Coercion Within the Care Economy: How AI and Human Security can mitigate Labour Trafficking among Internationally Educated Nurses

While human smuggling and trafficking are defined as separate phenomena, the labor trafficking of Filipino workers in Canada has garnered our attention from a human security lens, leveraging this framework to elucidate this persistent form of modern slavery. Labour trafficking includes deceptive recruitment, extortionate illegal fees, and severe exploitation under the threat of deportation, revealing systemic vulnerabilities within Canada’s immigration framework. This analysis serves as a clarion call for bilateral/regional mechanisms and junction analysis of the safe and ethical migration of Filipino workers, especially those in the healthcare sector.

Research for this article draws on a mixed methodology approach that collected existing data on the labour trafficking and exploitation of Filipino nurses in Canada following a presentation for the Healthcare Education and Safe Migration Forum, hosted by UniEd (Unilab Education, Inc.) in April 2026. UniEd is a collaborative education initiative launched by the Unilab Group to bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world employment in the Philippines. Enhancing our understanding of contemporary issues and informing insights into emerging trends, our methodology includes a review of academic and grey literature collected through public and academic databases, with a supplementary literature review conducted in May 2026.

With Canada increasing its demand for nurses due to its aging population, the need for well-trained international nurses has never been greater. Canada’s population of seniors is projected to make up to 25% of the population by 2036, signalling seismic demographic shifts across the country. Illustratively, a substantial portion of Canada’s nursing workforce is nearing retirement age, and according to the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, a third of registered nurses providing care to those in need were over 50 years old in 2020, suggesting imminent retirement for those members of the care economy (Office of the Auditor General of Canada, 2024). Canadian nursing schools’ limited capacity to train new nurses has also created bottlenecks in education, exacerbating shortages in the field. The Canadian government is addressing the nursing shortage by earmarking funding for the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing to develop a National Nurse Residency program, while the Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has allocated approximately $172 millions CAD to expand Canada’s Foreign Credential Recognition Program, assisting international nurses in getting their qualifications recognized by the Canadian government (Employment and Social Development Canada, 2022).

The increasing popularity of nurse migration throughout the world, let alone Canada, is driven by globalisation: trends of nursing inflows and outflows and traditional source and destination countries dramatically changed in the latter half of the twentieth century as a result of socio-cultural/political “push and pull” factors of migration between donor and receiving countries. Social and economic inequities such as poor working conditions; unemployment and underemployment; poor economic conditions and quality of life; political and social instability; and the quality of life and status of nursing in different countries also serve as a driver for this mass migration (Choy, 2010; Ronquillo, 2010; Torres et al., 2024). In recent decades, the Philippines has become the source nation of nurses to the following countries: United States (US), the Middle East, the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada (Brush & Sochalski, 2007). Canada’s use of internationally educated nurses (IENs) into its healthcare workforce has created tremendous opportunities for the Philippines, leading in numbers as a significant source country of IENs. However, rising inflation, housing costs, living expenses, along with persistent educational and accreditation inequities creates barriers for IENs from the Philippines, most of whom hope to settle, integrate, and complete professional recertification processes to become registered nurses in Canada (Leonida et al., 2025). This, unfortunately, creates opportunities for labour trafficking and exploitation, calling upon authorities to ensure safe, ethical, regulated, and beneficial mobility for these healthcare workers.

