Routledge International Handbook of Human Trafficking

A Multi-Disciplinary and Applied Approach

Rochelle Dalla, Donna Sabella, Rochelle L. Dalla, Donna Sabella

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351998147
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Economics

According to the UNODC (2015), human trafficking (HT) is the fastest growing means by which people are enslaved, the fastest growing international crime, and one of the largest sources of income for organized criminal networks. It profoundly impacts the physical and mental health of victims, their families, and entire communities and is recognized as a crime against humanity.

Despite burgeoning interest, education, research, and advocacy efforts, a pinnacle handbook devoted to human trafficking and modern-day slavery – with global focus and multidisciplinary scope – does not currently exist. The Routledge International Handbook of Human Trafficking was created to fill this resource gap. Divided into four sections, the Handbook offers the reader a comprehensive and fresh approach via: (a) in-depth analyses and opportunities for application (through case studies, critical thinking questions, and supplemental learning materials); (b) multidisciplinary linkages, with disciplinary overlap across each of the four sections acknowledged and highlighted; and (c) content experts representing multiple segments of society (academia, government, foundation, law enforcement, and practice) and global vantage points (Australia, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, South Africa, Thailand, and the United States).

Written by expert scholars, service providers, policy analysts, and healthcare professionals, this Handbook is an invaluable resource for those already working in the field, as well as for students in any discipline who want to learn (or learn more) about HT and modern-day slavery.

Section I
Public policy

1
The roles of past slaveries in contemporary anti-human trafficking discourse

Implications for policy

Karen E. Bravo

Abstract

According to contested sources, 40 million people worldwide are enslaved, and hundreds of thousands are trafficked across international borders. In response, anti-trafficking activists, academics, and others have sought to use the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery to understand and combat this contemporary form of exploitation. However, those who have invoked the trans-Atlantic slave trade have failed to explore it other than superficially or to adequately map out the similarities and differences between the trans-Atlantic trade and human trafficking. As a consequence, the ability to effectively combat modern human trafficking has been undermined both internationally and domestically. The analogy is underutilized as currently deployed because it does not illuminate the essential similarities or differences in the two forms of exploitation. Analysis of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and of white slavery offers a richer understanding of human trafficking that can be used to more effectively combat modern trafficking than do current efforts.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the chapter, readers will be able to:

1. 1 Understand the background of the legal definition of “human trafficking” and the origins of the anti-trafficking fight;
2. 2 Identify types of uses of the word “slavery” and understand the purposes and effects of those uses;
3. 3 Interrogate their own and society’s reaction to those uses;
4. 4 Understand and critique the discourse regarding human trafficking, and identify the contradictions between the discourse/rhetoric used and the types of actions taken by states;
5. 5 Understand the historical context of human trafficking and its linkages to past forms of human exploitation;
6. 6 Illustrate the role, use, and potential misuse of history in understanding and addressing modern challenges;
7. 7 Compare and contrast trans-Atlantic slavery, white slavery, and human trafficking to identify differences and similarities among the three forms of exploitation and foster critical reflections on policy approaches to human trafficking; and
8. 8 Map the relationship (including gaps) between rhetoric and policy creation and implementation.

Key Terms: human trafficking; slavery; trans-Atlantic slave trade; white slavery; the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children; Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime; Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA); U.S. Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report.

Introduction

The focus of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century activists on sex and the protection of white women has continued to limit understanding of the fundamental similarities among the trans-Atlantic slave trade, white slavery, and contemporary human trafficking. (As used herein, the term “trans-Atlantic slave trade” also includes trans-Atlantic slavery, in which the trade itself was embedded and of which it formed a part.) It was the exploitation and enslavement of whiteness that, together with the threats to state borders and authority, stimulated coordinated international action by state entities against modern human trafficking. But it is the image of enslaved Africans that arouses and harnesses visceral public outrage and support for anti-trafficking efforts.

Analysis of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and of white slavery offers a richer understanding of human trafficking that can be used to more effectively combat modern trafficking than do current efforts. Trans-Atlantic slavery was a centuries-long international trade in people and their labor, spanning the early 1500s to the 1880s (Davis, 2006). It coexisted with and surpassed in scope trans-Saharan slavery and the trade of slaves from the East Coast of Africa to the Gulf States. Following the end of trans-Atlantic slavery in 1888,¹ nation states and international institutions legally recognized and committed to protecting fundamental rights of human beings.²

Given the legal prohibition, an apparent resurgence in the enslavement of human beings might have seemed impossible. However, that resurgence has been documented worldwide in the form of “human trafficking” (see U.S. TIP Report, 2018). Indeed, analysis of the economic roots and structure of the two forms of exploitation indicates that modern trafficking in human beings is as interwoven with and central to contemporary domestic and global economies as were the trans-Atlantic trade and white slavery to their contemporaneous economic systems (Bravo, 2007).

This chapter examines some uses of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in modern anti-human trafficking efforts and discourse and the impact of those uses, and it identifies the role of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century efforts against white slavery in the modern discourse. I focus on the analogy to trans-Atlantic slavery, even though a majority of the users of the term do not explicitly refer to trans-Atlantic slavery. It is my claim that the power of the emotional impact and lasting structural legacies of trans-Atlantic slavery in contemporary society has embedded the image in all contemporary references to “slavery.” Permutations such as “modern slavery,” “contemporary slavery,” and “contemporary forms of slavery” attempt to piggyback on that emotional power, while simultaneously avoiding in-depth structural comparisons or acknowledgement of the legacies of trans-Atlantic slavery. The chapter is organized as follows:

1. 1 An overview of human trafficking, and international and domestic U.S. responses to it;
2. 2 Examination of the uses made of trans-Atlantic slavery and the slave trade in anti-trafficking discourse and efforts;
3. 3 Discussion of the ways in which white slavery frames the perceptions of and responses to human trafficking;
4. 4 A claim that these two forms of exploitation could play more meaningful potential roles in current anti-human trafficking efforts; and
5. 5 I conclude that, to be successful, anti-trafficking efforts must target the economic incentives and structures that facilitate the trade in human beings.

