Visa trading refers to a situation where a migrant is sponsored for a specific job or position. Upon arrival in the destination country, the migrant worker performs a substantially different job. This is because the sponsor has unofficially “traded” or “sold” the worker’s visa to another sponsor, whom the worker now informally answers to.

The critical distinction between the visa trading and typical irregular migration is that under visa trading, the migrant worker enters the destination country with appropriate paperwork with the correct visa, but then subsequently enters the black market.