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Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) is a member of GAATW in the United Kingdom. Srishty Anand from the GAATW Secretariat conducted this interview with Lucila Granada, FLEX’s Chief Executive, in June 2022 to learn more about the organisation’s history, work, and context.

Srishty Anand: Could you tell us when and how FLEX was founded and what is your focus?

Lucila Granada: The organisation was founded in 2013. GAATW is kind of the alma mater of FLEX because one of the founders is a former GAATW staff member. I think the main reason why the organisation was founded was to give more attention to labour exploitation and its widespread risk for many workers - women workers, people who are experiencing vulnerabilities due to different kinds of structural inequalities, like migration, race inequality, and so on.

We work very closely with organisations working on the ground with different communities, organisations that are experts on their communities. Our focus is on workers with low pay and insecure work. Women and migrant workers are the groups that we are prioritising now, given their circumstances in the UK.

SA: FLEX reports speak about community and peer researcher models. Could you elaborate on the focus of the research process and how it has evolved at FLEX?

LG: The honing of the research process started before my time. One of FLEX’s organisational values has to do with maintaining accountability to the people at risk of exploitation and actual victims of exploitation. We do this by facilitating involvement in co-creating knowledge, getting input in defining the problem and research method design to explore and understand these issues.

The community researcher and the peer researcher models are two methodologies that we've tried, and we learn more about it by implementing it with workers. We're proud of having done quite a lot of work in this area. We’ve worked with workers in the gig economy, in cleaning and hospitality - including restaurant and hotel staff - who are involved in the research process. Every stage of this process is to make sure that we ask the right questions, and that we also use the right methods to reach people. We also involve the workers in understanding the findings and analysing the findings within the wider context of their experiences as well. So, not just looking at work-related issues but widening the scope to interact with them, for example, as being parents who have dependents abroad and exploring the identities they hold. So that's been incredibly fruitful.

SA: Some of your report findings mention different categories of migrant workers like ‘hard-to-reach migrant workers’, and ‘seasonal workers’. Are these immigration categories? How does your research revolve around it?

LG: We ask questions about the context, the policies, and the government's role in shaping these experiences. One of the main ways in which the UK government is shaping work experiences, especially for migrant workers, is through the design of migration routes. This is particularly relevant after the end of free movement with the EU where we had a lot of sectors, and we still have a lot of sectors, that are highly reliant on EU workers. Our concern was understanding the consequences of Brexit for these sectors because they are already at high risk of exploitation due to very poor worker rights enforcement. So the focus of much of our work is immigration policy. This is looking both at what happens when there aren't any regular safe routes for workers and also how we can make sure that labour migration routes are safe. The focus on seasonal workers has to do with that, and also because it is the first temporary migration scheme that was opened to plug the gap in the agricultural sector post-Brexit.

SA: So did Brexit cause a crucial shift in UK’s recent labour history?

LG: Yes, and the reason is that we've had many changes, unfortunately: the end of free movement following the exit from the EU, COVID-19, and now the Ukraine war are all having a strong impact.

But these changes also relate to the wider context and to the historical changes in immigration rules, for instance. Some may be circumstantial changes that come into play but the underlying trends have been there for a long time. They are now just exacerbated by these different factors.

SA: Is the research by FLEX focused on migrant communities in the UK?

LG: If we are talking mainly about research, we have a strong fieldwork practice. That’s why we have been focusing on the UK. But some of our research also has international elements. Our current research on agriculture, for instance, is looking at origin countries. We’ve also done some work in Spain and Brazil.

SA: What is the process of connecting with community researchers and getting them on board? What is the role of FLEX’s network in this process?

LG: Their engagement in research is more long-term rather than via an interview or a survey, especially if we do FPAR (Feminist Participatory Action Research). We are engaging workers for a longer period of time. It is paid work and they receive training.

To get them on board, it's really important to work with our networks of NGO partners, because they are experts on their communities. These organisations can offer overall support for the workers’ needs, not just in terms of urgent responses but also reintegration needs and opportunities that can probably help people advance their situation, their interests, and whatever they want to do. In the UK, they can access more support, information, and even opportunities for socialising. We try as much as we can to reach workers through our networks. In some cases, there aren't that many organisations working with specific groups, but we always try to connect people with frontline organisations and also bring the frontline organisations to the policy spaces that we access.

We work with partners who share our values and our view that the people affected by an issue will have a specific kind of knowledge that comes from experience. They will know the interaction of workplace issues with other areas that are beyond our knowledge and expertise, like housing, caring responsibilities, access to health, and so on. So there is an insight from workers and people with lived experience that is truly irreplaceable. We seek to work with organisations that also recognise that.

