There is a certain type of person who will willingly take short cuts or bend the rules to suit their own needs.
There are people, too, who have no respect for other people and treat them badly.
However, when someone has these two character traits together, with a dash of cruelty, a smidgen of secrecy and a good measure of greed, you end up with exploitation on a grand scale.
This has happened from the beginning of time, I know.
That doesn’t mean that it is acceptable, however.
Here in Portugal, circumstances combine to produce a dreadful, toxic mix which is the perfect storm for the migrant worker to be taken advantage of.
Imagine the setting: a rural farm, quite literally miles from anywhere, in Alentejo, say.
This is the least developed of Portugal’s regions. It is savagely beautiful, with rolling endless hills and deep, dark forests.
There is a rich agricultural heritage here, with citrus orchards, olive trees and cork oak trees, in addition to the ubiquitous vine and soft fruit farms, such as raspberries and strawberries.
These are all very labour intensive enterprises.
Traditionally, small farms have been worked by village co-operatives or families and all has been well.
In recent times, however, two factors have produced a problem.
Young people especially have been leaving rural Portugal for work in the cities. The lure of work in northern Europe has also attracted the well-educated Portuguese professional.
Examples would be our local veterinarian, who has built up a thriving business, only to find it difficult to retain vets as they can, literally, double their money in Britain, Germany and France.
Young lads from our village leave to seek their fortune, in Dick Wittington fashion, in Lisbon or Porto, where the streets are, of course pavimento d’ouro.
The farm owner has a dwindling workforce available locally; he is miles from a prying bureaucratic eye and hundreds of acres of olives or lemons to harvest.
He also doesn’t want to pay too much.
Enter the middle-man, with migrant workers from Rumania, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and other places, eager and willing to work hard for little return.
They are housed in grim, basic conditions, with their identity documents removed and treated very poorly, with wages often withheld.
There is a section of law enforcement here that is called the Guarda Nacional Republicana, or GNR.
They look rather intimidating, as they strut around in their leather jackboots and they have a gun at their waist. They are technically a military unit and as such they enjoy more aggressive freedoms.
These chaps have been visiting farms, alongside Portugal’s Immigration and Border Service, or Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF).
The results are showing that this type of cynical exploitation is on the rise.
The Council of Europe reported last year that labour trafficking was rising across the continent and had overtaken sexual exploitation as the “predominant form of modern slavery” in several countries including Britain, Belgium and Portugal.
Worryingly, here in Portugal, the SEF doesn’t have enough people to police and visit the remote areas.
l Mike Gaunt is a former assistant headmaster at St Christopher’s School, Bahrain – mikegaunt@gmail.com