Labor Trafficking Research Articles

Borderline Slavery: Mexico, United States, and the Human Trade

Contents: Part I The Global Context: Setting the Stage for Sex and Labor Trafficking: Introduction, Susan Tiano Human trafficking: a perfect storm of contributing factors, Susan Tiano Migration the forgotten link in the nexus between freedom from want and freedom from fear, Sandro Calvani and Olivia Jung (in collaboration with Vittoria Luda di Cortemiglia) Trafficking in women and girls: commodification for profit, Kathryn Farr. Part II Human Trafficking in Mexico: Trata de Personas: Mexico's efforts, Gustavo de UnA!nue Aguirre CorazA^3n Azul: a hope for the vulnerable, Roberto Rodriquez HernA!ndez Sex trafficking in Mexico: the nexus between poverty, violence against women, and gender inequalities, Jenny Clark Assessing human trafficking in Mexico: the American Bar Association rule of law initiative's experience, Brenner Allen. Part III Human Trafficking Along the US-Mexico Border: Human trafficking and the US-Mexico border: reflections on a complex issue in a binational context, Tony Payan The best smugglers in El Paso, David B. Ham Human trafficking through Mexico and the southwest border: accounts from Hidalgo and Cochise counties, Richard J. Schaefer and Carolyn Gonzales Aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: labor exploitation and human trafficking of Mexican nationals to the Gulf Coast, Stephanie Hepburn. Part IV Combating Human Trafficking: Coordinated Responses Across Communities and Borders: Roadblocks to legal help for trafficking victims: T-visas and the Mondragon raid, Lise Olsen A model for coordination in anti-human trafficking task forces: the El Paso, Texas, site protocol, Virginia McCrimmon Combating human trafficking in the US-Mexico borderlands, Moira Murphy-Aguilar and Susan Tiano Index.

Book Review: Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

Book Review: <i>Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo</i> by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo

Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo

Human Trafficking: Beyond &lt;i&gt;Pretty Woman&lt;/i&gt; and Huggy Bear

Article focused on Human Trafficking and the law as related to both sex and labor trafficking.

Labor Trafficking in the Americas in Context: a Look into the Guest Worker Program

Human Trafficking is a social phenomenon, a crime, a human rights violation and a persistent practice throughout human history. The following pages approach human trafficking from a specific context, both from a concrete regional perspective (migration flows from and to Central and North America) as well as to a labor oriented immigration regulatory scheme. Particularly, the guest worker programs in the United States and Canada. In order to demonstrate how human trafficking occurs not only within contexts of irregular migration or in which legal schemes are absent, but rather how certain migratory regulation programs are fertile ground for human trafficking. Demonstrating how some of the responses and measures being implemented to tackle with human trafficking are being challenged, and how innovative proposals are being developed both by scholars and civil society.

Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubaiby Pardis Mahdavi

<i>Gridlock: Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai</i>by Pardis Mahdavi

Trading in Humans: A New Haven Perspective

Human trafficking is the third largest criminal industry after the drug trade and arms dealing, and it is also one of the fastest growing international crimes. Its victims are exploited in sex trafficking in large urban areas, vacation and tourist spots, near military bases; in labour trafficking fuelled by the demand for unskilled labour, present in seasonal agriculture, tourism, construction, fisheries and domestic servitude. This modern-day slavery is an affront to the dignity of the human being and a violation of core human rights. It is also a crime against the state that undermines labour relations, health, safety and security of every country it touches as a source of victims, place of transit or final destination. Concerted efforts locally and globally are necessary to combat it. Through the lens of the New Haven School of Thought, also known as Policy-Oriented Jurisprudence, this article analyses the problem of trafficking in human beings, presents the decisions made to address it, and develops recommendations to improve solutions.

Measuring labor trafficking: a research note

This paper reviews major challenges in the conceptual clarification and empirical inquiry of labor trafficking. Much of current literature on human trafficking in the U.S. has focused on the sexual exploitation of women and children. As a result, government funding has mostly gone to law enforcement agencies and rescue agencies home and abroad to find these victims. International organizations believe labor trafficking is perhaps far more prevalent than sex trafficking. But empirical research on labor trafficking remains rare. Wild claims have instead taken place of rigorous empirical research in advocacy activities and policy making. This paper calls for greater efforts on primary data collection that measures the incidence and prevalence of labor trafficking activities in the U.S. Campaigns against human trafficking cannot be sustained or even remain credible without sound empirical research.

