Human Trafficking - Science topic

yes

Yes, it is possible to use the intersectionality theory in sex trafficking topics. However, sex trafficking is a dangerous area to study, so be careful. You can check the literature that highlights the use of intersectionality theory in money laundering, human trafficking etc.

The simple answer could be - because it is busy with other problems, and it is not among the priorities, when it should be.

🥰🥰🥰ok

Interesting issue … perhaps look into case studies like the coffee supply chain, etc

Dominika Sokolowska you are probably moving along on your research, and more research on this topic is very much needed. From the US perspective this will give you more ideas-- https://humanrightsclinic.usc.edu/2021/11/15/over-policing-sex-trafficking-how-u-s-law-enforcement-should-reform-operations/

Venezuela is a big data source for your research, Dear Marguerite Healy.

Probably you won't find any other country in the world where illicit economy policies such as drugs and human trafficking, and billionaire corruption are promoted by the rule of law of CastroChavistas.

Best Regards.

Dear Marcel,

Sorry, am responding rather late. Colleagues who offered some thoughts on the question you posed have touched on the issues I think are pertinent to the debate. I agree and stress that qualitative and quantitative methodologies are more complementary rather than contradictory. This is also true when one considers the meaning of evidence as a socio-legal term. Evidence literally means any matter of fact that is presented to prove or disprove a case.

Social sciences researchers use 3 or more types of evidence to prove or disprove the existence of a social problem. The first type of social science evidence is anecdotal evidence. This is basically the citation of one or two related or unrelated cases, reported in the media.

To strengthen anecdotal evidence we need a reasonable number of experiential or lived experience. In the human trafficking research, this will mean, for example, the number of victims identified and interviewed. The number of victims needed to establish strong evidence is not known. This is where guidance is needed from government agencies and where the Second type of social science evidence - statistical evidence comes in. The number of arrests, prosecution and convictions on human trafficking is increasing yet some still do not consider the crime a threat to the South African society.

The third type of social science evidence is testimonial or the writing of experts on the subject of concern. In research terms, this is the citation of articles in accredited/peer reviewed journals.

Human trafficking research fulfills the 3 types of evidence briefly discussed.

While evidence presented by human trafficking researchers to prove the prevalence of human trafficking crime in South Africa are often criticized or dismissed as anecdotal, critiques have not been able to provide counter evidence to disprove it.

Good and relevant topic of study.

Michael J. Lynch thank you so much for sharing the article. I appreciate you taking time to answer this question.

Nice topic. But it will be wise not make any predetermined opinion like its stigma. It will be better to start from the neutral point of view because adult trafficking and child trafficking is different. Adults more know whats going on. So, even if they say its not their own wish sometimes they intended to go but things gone wrong in the way. So, it will be better if the hidden psychological issues came out through this research.

Hi Muthana,

I recommend you have a look at Baumol, W. J. (1990). Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproductive, and destructive. Journal of Political Economy,

98 (5), 893 - 921. This is pretty much regarded as a key text in respect of illegal entrepreneurship.

I've written a bit on this too, generally in relation to organised crime. You will find my work on my home page if it is of interest.

I think a really interesting 'case study' to look at that relates to your question is 20th century alcohol prohibition in the United States. A good article on this is at:

Hope this is helpful.

Kind Regards,

Martin

Hi Harshaf,

Thanks for raising important points. I think each of these issues requires to be tackled independently and cannot be clubbed together into a Socil Issues bucket.

Thank you, sir. I will check out the sites you mentioned.

Thank you so much for your responses.

I contacted Licia Brussa, PhD of TAMPEP in Amsterdam, Holland and the International Organization of Migrations in Geneva, Switzerland to understand how to account for the element of unreported cases of sex trafficking and illegal human trafficking in authoring my NIH project application for Europe. They are on the cutting edge of new strategies and solid methodology in controlling for these statistics.