A key element of our work is to facilitate spaces that will allow workers' views to be represented, for instance, in policy debates through their direct engagement, in research, or in media work. Alternatively, this representation might need to happen through an organisation working together with their beneficiaries to write their case studies and present their stories in a way that is appropriate and relevant to them. It might take different shapes, but yes, ultimately, we work with organisations that very much identify with that view.

SA: Could you elaborate on the shared values that you speak of? You mentioned accountability to the communities that you are working with. Are there more?

LG: Other values that we have as an organisation are respect, equality, and recognising that there are overlapping, accumulated layers of discrimination or disadvantage that create inequalities in society, thus affecting the work and position of people in different circumstances. So recognising the impact of intersectional discrimination on the communities that we work with is also a shared value with our partners. There is also integrity, which means ensuring that we are driven by the data, and that data is collected and analysed in a way that is reliable and rigorous.

UK introduces Seasonal Workers Scheme to get migrant workers to work on farms during harvest season.

SA: What are some of the specific issues that you’re working on right now? How were they decided?

LG: In terms of our research work and direct engagement with workers, we're looking at the Seasonal Worker Scheme (part of the temporary worker visa scheme in the UK) again this year. This time around, we are expecting to see a lot more national groups represented there, especially people from Nepal, who seem to be a growing number in the scheme. Ukrainians as well, not just through this scheme, but also entering other sectors in the labour market. The scheme has been open to virtually every place in the world. We're still sort of trying to find out who else will be there but we do expect Lithuanians, some Central Americans, and some from African countries as well.

We’re working with sectors that were highly reliant on EU migrant workers. We are exploring what we'll find after the changes in the national context. It might be that because of the new visa system we find students, young people, or more undocumented workers. They may come from Europe on tourist visas but work temporarily. We're assessing the situation at the moment.

SA: Can you expand a little bit more on how you work with the partners? Is it in the form of capacity building or more in terms of knowledge and other kinds of support that they might need?

LG: We do both actually. We have a training programme for frontline organisations. We always train the partners who are involved in our research programme. So we do training on data collection and research methodologies, but also to find organisations that are perhaps not necessarily dedicated to worker rights-related issues, but maybe migrant rights organisations. They might be connected with mental health organisations working with specific communities, women’s organisations, and so on. We offer free training to community-led grassroots organisations that are in touch with or supporting communities at risk of labour exploitation on indicators of labour exploitation and give them information about where to refer potential victims for support.

And then on the other hand, and often through that engagement, those organisations might become interested in advocacy work, which is also ultimately our goal. It's a mutually beneficial relationship because we also learn a lot. The training programme starts with listening sessions. We meet the caseworkers and sit down with them to talk about the people they assist, their circumstances, and whatever they find most relevant for those groups. Then we see the kind of work that they do, and the sectors that they represent. We learn from communities that are not represented in the anti-trafficking space. Whenever it is appropriate, these organisations can use FLEX as a platform to access spaces where they can have their views heard in advocacy.  

Because we’ve worked with a lot of different communities, we have a stakeholders group called the Labour Exploitation Advisory Group (LEAG). The members include Latin American Women’s Rights Service, Unite the Union, East European Resource Centre, British Red Cross, Kalayaan, Bail for Immigration Detainees, Kanlungan, Work Rights Centre, and Glass Door. There are several communities represented there. In terms of our networks, we are well connected to a lot of different groups.

SA: What is the purpose of creating LEAG? What are its main roles and tasks?

LG: The Labour Exploitation Advisory Group is an advocacy coalition that was set up in 2015 to promote discussion, information-sharing and collaboration among organisations working directly with people who have experienced or are at risk of labour exploitation in the UK. The group informs decision makers and key stakeholders like the Anti-Slavery Commissioner, about the issues that are affecting the groups that they support. It’s a mechanism that many of these actors really value because they can hear directly from the organisations what is happening on the ground. These are obviously expert organisations supporting a large number of workers and, sometimes, people who are not accessing mainstream services. In this case, their main activity is to inform about and advocate for the rights of the people who benefit from mitigating risks and for improving support for victims.

From an organisational point of view, we consider LEAG as one of the mechanisms that ensures that we maintain accountability towards the communities that we work with and that our work is grounded in those experiences.

SA: Do you also work on the issue of trafficking?

LG: We focus on prevention. We look at the factors and the systemic issues that are creating the risk of exploitation in the realm of trafficking, or what is called modern slavery in the UK, and forced labour and human trafficking for labour exploitation. We do work a lot with organisations that are dedicated to victim support, but at FLEX we are mostly dedicated to prevention.

SA: Thank you, Lucila.