From Human Trafficking to Human Rights

Reframing Contemporary Slavery

Alison Brysk, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780812205732
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Slavery
• Index: Social Sciences

Over the last decade, public, political, and scholarly attention has focused on human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery. Yet as human rights scholars Alison Brysk and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick argue, most current work tends to be more descriptive and focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation.In From Human Trafficking to Human Rights, Brysk, Choi-Fitzpatrick, and a cast of experts demonstrate that it is time to recognize human trafficking as more a matter of human rights and social justice, rooted in larger structural issues relating to the global economy, human security, U.S. foreign policy, and labor and gender relations. Such reframing involves overcoming several of the most difficult barriers to the development of human rights discourse: women's rights as human rights, labor rights as a confluence of structure and agency, the interdependence of migration and discrimination, the ideological and policy hegemony of the United States in setting the terms of debate, and a politics of global justice and governance.Throughout this volume, the argument is clear: a deep human rights approach can improve analysis and response by recovering human rights principles that match protection with empowerment and recognize the interdependence of social rights and personal freedoms. Together, contributors to the volume conclude that rethinking trafficking requires moving our orientation from sex to slavery, from prostitution to power relations, and from rescue to rights. On the basis of this argument, From Human Trafficking to Human Rights offers concrete policy approaches to improve the global response necessary to end slavery responsibly.

PART I

From Sex to Slavery

Chapter 1

Rethinking Trafficking: Contemporary Slavery

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick

Introduction

Over the last fifteen years, ever-increasing public, political, and scholarly attention has focused on human trafficking and modern slavery. This attention has been converted into action as pressure from international advocates has generated new international norms and policies. Advocacy within the United States has resulted in new domestic legislation. Subsequent pressure from the U.S. government has resulted in new legislation abroad, as well as extensive funding of projects intended to prevent trafficking, protect trafficked individuals, and prosecute perpetrators.

Action on the part of the United States has also generated a range of criticism, from both human rights advocates and scholars working on this issue. Since these critiques have come from many quarters, they have failed to generate a platform from which subsequent critiques (and efforts at amelioration) might be based. This volume can be seen as a clear argument for a human rights platform for ongoing critique, and subsequent reform.

This chapter contributes to this platform by introducing and briefly sketching a number of key issues, including: the existence of a growing body of work that I am calling a field of contemporary slavery studies; the importance of working within the rubric of slavery; the opportunity to better theorize the role of power in contemporary slavery; and the necessity of theorizing contemporary abolition and emancipation in addition to exploitation.

Contemporary Slavery Studies

Scholars contributing to our understanding of trafficking and slavery are engaged in a nascent and emerging interdisciplinary field of contemporary slavery studies. Indeed, one could argue that this field bridges research and movement fields as it increasingly involves the voices and contributions of grassroots activists and survivors of slavery as well as scholars and policy makers (Bales and Trodd 2008; Sage and Kasten 2006). This field of contemporary slavery studies has taken shape over the past decade with the emergence of special issues of journals and magazines, edited volumes and monographs in the popular and academic press, academic institutes on the topic, social movement organizations on college campuses, online and in major cities around the world, and with increased attention among members of the world policy community (governments, nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations and its affiliates, international nongovernmental organizations)—all eager to be seen tackling the issue with vigor. The momentum within national civil societies is clear, as is the salience of the issue within the world polity. Yet, despite this broad attention—or perhaps because of this attention—our understanding of what we are talking about, and what we hope to do about it, is sometimes hopelessly heterogeneous.

A steady stream of popular work has introduced this issue to the general public. For example, recent and popular works have sketched the issue in broad terms for a general public (Batstone 2007; Skinner 2009). The most popular theoretical overview, inarguably, is Kevin Bales’s work emphasizing the historic dimension of modern slavery as well as its embedding in the global economy ([1999] 2004). Subsequent scholarly work has explored recent historic trends (Miers 2003), the crucial support this issue has received from evangelicals and second-wave feminists (Choi-Fitzpatrick n.d.; Hertzke 2004), the structural factors underpinning trafficking (Cameron and Newman 2008), the nature of demand (DiNicola et al. 2009), whether and how it intersects with issues of human rights (Obokata 2006), smuggling (Zhang 2007), security (Friman and Reich 2007), the global sex industry (Beeks and Amir 2006), gender (Aradau 2008; Lobasz 2009) and law (Gallagher 2010). Additional work has focused on the economic dimensions of the modern slave trade (Kara 2009; Shelley 2010), as well as specific regions, including the Balkans (Friman and Reich 2007), South America (Guinn and Steglich 2003), and Eurasia (Strecker and Shelley 2004).

