Discrimination during COVID-19: Assessing migrant workers’ vulnerability to forced labor in Thailand’s seafood industry

Abstract

Between 2020 and 2022, Thailand instituted a series of policies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many of the regulations were rooted in structural discrimination against the migrant population. This paper reveals how the discriminatory nature of the government’s policies heightened the vulnerability of migrant workers in Thailand’s commercial fishing and seafood processing industries. COVID-19 containment measures and immigration policies, coupled with the exclusion of migrant workers from social protection programs, inadvertently subjected migrant workers in Thailand’s seafood industry to increased risk of forced labor. At the same time, further restrictions on freedom of association rights and the weakening of labor inspections during the pandemic hampered workers’ ability to report labor abuses and the government’s ability to identify and remedy cases of forced labor.