Human Trafficking in Florida: The Role of Applied Anthropology in Addressing the Problem and Response

Human trafficking is a pervasive issue in the United States (Florida State 2003:16). While an estimated 18,000-20,000 persons are trafficked across the nation's borders each year, this may be a dramatic underestimation of actual occurrence due to the hidden nature of human trafficking crimes and the fact that this number does not include domestic trafficking incidents (Florida State 2003:16). Federal anti-trafficking legislation defines "trafficking in persons" to mean those compelled into commercial sex acts (sex trafficking) or labor and services (labor trafficking) through force, fraud or coercion (United States Congress 2000). Although exact data regarding the incidence of human trafficking in Florida are currently unavailable, it is considered a lucrative trafficking hub—often being cited as one of the top three states in which the crime occurs. This is principally because of its agriculture- and tourism-based economy, two industries in which trafficking can thrive with relatively little resistance (Florida State 2003:27). Indeed, Miami International Airport has ranked among the "top points of entry for trafficking" since as early as 1999 (Florida State 2003:28). The lack of comprehensive data also precludes a clear picture of the demographics and nationalities of all trafficked persons in Florida, but figures from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops provide a snapshot of certified victims of trafficking who are receiving federal benefits. In a four-year period ending August 2010, 274 trafficked persons received federal benefits; of these individuals, 127 were female, 147 were male, and the top five nationalities were those from Haiti (81), the Phillipines (65), Mexico (42), Guatemala (13), and Honduras (12) (Florida State 2010:39-40).

Book Review: Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo

Book Review: Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo

The Road to Effective Remedies: Pragmatic reasons for treating cases of “sex trafficking” in the Australian sex industry as a form of “labour trafficking”

Internationally, it is widely recognised that labour law and associated protections are a critical part of any comprehensive response to trafficking in persons. In this article, we argue that while Australia has taken some important steps to incorporate labour protection systems into the anti-trafficking response, there is still more work to be done. In particular, the federal, and state and territory governments have yet to take up the opportunity to link anti-trafficking efforts with initiatives aimed at improving the working conditions of workers in the sex industry. We suggest this reflects a common—but unjustified—assumption that “labour trafficking” and “sex trafficking” are distinct and different species of harm. As a result of this distinction, workers in the Australian sex industry—an industry where slavery and trafficking crimes have been detected— are missing out on a suite of potentially effective prevention interventions, and access to civil remedies. We argue that there is a need to provide practical and financial support, so that the national industrial regulator, the Fair Work Ombudsman, can work directly with sex worker advocacy groups, to examine opportunities and barriers to accessing the labour law system, particularly for migrant sex workers.

Free State Slavery: Bound Indian Labor and Slave Trafficking in California's Sacramento Valley, 1850–1864

Although it outlawed chattel slavery, antebellum California permitted the virtual enslavement of Native Americans under the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. Drawing data from a rare and valuable cache of Indian indenture records at the Colusa County courthouse and interpreting them through the lens of Henry Bailey's candid pioneer memoir, this article offers a detailed case study of bound Native American labor and Indian slave trafficking in Northern California's Sacramento Valley. While never comprising a majority of the state's rural work force, bound Indian laborers proved essential to California's rise as a major agricultural producer. Compensating for the dearth of white women and children in male-dominated Gold Rush society and providing a vital alternative source of labor in an expensive free wage market, captive Indian farm hands and domestic servants enabled pioneer farm operations and communities to flourish throughout the formative 1850s and 1860s.

The Importance of Ethnic Competency: Labor Trafficking, Thai Migrations, and the Thai Community Development Center

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000, 2011) created new conditional residency visas and new avenues for American citizenship for the victims of human trafficking. Thai migrants have benefited from its provisions, but their disproportionate presence in this category has indicated the depths of this problem within the Thai immigrant community. This paper examines anti-trafficking advocacy, and it begins by criticizing existing Asian American pan-ethnic organizations. It addresses the limits of their approaches, and argues that ethnic-specific organizations still play an important role in helping victims as well as the ethnic communities in which they will settle.

The Importance of Ethnic Competency: Labor Trafficking, Thai Migrations, and the Thai Community Development Center

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (2000, 2011) created new conditional residency visas and new avenues for American citizenship for the victims of human trafficking. Thai migrants have benefited from its provisions, but their disproportionate presence in this category has indicated the depths of this problem within the Thai immigrant community. This paper examines anti-trafficking advocacy, and it begins by criticizing existing Asian American pan-ethnic organizations. It addresses the limits of their approaches, and argues that ethnic-specific organizations still play an important role in helping victims as well as the ethnic communities in which they will settle.

Conceptualizing child labour trafficking and exploitation: The case of Roma children in Montenegro

Trafficking of children for labour exploitation is a profit-oriented criminal activity by which children are recruited, transported, harboured or received for the purpose of labour exploitation irrespective of whether or not force, abduction, fraud or other means were used. This paper examines child labour trafficking in the context of human rights violations and as the worst form of child labour. In an attempt to situate the discourse of alleged labour exploitation and trafficking of Roma children in Montenegro, focusing in particular on instances of child begging, this paper offers an overview of the international legal framework as well as the Government of Montenegro?s policy framework relevant to this issue; an analysis of implicated historical, familial and cultural structures; and focuses on identifying root causes in terms of push-pull factors that are associated with enhancing children?s vulnerability and proneness to exploitation. Along with a set of recommendations, in closing, the paper calls for a more sophisticated analysis of child labour trafficking and, in the case of Roma children, a more nuanced understanding of historical and cultural pretexts against the backdrop of labour trafficking.

Criminalizing Health-Related Behaviors Dangerous to Others? Disease Transmission, Transmission-Facilitation, and the Importance of Trust.