.As so many of you have stated, it is difficult to gain accurate data on the topic. I have pull statistics from a wide range of sources dealing with different aspects of the topic, but in many cases, the numbers reported are fairly broad-based estimates. I have found about the best I can do is establish trends

I am now doing some research into human trafficking, specifically in the beauty industry and its link to both labor and sexual exploitation. I feel it is a multidimensional problem is a challenge to the community. What I have seen is strip clubs are often just one element in the equation. Typically for the true impact to occur on the dynamics of sex trafficking in an area requires a multidimensional community involvement, to include a true commitment by local government, area business leaders, residents and a well-planned enforcement initiative. While it is naïve to assume that these efforts will only remove the challenge from the community. The average can disrupt the activities of the targeted area

Great question, as pointed out by the earlier respondents there is a difference and much has to do with the initial intent and ultimate freedom of those trafficked.

That is a very good question. From my perspective not all trafficked fall into a "slave-type" or indentured situation, thus, the term slavery does not apply in all cases.

I think you cannot find publicly available multilingual versions of international survey - only the generic one (English). There are many secondary data analyses on trafficking, as well as national reports - for example Eurofound deals with labout exploitation and trafficking.

Here you could find summary of methodological challenges in research on trafficking. http://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/global_survey.pdf

In case your research is for Master degree, I would recommend to be focused on qualitative research, combined with secondary data analyses. Good luck!

Thank you so much! I will definitely look at your recommandations!

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Human Trafficking is the trading of people for an economic benefit. It involves violence against these people, forced taking them to other places within or outside their countries. It is done to supply people for local or international prostitution, forced labour, sexual slavery, or providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage. People, often women who are exposed to this form of violence and human rights abuse are often vulnerable because of economic reasons (poverty), ethnic background and/or gender. Human trafficking is a multi-billion business world-wide and should not be confused with human smuggling, which usually would involve consent of those who are smuggled over international borders, which makes smuggling a violation of laws of countries, but not necessarily violation of people’s human rights, which however can also happen in the process, as smuggled people are also vulnerable through the situation they are in and the dependency on others, who then can exploit the situation. This can lead that human trafficking and human smuggling can overlap..

Human security is in contrast to national security the situation when humans are free from fear and free from wants. A crucial aspect of human security is the absense of many different forms a structures and processes that make people vulnerable.

To bring both concepts together means that whenever human security is low people face all sorts of vulnerabilities, which includes the exposure to violence such as human trafficking.

Some recent literature that brings both concepts together

Chanda, S. (2017, March). Human Security and the Trafficking of Women: India and her Neighbours’. In National Conference on Contradiction, Conflict and Continuity: Their Significance in Contemporary Society (Vol. 1, p. 106). Allied Publishers.

Bowersox, Z. (2017). Natural Disasters and Human Trafficking: Do Disasters Affect State Anti‐Trafficking Performance?. International Migration.

Molinari, N. (2017). Intensifying Insecurities: The impact of climate change on vulnerability to human trafficking in the Indian Sundarbans. Anti-Trafficking Review, (8).

Emser, M., & Francis, S. (2017). Counter-trafficking governance in South Africa: an analysis of the role of the KwaZulu-Natal human trafficking, prostitution, pornography and brothels task team. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 35(2), 190-211.

Uddin, M. B. (2017). Revisiting Gender-Sensitive Human Security Issues and Human Traffickingin South Asia: The Cases of India and Bangladesh. In Crime, Criminal Justice, and the Evolving Science of Criminology in South Asia (pp. 219-245). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Batra, M. (2017). Relationship between disaster and human trafficking. Disaster Law: Emerging Thresholds, 4.

 Maybe it will be better not to review in this stage of your research any themes.

This way you will be exclusively focused on the themes spontaneously occur in interviews. You will also avoid imposing themes that could be not important, marginal for your subjects and missing some important cultural, geographical etc. particularities.

You can guide your interviews by emergent themes (analyzing your first unstructured interviews).

