exploitation.

I'm not happy here; I do not speak the language and do not always have a job […]. But my compatriots help me have a home and food, and I'm in a safer place […]. When I work, I usually work with people from the East (of Europe), so we do not speak Spanish between us, and thus, I do not learn the language well. I watch TV from my country and do not have Spanish friends. (Male, international protection working in the construction sector, ES_IP_3).

The study also confirms that some economic sectors are more likely to be loci of labour exploitation due to their specificities. In this sense, all participants consider agriculture, construction, domestic work and hospitality as economic sectors that increase the likelihood of facing labour exploitation. Furthermore, most of the people who took part in the study considered their status as foreigners and migrants as a factor conducive to situations of labour exploitation, especially when it coincides with other risk factors, such as being a woman, irregular and working in the domestic sector, thus leading to situations of multiple and intersecting discrimination.

Once I requested voluntary leave. But I told myself, ‘I have already spent two years here, and if I‘ve managed two years, I can stand one more […] because I didn’t want to return home defeated […] that’s the pride of an immigrant […] not to return home empty-handed and defeated. (Female, irregular migrant working in the domestic service sector, ES_IR_2).

I was asked to work 3 months without pay when they wouldn’t have a Spanish person working for more than 7 days without pay. There has to be more control of labour conditions; this goes against human rights; I don’t even want to think about how it is for the people who fled Africa or Iraq. Compared to that, I'm lucky. (Female, international protection, working in the hospitality sector, ES_IP_2).

As the table shows, apart from being a foreigner, being in a country without the required papers is considered by 65% of the participants as one of the main factors contributing to their exploitation in the Spanish labour market ‘I never had a contract because I was illegal. (Female, irregular migrant working in the domestic service sector, ES_FG_1(P4)).

Another risk factor mentioned by most study participants relates to the level of education. In this regard, many who do not have any qualifications and those who have obtained them in their country of origin face bureaucratic obstacles when it comes to having their qualifications recognised in Spain, eventually leading them to accept jobs below their qualification and professional experience.

In my country, I have a law degree. I worked as an assistant in the energy sector in Venezuela for over 30 years. Since March 2017, I have only worked in a call centre of a dental company. (Female, international protection, working in a call centre, ES_IP_1).

I have a degree in computer science. I need to get my qualifications verified, but I came here without bringing the certified programmes, as there it is very difficult to do the paperwork, and I didn’t have enough money to pay a lawyer to do it for me. (Male, irregular migrant working in the third sector, ES_IR_7).

Age is another risk factor related to increased vulnerability to labour exploitation. As emphasised by a part of the participants over 50 years of age, above a certain age threshold, it becomes even more challenging to obtain a decent job; this additional difficulty obliges them to accept any conditions to have a job, thus leading to coping with various forms of labour exploitation.

I was over 40 years old when I arrived, almost 50, and finding a job was more arduous. That’s why I accepted whatever I was offered. Even in the queue at the job placement offices of religious institutions, I heard, ‘what are you doing here? Go take care of your grandchildren! There are no jobs for old biddies!’ (Female, irregular migrant working in the domestic service sector, ES_IR_3).

5. ‘They fill you with fear’: workers’ experiences of labour exploitation

Based on the interviews and focus groups conducted, it was possible to identify eight forms of labour exploitation ranging from non-payment to being a victim of violence. Table 3 illustrates these different experiences of labour exploitation and the frequency with which the participants lived each.

Table 3. Typology of problems of severe labour exploitation experienced by the participants.

Type of problem	Number of interviewees who experienced it	Number of focus group participants who experienced it
Problems with pay	18/20	8/9
Problems with conditions at work	20/20	8/9
Problems with work contract	16/20	8/9
Problems with housing/accommodation	11/20	5/9
Problems with documents	11/20	8/9
Problems with work tasks	5/20	3/9
Experienced (personally) threats or violence	1/20	1/9

Practically all the individual interviews and focus groups participants manifested problems with payment and working conditions. The problems related to the payment that occurred more frequently according to the interviewees were being paid less than the salary agreed upon, delays in payment and unpaid overtime.