Human trafficking

How do you feel when you hear the word “slavery”? What mental image do you have? What is your definition of “slavery”?

Separated from the trans-Atlantic slave trade by more than 100 years and a seeming eternity in human development, human trafficking today might appear to be an aberration, a dreadful anomaly in the march of human progress. In reality, human trafficking has re-emerged only in the sense that it has re-entered public consciousness. Slavery has always been a part of human existence and was not eliminated by the nineteenth-century abolition of trans-Atlantic slavery (Miers, 2003). In the early 2000s, according to varied and frequently conflicting sources (see Wong, 2005), 27 million people worldwide were enslaved (Bales, 2004); either four million or 600,000–800,000 (or some unknown number of) individuals are trafficked annually across international borders (Kapstein, 2006; U.S. Dept. of Justice (2006); Richard, 2000); and each year 14,000–17,500 people are trafficked into the United States (U.S. TIP Report, 2006). By 2016, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that 40 million persons are enslaved worldwide (IOM Global Trafficking Trends, 2006–2016).

The modern trade³ in human beings – their purchase, sale, and distribution – has significant ramifications for international human rights, international criminal law, and the global economy. The modern “re-emergence” of trafficking in human beings and of slavery is said to be linked to the deepening interconnection among countries in the global economy, overpopulation (with its consequent production of disposable people) (see Bales, 2004), and the victims’ economic and other vulnerabilities. Despite the expenditure of a great deal of intellectual, legal, social, and other resources to prevent and punish human trafficking, there is little or no evidence of effective, systemic impact on the size and operations of these activities (U.S. TIP Report, 2018).

The UN Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery first raised the issue of sex tourism in its 1978 report (Miers, 2003), and the existence of international sex markets became generally known through media reports and other information channels (see, for instance, Handley, 1989; Erlanger, 1989; Simons, 1994; Kempadoo, 2005). However, it was not until the 1990s that modern human trafficking began to fully engage the consciousness of Western legislators and the public in general (see, for example, Man Pleads, 1999; Connolly, 1999; Crecente, 1999; Chen, 1999; Barry, 1998; Nicholson & Wheeler, 1998; Triads, 1997). A perceived growth in the buying and selling of human beings followed the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union (Wong, 2005). Media and other reports disseminated frightening statistics and horrific reports of the purchase and sale of women and young girls from republics of the former Soviet Union, in particular, into Western Europe (Caldwell, Galster, & Steinzor, 1997).

Is human trafficking “slavery”?

The dominant perception of modern human trafficking is that it is an abnormal parasitic appendage to global and domestic economies and the product of the greed of particularly monstrous individuals and groups. The images of forced sexual slavery on a large scale was alarming and created concern that spread throughout the globe. According to dominant narratives, growing numbers of victims were enslaved by modern-day traffickers: tricked by schemes offering employment abroad or other prospects of fruitful economic opportunity – or simply sold by parents or other authority figures – countless men, women, and children around the world were being subjected to sexual or other exploitation without compensation. Victims were deprived of freedom of movement, raped, beaten, and violated in various ways through mechanisms of violence, force, psychological abuse, coercion, and fraud. By the late 1990s, conventional knowledge held, based on varying statistical sources, that up to four million people were trafficked annually across national borders (see USAID, 1999). In addition, the trade in humans was said to be a $5–7 billion per year illicit industry – less profitable than only the traffic in illegal drugs and arms (Tiefenbrun, 2002).

Confronted with evidence of the increase in the traffic and exploitation of human beings and violations of state borders and laws, scholars, policymakers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and legislators came together in both the international and domestic U.S. arenas to combat human trafficking. The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2001) (hereinafter the Trafficking Protocol) United Nations, 2001a was adopted and ratified as a protocol to the more wide-ranging Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2001) (hereinafter the UN Convention) (for analysis of international legal tools see Ollus and Joutsen, Chapter 3, this volume). One of the principal achievements of the Trafficking Protocol is the creation of the first international definition of trafficking. The Trafficking Protocol defines trafficking in persons as:

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or other services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

(United Nations, 2001a)

The U.S. domestic statute, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 (United States, 2000), was adopted a mere month before the UN Organized Crime Convention and Trafficking Protocol were opened for signature.⁴ Together, the international instruments and the U.S. legislation have been influential in the fight against and interpretation of modern trafficking in humans. In addition to the obligations voluntarily undertaken by state parties under the Convention and Protocol, the series of U.S. State Department reports issued pursuant to the mandates of the TVPA have vastly increased public and institutional awareness of, and knowledge about, human trafficking (see C.deBaca, Chapter 2, this volume for analysis of U.S. domestic policies). For example, the U.S. State Department has issued annual reports each year from 2001 through the present. Each successive report reflects an increase in the depth and breadth of coverage of human trafficking and the efforts against it.

Two contrasting accounts illuminate the emergence of broad public awareness around trafficking and the subsequent development of an international consensus to combat it. Commentators such as Kelly Hyland (2001) pointed to growing international concern regarding the scope, complexity, and criminality of modern trafficking in humans as the impetus for the development and adoption of the United Nations’ anti-trafficking treaty in 2000. In contrast, other scholars have high...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Images
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• Introduction
• Section I Public policy
• Section II Criminal justice
• Section III Healthcare
• Section IV Social work
• Index