It is hard to find reliable (accurate) research on this topic, this is because most sex traffickers target troubled females with prior drug abuse, therefore, when they go missing most of their acquaintances don't suspect foul play and just assume (due to their flakey; unreliable nature) they jumped states, shacked up with some new boyfriend, or got involved in some other living situation, etc. and don't report their disappearance. Last seminar I attended it was said that the sex traffickers were waiting outside methadone clinics to lure females. I know as this area of crime evolves it gets harder to locate reliable data. 

I don't know if you have seen it before but there is a book titled Applying Complexity Theory: Whole systems approaches to Criminal Justice and Social Work.

Don't forget the role of offshore finance, which allows for transactions in the IPE to be hidden from view, as revealed by the Panama Papers.

I was going to suggest asking Gary Craig but I assume you will have done that...

You'd really need to stratify and segment the market to get these figures in any meanjngful way, and other factors intervene. The more organised higher class levels are pretty fastidious about testing etc and even lower down safe sex is the norm. The ones who practice unsafe are usually ostracized and guys who require it blacklisted, but there are much lower levels eh trafficked women where the women are just abused and when they are no longer marketable may be deliberately infected. However, where infection does occur at lower levels it is usually a result of drug use, which of course is a major reason why women are on the streets. CDC has figures.

Thanks Matilde - yes, even the FRONTEX data is complicated to read, and I suspect it is still missing more than it is capturing.  It is a "hidden" crime that is very hard to detect and track, much less attack.  

I know when I lived in London the Brits were working very hard on this - they have the advantage in that they are sort of the "end of the line" for smuggling and exploitation in Europe.  There are also ethnic enclaves that are very hard to penetrate - for example in Manchester - that adds to the general sense of "what don't we know"?

Cheers

Don

Yes - I am currently considering these issues in the Pacific for my PhD.

I don't know if these works help you

Health care providers are already subject to some mandatory reporting -- e.g., for child abuse. Some states have broadened that, but even in states that have not, for the provider there may be little difference. That is, a provider is unlikely to see physical injuries and think "if wasn't done by a parent, therefore I can ignore it." So practically speaking, a lack of mandate may not be the biggest obstacle. Lack of training and other issues are likely more significant. I have a co-authored piece on health care professionals' role in responding to child sex trafficking and am working on a book on the topic, so I'm happy to chat further.

Hi Toula,

Good day.Thank you for your suggested references and links.

South Asia has several key characteristics that cause human trafficking to thrive in a region: large impoverished population, major cultural/linguistic/economic barriers for marginalized groups, porous borders, significant amounts of low skilled labor migration, among others.  Other examples would be Southeast Asia, Subsaharan Africa, Central America.  The vast wealth differential between the affluent and the poor in these areas, combined with social/educational/cultural/linguistic barriers due to discrimination toward marginalized groups, forces people to make risky choices for work.  Lack of opportunity for the least advantaged of a society makes them vulnerable to exploitation in the informal sector.  Just based on the sheer magnitude of the population living in poverty, India has circumstances that encourage trafficking.  Large numbers of unskilled, uneducated migrants means that unscrupulous people are likely to take advantage of that populous.  

The chance at a better life in the big city is motivation enough to engage in risky migration, and these migrants are often exploited by traffickers.  The circumstances create the traffickers and the traffickees.  Traffickers don't manifest in a vacuum, they are opportunistic people, often desperate to earn money, and likely to have been exploited in the past.  

Thailand is a destination, transit, source  country for trafficking, not because Thai people are any more or less scrupulous than anyone else.  Thailand just has a set of historical realities, combined with neighbors filled with large number of marginalized people, and a comparative economic advantage in the region.  These marginalized, disadvantaged migrants (from Laos PDR, Burma, Cambodia, elsewhere) see the opportunities in places like Bangkok, and are willing to take the risks of informal migration for the chance at a better life.  They see the good life on TV, billboards, the internet, and make risky choices in hopes of having that life, as well.  All it takes is to go from the extravagant shopping malls in Siam Square in Bangkok, and travel a few blocks to the slums, and you see how in your face wealth disparity is.  If I were living in a slum within walking distance to a Lambroghini dealership, I might take risks, and even engage in less than scrupulous behavior to access that.