BACKGROUND:
Labour exploitation and trafficking is a challenge to the achievement of the Sustainable Development goals, a public health and occupational safety concern - and not only an immigration and law enforcement issue. Labour trafficking impacts numerous workplaces and can be perpetrated by different actors with varied motivations. Its “hidden” nature, because of intersecting factors and barriers, means that it often goes undetected, unreported, misclassified and/or linked to other crimes. This means that frontline practitioners often overlook the role of occupational health exposures as early indicators of exploitation. Considering this, the research question guiding this study is: How do intersecting identities of employees make them vulnerable to precarious labour conditions and trafficking, and in what ways can public health responses be shaped to reflect their voices?

METHODS:
A qualitative intersectional positioned methodology for trafficking in person’s scholarship will be adopted. This paper applies an intersectionality lens in understanding qualitative data collected from a trafficking study in South Africa.

RESULTS:
Practitioners are well positioned to identify and address coercive and precarious labour conditions which either are or which mask labour exploitation and trafficking. By reframing occupational injuries, chemical and environmental hazard exposures as potential acts of coercion rather than isolated occupational incidents, an intersectional-public health framework strengthens frontline practitioners’ capacity to identify trafficked persons early and provide appropriate referral and/ or care.

CONCLUSIONS:
Future interventions should focus on integrated public health interventions which combine occupational health surveillance, lived experiences, community based outreach, and intersectionality informed training to enhance prevention and early intervention response efforts for workers experiencing labour trafficking.