In this sense, the experience of ES_IP_1 is very illustrative of how delays are usual and constitute a mechanism of subjugation to an employer who considers paying a salary as his prerogative and a way to control workers’ behaviour:

The first month I got paid on the 3rd, the second month on the 10th, and the third month I was paid on the 15th […]. They psychologically abuse the employees […]. They fill you with fear; I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it. Anyone who complains for whatever reason or asks for their salary because they still haven’t been paid or who demand an apology because they were disrespected; all of them have been fired. (Female, international protection, working in a call centre, ES_IP_1).

Sometimes, as to ES_IR_7, the problem is not related to the frequency of payments but directly to non-payments. The situation of this worker may indicate that some companies employing irregular migrants consider that workers must be grateful for their jobs and be always at the employer's disposal without expecting to receive remuneration for their extra work:

I was supposed to have 2 days off a week, but we always had to cover company emergencies. […]. My contract was for 8 h a day, but I’ve had to work up to 12 h a day according to the emergency. The company got paid, but they didn’t pay us overtime. (Male, irregular migrant working in the third sector, ES_IR_7).

Furthermore, according to the experience of ES_FG_2(P1), sometimes receiving a salary may also become a problem since the amount received for a full month of work may be only a part of the salary agreed upon: ‘I worked for €500 a month. The boss was bad. He only gave me €250’. (Male, international protection, working in the agriculture sector, ES_FG_2(P1)).

In the case of working conditions, according to the interviewees, the most frequent problems were the excessively long working hours, non-compliance with the rules on rest breaks at work, no holidays and no social security contributions paid on salaries. One of the sentences that the coordinator from a call centre told ES_IP_1 is very illustrative of this problem showing how, in some cases, employers expect to squeeze the most out of these workers: ‘as one of the coordinators said, you have to go to work catheterised (with a urinary catheter). Because they couldn’t give you permission to go to the bathroom’. (Female, international protection, working in a call centre, ES_IP_1).

Also, if workers protest against the non-fulfilment of the agreed conditions, they may even be fired, as was the case of ES_IR_5:

As I needed to work externally, because of the arrival of my children, I went to work for a company, and they told me that I would work 8 h […] and the salary was €900. At times I worked 12 h because they made us clean the entrance hall […]. Soon after, the company fired me because I complained that they did not pay me €900 the first month, they only paid me €700. (Female, irregular migrant working in the domestic service sector, ES_IR_5)

Interestingly, not even being registered in the social security system guarantee compliance with labour law, as illustrated by the case of ES_S_2, who was the victim of what is called ‘grey work’, consisting of the practice of fulfilling the minimum legal requirements without declaring to the state the work carried out by the worker: ‘here they only declare [to the state] 2–3 days but you actually work 20’. (Male, legal resident working in the agriculture sector, ES_S_2).

A specific problem of the domestic sector is related to the access to food, especially in the case of workers who live 24 h with their employers, who often control what they eat or give these workers the minimum possible food, as was the case of ES_FG_1(P3):

I don’t know how I put up with them for a year, when I left, I was a bit crazy; I was bad because there was no food, we ate hardly anything, and they didn’t consider feeding me. When I took the little girl out for a walk, from the little money I had left after sending it back home, I bought bread; that’s what I ate. (Female, irregular migrant working in the domestic service sector, ES_FG_1(P3)).

Another common problem highlighted by most participants was related to the employment contract. Some migrants mentioned that they never signed one because their irregular status implied that employers did not want to leave any trace. But for those who signed a printed employment contract, it was common to work more hours and days than those stated in the contract. The situation of ES_O_1 is very illustrative in this sense:

In construction, the hours on the contract never match the hours you actually work, never. On the contract, it stated 8 h, but I had to work 12 h […]. You are not paid overtime for those hours […]. And you work on Saturdays. You work bank holidays too. (Male, EU national working in the construction sector, ES_O_1).

These problems are not just related to working time but directly affect earnings, as was the case of ES_FG_2 (P3), whose salary was arbitrarily decreased by her employers:

I have worked for 6 months. They reduced my salary; for example, if I was supposed to earn €100, they would transfer €50 this month, and the next month they would transfer €30. That’s how they are. I did not have a salary […]. I have the payslip, and it says that I earned €1900, but that’s not true, at the end of the month I found they had transferred €600 to my account. (Female, international protection, working in the third sector, ES_FG_2(P3)).

