Chapter 14 - Human Trafficking: Forced Labor and Sexual Slavery

Abstract

This chapter educates the reader with basic language and concepts related to human trafficking. The goal is to help those professionals examining vulnerable individualsdto aid with understanding the picture and the problem more clearly. Especially when a trafficked person is sitting right in front of them. Someone that is being exploited, who requires not dismissal or judgment, but access to justice and the preservation of other basic human rights. This requires addressing popular and convenient myths. It also requires a review of human trafficking contexts that have not generally been portrayed in popular culture.Because of poor journalism, which merely echoes badly written films and television, the problem of Human Trafficking is routinely misrepresented and ultimately misunderstood. We think we know who the victims are; we think we know who the traffickers are; and we think we understand the customers. We are confident because of the persistent character narratives and visuals that have been firmly embedded in our subconscious by these and other equally misleading media tropes. They include naive and innocent victims held in cages, moved around on backroads in the night; callous and lustful offenders, with volatile tempers and dark skin; and, of course, the virtuous savior who charges selflessly to the rescue across any border. And always into territories populated by stereotypically hostile foreigners, written to appear wholly complicit.