with anyone apart from the OEPs or subagents. Many workers are also unaware of the other stakeholders involved in the process of migration and who they can report any potential issues to. As a Pakistani activist in Bahrain, advocating for the rights of imprisoned Pakistanis, explained in an interview, “the prisoners I’ve spoken to do not even know the name of the Bureau [Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment], let alone that such organisations even exist to protect them from abuse.”30 Finally, surveys of returned migrants have shown that workers are usually unaware of predeparture conditions and largely leave the handling of their documents to the agent arranging their employment and travel abroad.31 This is also made possible by certain practices allowed in Pakistan’s legal framework for emigration. For example, the official Procedure for Overseas Employment allows OEPs to retain the passports of job seekers as long as they “maintain the record in a register.”32 In addition to loopholes such as these which sideline the intending lowskilled migrant in his own migration procedure, the section on pre-departure briefings and the information obtained from the detainees in this report points towards a significant lack of enforcement and oversight at best, and extreme corruption and indifference at worst. 2.2.3 The Role of Subagents in Labour Migration Asad, a co-worker of Ibrahim, took Ibrahim to meet the subagent who was to process Ibrahim’s documents and passport for travel to Saudi Arabia. When they reached the agent’s place, Asad left, telling Ibrahim that Ibrahim would go to Saudi Arabia alone and Asad would come at a later time. When Asad left, the subagent injected Ibrahim with something that put him in a semi-conscious state. It was in this state that Asad was forced to swallow heroin capsules. He was then taken to the Islamabad airport where he was made to board the flight to Saudi Arabia. Although Pakistani law prohibits the use of unauthorised intermediaries, in practice subagents are the critical intermediary between prospective workers and employers overseas, especially for individuals from rural areas who account for a significant portion of all labour migration from Pakistan. Pakistan’s 2,157 licenced OEPs are spread out over the seven cities of Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Malakand District, Quetta and Multan. Due to this, in order to recruit semi-skilled or unskilled workers from more remote areas, licenced OEPs inevitably rely on subagents to transmit job offers and connect workers with OEPs. The government’s Overseas Employment Corporation has even fewer branches and lower accessibility, located just in five cities. Therefore, the first contact many migrant workers have with an “agent” to facilitate migration is an unlicensed person, with no credible, official source to recommend or monitor him. The Emigration Ordinance of 1979, which governs the licencing of OEPs, does not provide any rules or regulations on the use of subagents by licenced actors. However, it states, “whoever recruits a citizen of Pakistan (without licensing or official permission) or holds an interview or examination or issues an advertisement for such recruitment, and the editor, 13