More than half of the interviewees and participants in the focus groups also mentioned problems with housing, like not being able to afford the rent, which was often due to the delay in their wages, so many of them had to live in shared accommodation, which also implied having debts with the other workers. In this regard, seasonal workers perceived the greatest vulnerability in agriculture along with live-in female migrant domestic workers. ES_S_1 even tries to sleep outside during the summer to avoid these problems but mentions that this is not possible in winter:

As it is now summer here, you sleep well outside (points to the tents on the assigned lot), but you don’t have all the conditions you need to take a shower or to do all the things a man needs to do. But in Badajoz when we start the olive season, it’s very cold, and we have to rent houses […]. We rent them with our own money. We pay the rent, and water and electricity are extra […]. (Male, EU national working in the agriculture sector, ES_S_1).

Another common problem among at least half of the participants was related to their legal status or the renewal of their residence permits, which depend on employers who sometimes delay administrative procedures or do not follow the required guidelines to keep their employees depending on them. The case of ES_IR_5 perfectly shows this:

Well […] regarding my papers, to be honest I trusted him, because the husband was a lawyer […] He told me that he would do it through his colleagues […] When I arrived […] you just got a contract […] and you had to take it to your country and apply for the visa there […] the first time I didn’t do it […]. and so, I had to apply for a new visa. He did not tell me (he did not inform me) […] He did not give me any papers, he received them […] he hid them from me […] He finally gave them to me when a document arrived saying that I had been denied a permit because I hadn’t gone to my country to apply for the visa, and that the deadline they had given me to apply for the visa had expired, […] So, I had to travel to my country to do the visa and start the process all over again. (Female, irregular migrant working in the domestic service sector, ES_IR_5)

Threats and violence were not common among the participants. However, sexual harassment was mentioned by at least four women as one of the most traumatic situations they experienced. The testimonials of ES_IP_2 and ES_IR_2 show how being irregular or an international protection applicant may be a factor increasing the possibility of suffering this kind of aggression.

As a carer, I was harassed by the old man I looked after, he wanted to pay me €20 to let him touch me, I stood up to him and said that if he didn’t stop harassing me I would call the police. The old man had a tachycardia and I had to leave the job because I didn’t want any problems. (Female, international protection, working in the hospitality sector, ES_IP_2).

I looked for a job as a caregiver or whatever, I even worked for a man in the construction sector but as I wouldn't consent to his intentions […] Yes, sexual harassment. Well, he got me cleaning the industrial buildings he owned and paid me only €150 a month. (Female, irregular migrant working in the domestic service sector, ES_IR_2).

6. ‘Because you can’t let them play with your health’: actions taken by workers to improve their situation or to get out of it.

Table 4 provides a detailed picture of victims’ trajectories throughout their lived experiences of labour exploitation focusing on their current situation, their initial expectations, their access to information about their rights, and the actions taken to improve or change their circumstances.

Table 4. Victims’ situation: expectations, knowledge and actions taken.

Victim's situation: victim support and access to justice	Number of interviewees	Number of focus group participants
Still in the situation of exploitation	12/20	7/9
Satisfied with situation now	5/20	2/9
Victims’ previous expectations: more employment rights and protection	10/20	6/9
Told about workers’ rights at any stage	12/20	8/9
Contact anyone for help (other than police)	10/20	7/9

Most of the individual interviewees (twelve out of twenty) and seven out of nine focus group participants continue to be exploited. This suggests that the situations of exploitation are not one-off incidents in the working relationship but rather ongoing experiences that, on average, last for more than two or three years.² As the situation of exploitation persists, practically none of the interviewees were satisfied with their current situation.

After that company I went to another one, which is where I am now. The company pays €5, it’s not very much. I only stay there because of the Social Security […]. being freelance is much more expensive. Currently, I work Monday to Friday but this month as there are a lot of people on holiday, I’m covering a lot of shifts. (Female, irregular migrant from the service sector, ES_IR_8)

It should be noted that two-thirds of interviewees and focus group participants expected more guarantees for workers and better labour rights in Spain: ‘Because you believe you are coming to a country where the rights are better. (Female, irregular migrant from domestic work sector, ES_FG_1(P2)).

I’ve realised workers in Spain aren’t given the right to anything, to defend themselves, to feel rest assured that the law will protect them. Laws are debatable here, they aren't well written. Employees aren’t looked after. (Female, international protection, from a call centre, ES_IP_1).