A Human Security Approach

Human security (hereafter HS) is defined through interrelated dimensions such as economic security; food security; health security; personal security; community security; and political security (Jolly and Ray, 2007; Roberts, 2008; Ewan, 2007). The Commission on Human Security, in a related vein, also buttresses the idea of HS via freedom from fear and freedom from want, exploring economic stability, health, personal safety, community belonging, and political rights (Commission on Human Security, 2003). Adopting an HS lens, we can theorize the exploitation of Filipino nurses in Canada as a function of the systemic gaps in immigration, professional licensing, labor protections and institutional barriers that push these workers into vulnerable, underpaid positions, despite Canada’s severe nursing shortage. For example, the Vancouver-based Filipino Nurses Support Group (FNSG) has been at the fore of labor trafficking, arguing that Filipino nurses who come to Canada are being taken advantage of due to the Permanent Resident Visa under the Skilled Worker category of immigration, which allows migrant workers to enter Canada under the Live-In Caregiver Program, requiring that they work as nannies for two to three years before becoming Canadian Permanent Residents. Confined to work as caregivers for children, the elderly, and the sick, they become de-skilled which, in turn, results in their personal and professional development being stalled, placing them in a stream of home support work, food services, warehouse jobs, and other cheap labour positions (CanadaVisa Team, 2015). Referred to as the “De-Skilling” Pipeline, Canada’s system erects barriers for Filipino nurses that do not meet the strict point thresholds for immediate permanent residency as skilled workers, diverting them into alternative pathways (Canadian Race Relations Foundation, n.d; Patricio, 2024). According to a 2023 Canadian census report, many immigrants from the Philippines are highly educated and overqualified for the jobs available to them: in fact, more than 40 per cent of Filipinos in Canada held a bachelor’s degree or higher but were underrepresented in jobs requiring such a degree, with an overqualification rate of 41.8 per cent. The driving force behind the overqualification job mismatch was the caregiver programme, which recruits Filipino women to work in personal care occupations, consigning them to roles such as nurse aides, orderlies or patient service associates in Canada (AsiaOne, 2023). Relatedly, research has revealed that Filipino care workers earn, on average, the lowest employment incomes among racialized groups in Canada (Migrant Rights Network, 2021). Despite work experience and certification in areas such as palliative care, Filipino nurses are still told from the National Nursing Assessment Service (NNAS) that their education is not comparable to that of a Canadian-educated nurses, rendering their credentials moot and ineligible to practice in Canada (Baylon, 2021).

If we address the economic security considerations of Filipino nurses first, we begin to acknowledge the false pretenses under which they are recruited internationally and promised better opportunities but are faced with wage disparities, underemployment, or precarious employment. In the main, many nurses also incur significant debt from migration and credentialing processes, whilst the temporary working permits create dependence on employers, making workers vulnerable to exploitation (Nazareno et al., 2021). The personal security of these workers is also violated as a result of ongoing violence, abuse and discrimination via workplace harassment and exploitation by recruiters or employers, reducing their sense of safety and autonomy, and increasing their risk of emotional and psychological harm (Kafle et al., 2022). Lastly, the limited awareness of labour rights and complaint mechanisms among these workers weakens their political security, as many are faced with structural barriers to reporting abuse which reduces their ability to advocate for fair treatment, perpetuating unequal access to legal protections and workplace rights (Elsharkawy et al., 2025).

A HS analysis must, perforce, examine broader structures contributing to insecurity and Canada’s reliance on IENs to address labour shortages. With stronger labour protections, fair credential recognition, anti-discrimination measures, ethical recruitment practices, and immigration policies which prioritize the rights and well-being of migrant nurses, stronger alignment of existing international and national frameworks can be leveraged to strengthen HS. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration should include clearer, enforceable standards for ethical recruitment and protections specific to health workers, monitoring destination-country compliance. Also, the Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers’ rules should also be strengthened with mandatory pre-departure training on destination-specific scope of practice, credentialing processes, and workers’ rights in Canada, ensuring the World Health Organization’s Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel is being upheld with respect to bilateral agreements between the Philippines and Canada. Recruitment fees, transparent contracts, and guaranteed access to continuing education and workplace protections should be at the forefront of these agreements. And finally, the Philippines’ Republic Act No. 8042 (as amended by RA 10022) should be improved by prohibiting recruiter fees for health professionals, enhancing oversight of recruitment agencies, and integrating mental health and financial literacy support as part of migrant welfare services in an attempt to mitigate exploitation and promote long-term well-being of nurses abroad (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 2018; Bourgeault et al., 2023; Baumann and Crea-Arsenio, 2023).

Providing a Voice for the Voiceless

Migrant care worker organizations such as the Caregivers’ Action Centre have documented the experiences of hundreds of racialized migrant domestic workers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a scathing report entitled “Behind Closed Doors: Exposing Migrant Care Worker Exploitation During COVID-19”, stories of abuse including working every day without a break, thousands of dollars in stolen wages, and workers being trapped in employers’ homes for months were reported. One migrant care worker from the Philippines reported being forced to work 12 hours a day, 5 days a week during COVID-19, only to be compensated $1,440 per month until she was fired due to her employer relocating during the pandemic (Caregivers’ Action Centre, 2020). Unfortunately, the post-COVID landscape has not changed for Filipino workers in the care economy: Redula (2025) explains that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) refuses permanent residency (PR) applications under the Express Entry system which, in turn, results in many Filipino workers losing their immigration status. The Integrated Filipino Canadian Nurses Association (IFCNA), an advocacy group for internationally educated nurses, also notes that many foreign-trained nurses who obtain their nursing license in Ontario have no choice but to fly back to the Philippines or move to another province due to loss of immigration status, and the lack of support for nurses’ immigration pathways. One case study involved an Ontario nurse who returned to the Philippines after an immigration struggle even though they were fully licensed and working in a Canadian hospital. In this case, the worker lost his legal status because of complications with his permanent residency application and work permit, highlighting how a person can be economically and socially vulnerable even while performing essential work (Redula, 2025).