Statutes criminalizing behavior that risks transmission of HIV/AIDS exemplify use of the criminal law against individuals who are victims of infectious disease. These statutes, despite their frequency, are misguided in terms of the goals of the criminal law and the public health aim of reducing overall burdens of disease, for at least three important reasons. First, they identify individual offenders for punishment, a paradigm that is misplaced in the most typical contexts of transmission of infectious disease and even for HIV/AIDS, despite claims of AIDS exceptionalism. Second, although there are examples of individuals who transmit infectious disease in a manner that fits the criminal law paradigm of identification of individual offenders for deterrence or retribution, these examples are limited and can be accommodated by existing criminal laws not devoted specifically to infectious disease. Third, and most importantly, the current criminal laws regarding HIV/AIDS, like many other criminal laws applied to infectious disease transmission, have been misguided in focusing on punishment of the diseased individual as a wrongful transmitter. Instead of individual offenders, activities that enhance the scale of disease transmission—behaviors that might be characterized as ‘transmission facilitation’—are a more appropriate target for the criminal law. Examples are trafficking in human beings (including sex trafficking, organ trafficking, and labor trafficking), suppression of information about the emergence of infection in circumstances in which there is a legally established obligation to disclose, and intentional or reckless activities to discourage disease treatment or prevention. Difficulties remain with justifications for criminalizing even these behaviors, however, most importantly the need for trust in reducing overall burdens of disease, problems in identifying individual responsible offenders, and potential misalignment between static criminal law and the changing nature of infectious disease.

The Business Side of Trafficking in Humans: Regional Contexts and Organized Crime

Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective. By Louise Shelley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 341 pp., $26.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-13087-5). In Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective , Louise Shelley sketches the regionally diverse practices and realities of human trafficking across Africa, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, Latin America, Central Asia, and Russia. Although she focuses her attention primarily on human trafficking for sexual exploitation, she also addresses organ trafficking, labor trafficking, human smuggling, and the trafficking of children into adoption markets or for use as beggars or soldiers. Utilizing a comparative and historical perspective, Shelley's aim is to note the economic, social, and political context and consequences of human trafficking, examine the role of organized crime in trafficking enterprises, and reveal the various business models of human trafficking networks. Shelley demonstrates that human trafficking networks operate in such regionally diverse ways that any attempt to successfully eradicate them will require equally varied and context-specific solutions coordinated across a multitude of anti-trafficking actors. Part one includes two chapters that are especially well suited for those new to human trafficking as it outlines for the reader in very broad strokes the multiple and intersecting factors that have contributed to an increase in human trafficking since the 1980s. It also traces the social and political consequences of the trade in humans. Because the focus is on broadly sketching “the rise and costs of human …

Research note: challenges of identifying female human trafficking victims using a national 1-800 call center

Human trafficking is a complex global and national crime problem harming victims physically, psychologically, and financially. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), Pub. La 106–386, and subsequent reauthorizations, provide assistance and benefits to foreign born victims of labor or sexual human trafficking who are here in the United States. The strategies used to encourage victims to come forward were modeled on those used in the anti- domestic violence (DV) and child protection movements. These include initiatives alerting the public to domestic violence situations through awareness campaigns to increase tips as well as calls for service to police. Other public service initiatives urge victims themselves to self-identify by calling 1-800 numbers. While these techniques have shown success in reducing incidences of domestic violence and providing help to victims, their use to combat sex trafficking has not produced the same level of results. This note explores the challenges for immigrant women victims to self-identify as trafficking victims and urges that evidence-based research is needed to determine the efficacy of a national call center approach.

Climate Change and the Contemporary Evolution of Foodways

Climate Change and the Contemporary Evolution of Foodways

Enforcing Transnational White Solidarity: Asian Migration and the Formation of the U.S.-Canadian Boundary

“Enforcing Transnational White Solidarity” examines the struggle over Asian migration and labor trafficking in the Pacific Northwest, showing how it gave rise to a new emphasis on border policing and surveillance on the North American continent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The transnational circulation of Asian merchants, contract laborers, and smugglers integrated disparate points in the Pacific into a complex web of networks, with their myriad of movements traversing multiple and intersecting imperial and national spaces, linking the North American West to Asia and the South Pacific. These ever thickening global connections kindled a countermovement to solidify national borders among Anglo-American settler societies in the Pacific Northwest, who together elaborated new forms of sovereignty in an attempt to exert control over the mobility of Asian migrants around the Pacific and across landed borders in North America, even as they integrated the Pacific Northwest into a larger world. This article reveals how this double movement transformed the U.S.-Canadian boundary from an imaginary abstraction to a social reality on the North American Pacific Rim. It argues that efforts at Asiatic exclusion codified immigration and boundary controls as rightful prerogatives of the nation-state, which in turn, reconstructed racial and national borders through its practical enforcement in Canada and the United States. By relocating the historical origins of the border from the southern to the northern boundary, the article demonstrates that this struggle was transnational in scope, involving contests over Asian migration that extended across the Pacific world. In doing so, it highlights the contested and contingent process of consolidating the territorial state, and considers the multiple and overlapping sites—local, national, and the imperial—that shaped and defined its historical development.