Notably, six out of ten interviewees claimed that they had never been informed about workers’ rights, although some of them did receive information at some point in time, mostly from groups and associations of workers: ‘I’ve never been informed about workers’ rights, neither in my country (Morocco), nor in Spain’. (Male, seasonal worker from agriculture sector, ES_S_4).

I had never been told about labour rights in Spain. It is only recently that I met a group of household employees and I’ve attended some talks on the subject. (Female, irregular migrant from the domestic service sector, ES_IR_5)

There should be an association or group of lawyers that offer support and give advice to people like me; I’d like to join a group that offers support. (Female, irregular migrant from domestic work, ES_IR_11).

However, a significant number of participants (ten out of twenty respondents, seven out of nine focus group participants) ended up asking for help. It is noteworthy, however, that only a tiny proportion used institutionalised or official channels (trade unions, the police or the competent authority) to report labour exploitation. In most cases, NGOs were approached for help. The majority of those who turned to the civic sector did so through solid associations with experience in defending workers’ rights (as it is the case of ES_IP_2 or ES_IR_3).

CEAR help me, from the social worker I talk to if I need anything to the HR employees, the lawyers; they all are very kind and get really involved. (Female, international protection from the hospitality sector, ES_IP_2).

I met some lawyers at a workshop, who were part of SEDOAC; they are charity lawyers and they helped me to get the sons (of my boss) to pay me what I was owed. (Female, irregular migrant from the domestic service sector, ES_IR_3).

In other cases, access to aid is indirect, through organisations known to the migrants for the assistance received in the past.

I don’t know of any agencies or associations that can give me support. The only association I know is the Red Cross because they offered us access to bathrooms and water. (Male, seasonal worker from the agriculture sector, ES_S_4).

Furthermore, some of the participants had created their own activist group.

There are quite a few of us […] almost 50 members and we have all suffered labour exploitation. Not once, not twice, but a lot. So, when I arrived here in 2013, I decided to set up a group of activists so that we could defend our rights (Female, international protection from the service sector, ES_FG_2(P3)).

Finally, recourse to institutionalised channels is less frequent, although situations have been found where the affected person went to a trade union.

I resorted to UGT because I’m a member of the union and I told their lawyer what had happened and she said she could do nothing at all, because the letter was handwritten and I had asked my boss to do me the favour of signing a contract for 8 h a day when I worked only 4 h. (Female, irregular migrant from the domestic service sector, ES_IR_4).

Or even lodged a formal complaint with the competent authority.

I did not have to go to the police […]. I did not go to any union (I have never been a member of one). I filed the complaint there, in 8 Princess Street. I researched on the internet where I had to go. I didn’t have to pay anything, and they treated me very well and it was worth it. (Female, irregular migrant from the service sector, ES_IR_8).

Only one of the participants, from both the individual interviews and the focus groups, affirmed that after reporting it to the police they obtained a satisfactory result.

I went directly to Comisiones Obreras (a trade union) and to the police. (Did you receive support from the police?). Yes, yes, it was very good, the truth is that they treated me well. (Female, international protection from the service sector, ES_FG_2(P3)).

Three out of four participants said they would not be willing to accept the same job if the working conditions were still the same. Based on past experiences, most participants highlight the importance of having more and better information about their rights; the usefulness of obtaining legal advice, and the need for official control channels such as the labour inspectorate. Table 5 summarises these actions.

Table 5. Victims’ situation: ways forward and prevention.

Ways forward and prevention	Number of interviewees	Number of focus group participants
Know their rights and the rights of employers from the outset	12/20	8/9
Search for legal advice from the outset	7/20	7/9
Increase formal inspections of the workplace	8/20	6/9

There is a lack of knowledge regarding the rights and duties on the side of both workers and employers. More information and training are necessary regarding the rights and functions of workers; this need was mentioned by most of the participants:

They can't let him (the employer) retain their money or documents […]. People should seek information from Spanish people who know about the subject, and shouldn’t be misguided by comments, gossip or rumours. (Male, irregular migrant from the construction sector, ES_IR_1).

No one defends us. The employers are only interested in making money, and the unions have lost the ability to fight, to defend the rights of workers. (Male, Portuguese from the construction sector, ES_O_1).

This lack of knowledge of rights and duties is widespread and endemic in the domestic sector, despite the regulatory framework in place;³ a situation that ultimately calls into question its effectiveness when we consider the multiple forms of violations of rights and duties that occur in this specific sector.