A similar case involves Vesminda Cara, who migrated from the Philippines in 2019 to take a job as a caregiver for three children in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before arriving in Canada, Cara was promised $2,700 a month but was forced to work weekends, faced long work days with unpaid overtime and received only $750 per month. Cara turned to the Migrant Workers Centre for help, whose legal director, Jonathon Braun, commented on similar cases describing them as modern-day slavery. Braun has documented other cases of verbal, psychological, physical and sexual abuse against Filipino migrant workers, explaining that most suffer in silence out of fear of deportation and criminal charges being laid against them if they leave their place of employment – yet another layer to labour trafficking across Canada. When Cara left her employer in 2021, she sought refuge at the Salvation Army’s Debra’s Gate, a high-security safehouse for self-identifying women who are fleeing human trafficking. Fortunately, in a 2024 decision made by Employment Standards, Cara’s former employer was ordered to compensate her more than $120,000 (Pires, 2025).

The aforementioned case studies reveal that HS is affected when immigration systems, labour needs, and worker protections are not aligned and that HS means not only addressing immediate safety concerns but also creating fair, reliable systems that allow people, especially those performing essential work, to live and work with stability and dignity. Using a HS framework, we begin to see the exploitation of Filipino nurses in Canada as a multidimensional security concern and a pronounced shift away from traditional, state-centric security approaches, focusing more on the protection of individuals rather than states, as per the United Nations Development Programme.

An AI-enabled, Human Security Framework

In order to address some of the examples of labour trafficking in the preceding section, we contend that artificial intelligence (AI) holds tremendous promise in supporting Filipino nurses who are victims of labor trafficking, particularly when implemented within a human rights and trauma-informed framework. If we refer to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals – particularly, Target 8.7 – we begin to see what role AI is poised to play in upholding HS. An AI-enabled human security framework, for example, safeguards the fundamental freedoms, economic agency, and human rights of vulnerable workers, synthesizing machine learning capabilities with HS principles to prevent exploitation before it occurs. According to Target 8.7, all UN Member States are committed to take “immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms” (United Nations, n.d.). The application of AI here is instructive, as Target 8.7 can foster collaboration between artificial AI, computational science and anti-slavery advocates.

As a tool utilized by legal advocates, social workers, healthcare professionals, unions, and government agencies, AI-powered platforms can provide multilingual information, and educate IENs on employment standards, immigration rights, and occupational health and safety laws. One example currently being used is that of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), who has partnered with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to launch an AI-powered anti-trafficking platform in 2025. The platform helps frontline responders identify trafficking risks, connecting victims with services to secure safe employment. In 2026, the platform introduced Sarah, an AI career coach that helps victims of labor trafficking with rebuilding their careers and reducing the risk of re-trafficking (International Rescue Committee, 2025). Another example is DueCare AI, an open-source system created specifically for migrant worker protection. The platform detects indicators such as illegal recruitment fees, contract substitution, fraudulent job advertisements and exploitative recruitment practices, assisting in the collection of data to help non-governmental organizations and labour inspectors summarize cases and deduce recurring patterns of labour trafficking (DueCare, n.d.). An equally important consideration is worker agency and participatory design insofar as AI-driven systems work with victims to protect the autonomy and data privacy of vulnerable workers. The cases above reveal the heightened vulnerability of migrant care workers and the need to secure anonymization through Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) which allow workers to report conditions without exposing their personally identifiable information (Duarte et al., 2025).

Conclusion

Taken together, the case studies and exploration of HS above present a case to strengthen an AI-enabled, HS framework to address the labour exploitation of Filipino nurses in Canada. There is considerable proof that Canada’s immigration framework requires bilateral/regional mechanisms to ensure the safe and ethical migration of Filipino nurses. One vitally important implication of this research is that AI can be leveraged to address the many dimensions associated with labour trafficking, developing Government-to-Government Agreements (G2G) to strengthen labor enforcement standards and provide legal assistance; oversee pre-arrival orientation and offer immigration flexibility and settlement services, investing in Philippine nursing education and hospital resources as part of said bilateral agreements. Lastly, AI can track outcomes, collecting data on employment conditions, retention, and well-being of Filipino nurses, upholding the security of these valuable members of the care economy.

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