I believe that a decent job is one with a contract and a salary that has been defined by law. Not one where they can do whatever they want. In the presence of the law determine what you are going to do, and this is the salary that corresponds to what you are going to do […]. Even in the agencies they are not paying them fully, if the law says they (domestic workers) should be paid in full, they (employees) must comply. (Female, irregular migrant from domestic work sector, ES_FG_1(P2)).

To stop being a victim of labour exploitation, one out of three interviewees and seven out of nine participants in the focus groups suggested getting legal advice from the outset:

Anyone looking for legal advice should go to the Ministry of Work to find out whether it is normal or not, because for sure it is not. Get legal advice, let them help you. Because you can’t let them play with your health, both mentally and physically. (Female, international protection, from a call center, ES_IP_1).

Finally, highlighting the importance of the institutional support, nearly two out of three interviewees felt that more formal workplace inspections were needed. The construction, hospitality, agriculture and domestic service sectors are the main sectors where more work inspections and violations are recorded (Europa Press 2015; International Labor Organization 2017).

There needs to be more control, and more supervision. Not wait until 200 people have complained about it. Here in this company, there are a lot of people complaining, but there is no control whatsoever. (Female, international protection, from a call center, ES_IP_1).

Controlling the conditions that immigrants have. I was asked a 3-month practical training without pay when they wouldn’t have a Spanish person working for more than 7 days without pay. There has to be more control of labour conditions, this goes against human rights. (Female, international protection from the Hospitality sector, ES_IP_2).

7. Conclusions

In this study, the aim was to voice the lived experiences of migrant workers about the phenomenon of labour exploitation in Spain. This was not done to unveil forms of labour exploitation that remained hidden from media coverage and the main narratives; instead, the major objective of this study was to embrace the privileged perspective of migrant workers to better understand how the vulnerability is generated by certain factors and reproduced through a continuum of labour exploitation practices.

Shifting the focus to the embodied experiences of migrant workers in Spain allowed us to demonstrate how despite the phenomenon of labour exploitation is often associated with extreme cases developing in the underground, unprotected and illegal depths of employment, in reality, the large part of labour exploitation and work-based harm is embedded within everyday business practices and occurs in plain sight within the boundaries of the main sectors of the legal economy, such as construction, home care for the elderly, agriculture and hospitality, and not, as is often assumed, at the fringes of society. The structural presence of labour exploitation within legal structures normalises these forms of exploitation and ultimately makes them invisible (Marconi 2021).

Although severe cases of exploitation intersect with underground human trafficking activities and modern forms of slavery run by criminal organisations, in most cases, recruitment in labour exploitation situations takes place without the coercive intervention of a criminal organisation but rather through the active acceptance by immigrant workers. The wilful agentive capacity of migrant workers contributes to maintaining low levels of institutional support and solidarity towards them even when they are immersed in exploitative working conditions, thus consolidating the normalisation of various forms of labour exploitation and work-based harm.

Based on migrant workers’ reports, these forms of exploitation parasitically feed on human needs, desperation, and lack of better options. In summary, the results presented in section 4 show that the factors that are more likely to lead to labour exploitation, as perceived by workers, include: fearing for their physical integrity, even fearing for their life, suffering from a precarious economic situation, not understanding the language, working in one of these four sectors: agriculture, construction, domestic service or hospitality, being an immigrant/foreigner, being in an irregular administrative situation, possessing a low level of education, being older than 50 and being female, especially in domestic employment (Chulvi 2020, cf. on the role of gender in modern slavery labour exploitation Shankley 2023).

As explained in detail in section 5, the most common experiences of the workers who have suffered labour exploitation include various mechanisms of appropriation and ownership of life based on coercion and deception. More specifically, we observe a continuum of exploitation involving problems with payments, working conditions, employment contracts, housing/accommodation, issues with documents, issues with work tasks, and experiencing and/or witnessing threats and violence. Moreover, the global economic crisis that transpired between 2007 and 2014 has intensified the predicament, further entrenching migrants in their disenfranchising circumstances (Hellgren and Serrano 2019; Rodríguez-Planas and Nollenberger 2014).

The results presented in section 6 show that most interviewees continue to suffer from a situation of labour exploitation. Very few have contacted NGOs, trade unions or the competent authority to ask for help. Approximately half of the participants stated they had been informed of their rights at some point. Only a minority are satisfied with their current work situation; half of them had expected the Spanish labour legislation to offer more guarantees and did not expect to suffer in such a way. Some of the measures suggested by the participants revolve around the creation and strengthening of dedicated channels for workers to seek legal information and learn about their labour rights and duties from the outset, and increase work inspections.

In 2015, a vital reform took place in Spain's legislation regulating domestic services. This reform brought about a definite improvement in the conditions of domestic service workers. However, the regulation has been deemed insufficient in many aspects, notably sick leave, unemployment benefits and retirement pensions (Benito Benítez 2019). The Strategic Plan of the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate for the period 2018–2020 has a specific line of action to improve the protection of the labour rights of immigrant workers. Finally, the National Plan for Decent Work 2018–2020 also foresees a specific measure to intensify the Labour and Social Security Inspectorate to verify the working conditions of immigrants, especially women and minors of working age.

As shown by these recent reforms, the Spanish legal system openly prohibits these forms of exploitation however the full implementation of these legal provisions to protect the most vulnerable immigrant workers is hampered by interconnected factors, such as lack of political will and laissez-faire, judicial discretion, corruption and unaccountability; however these are only the by-product of a structural phenomenon of the global economy within which a specific national economy with its labour market and its own particular needs and interests is embedded (Scott 2017; Strauss 2015).

Although labour exploitation is not exclusive to immigration and foreign status, migrants face additional obstacles in the workplace compared to their autochthonous counterparts, which generally results in exploitative practices. For example, language barriers can make communication in the workplace difficult and make it more difficult for migrant workers who are not proficient in the language of the country of destination to understand their employment rights and build social networks (Davies 2019).

Irregular immigration status further exposes migrant workers to exploitative labour practices that are often connected to concerns of arrest and deportation (Skrivankova 2010). In this regard, Martínez-Virto et al. (2021) argue that irregular immigration status is often the result of the employer's predisposition to favour informality to reduce costs, which ultimately generates obstacles to the regularisation process of migrant workers and, for many the fall into an irregular status (Ambrosini 2015; Song and Bloemraad 2022). The last few years have demonstrated that the mere enactment of welfare-oriented legislation for marginalised workers does not necessarily result in a broad-based enhancement of their quality of life. The solution to exploitative labour practices cannot be limited to the creation of stricter laws, if this is not accompanied by the full realisation that these unlawful practices are an integral aspect of the current labour production system, that they do not develop, as is continually alleged, outside the legal boundaries of the economy.

This principle, first underlined by Corkill two decades ago (2001), has been re-emphasized in the current discourse by scholars such as López-Sala (2022) and Corrado and Caruso (2022) in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. These researchers highlight the pressing need for systemic measures that both illuminate and ameliorate the precarious conditions of a group that has historically been, remains, and will continue to be indispensable to our survival. However, the full magnitude of this necessity will only resonate when all relevant stakeholders are mobilised and engaged – including politicians, citizens, trade unions, NGOs, and notably, the migrants themselves. These initiatives aim not just to increase visibility but also to confer dignity on this vital collective.

Thus, by adopting the approach of ‘starting from the end’ (Paoli and Greenfield 2015), that is, focusing on the vulnerability and work-based harm perceived by migrant workers themselves, we strive to foster a more nuanced conversation on the multifaceted nature of labour exploitation. This perspective offers a robust foundation for subsequent research, enabling it to transcend the confines of criminal law and accommodate the fluidity of subtle and less ‘newsworthy’ forms of exploitation inherent in the contemporary labour structure.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) under Grant F-SE-13-T12-C12-L09. Framework Contract Data collection and research services on fundamental rights issues.

Notes

1 Comisión Española de Ayuda al Refugiado (CEAR), Asociación Día-Día África Libertad, Asociación de Servicio Doméstico Activo, Asociación de Venezolanos en España, Asociación Casa de Colombia, Amalgama, Asociación Vecinal Cuatro Caminos-Tetuán, Red de Mujeres de América Latina.

2 The people interviewed in 2017 recall suffering from exploitative labour practices that date back to 2014.

3 Royal Decree 1620/20111 of 14 November, regulating the special relationship that characterises service within the family household.