Moreover, this recent literature has focused specific attention on the nature, scope, and quality of current data (Ali 2010; Feingold 2010; Laczko and Gozdziak 2005; Savona and Stefanizzi 2007; USGAO 2006), as well as contemporary policy trends (DeStefano 2008). Additional work has explored the predominant and preponderant emphasis on sex trafficking (Doezema 2010; Outshoorn 2004) and the overlooked role of labor organizing (Kempa-doo 2005; Kempadoo and Doezema 1998). An emerging critical perspective on trafficking and slavery can be seen in a number of recent works, including volumes edited by Christien van den Anker (2004) and Kamala Kempadoo (2005). This volume continues this more critical conversation, broadening it to new arguments and targets.

In branding this efflorescence of work a field of contemporary slavery studies, I hope to delimit a body of academic and serious popular work on the issue, and to suggest opportunities to work comparatively and coherently in our efforts to better understand slavery and trafficking. Doing so recognizes a number of issues. First, this approach must recognize the diversity of the phenomena under consideration. Indeed it covers trafficking for sexual or labor exploitation, hereditary slavery, forced labor under military regimes and states, temple slavery, and the commercial sexual exploitation of children. Second, this approach recognizes the number and variety of perspectives on the issue, including migration, prostitution, child labor, and human rights, as well as cultural studies and history. Third, it is important to recognize the ways these different issues are connected to scholars’ framing of the issue. By this I mean slavery is variously considered to be a matter for state-level intervention, a product of state-level intervention, a product of globalization, an issue connected to women’s rights in particular or human rights in general, just to name a few. Finally, this approach recognizes the number and diversity of actors currently working to understand this issue. At any point in time, students, governmental officials and civil servants, nongovernmental organizations, social movement organizations, businesses, consumers, armed rebel groups, everyday people, and scholars are struggling to better conceptualize this form of exploitation. Not surprisingly, this complex issue has generated incredible enthusiasm as well as credible first steps within many of the sectors already listed.

The task that remains, I believe, is to integrate these resources, ideas, and opportunities under a common analytical umbrella. Such a rethinking, I argue, will allow us to move from thinking of trafficking as sex to considering the broader context of slavery, from understanding power as simple coercion to an analysis of domination, and from abolition to emancipation.

From Sex to Slavery

While the center of this field is focused on human trafficking and contemporary slavery, it overlaps significantly with many varied forms of abuse. It is crucial that efforts within contemporary slavery studies take slavery as the unit of analysis and the social phenomena of central concern. By slavery I mean a social and economic relationship in which an individual is held against his or her will, through violence or threats of violence with little or no pay, for the purpose of economic exploitation (Bales [1999] 2004). Thus, while contemporary forms of slavery differ in significant ways from more traditional forms of slavery, these core factors obtain (being held against one’s will, threats/violence, and economic exploitation). My framing of slavery as occurring in multiple forms highlights slavery’s position on a continuum of exploitation occurring around the world more than its historically fixed status as the “particular institution.” In other words, slavery is no longer an institution, but instead a state of affairs that—whether short-term or life-long—best resembles a highly dysfunctional human relationship punctuated by violence and threats of violence. Thus, we can see being held against one’s will, threats/violence, and economic exploitation as the key factors that connect contemporary slavery to its manifest prior forms.

With this central concept as a rubric or guide, we may then fruitfully work our way outward and determine whether other forms of abuse fit the definition. Many important forms of exploitation will not fit—such is the cost of conceptual and theoretical specificity. To date, the relationship between slavery and trafficking is poorly conceptualized and often abused. My call here is not to a new definition or theory, but to a more consistent use of an existing approach. For those who argue that slavery will not capture all phenomena currently debated by the “anti-trafficking community”—I agree. Understanding slavery’s numerous forms and contexts wasn’t easy in earlier movements against slavery, and we should not expect it to be any easier now, a point Quirk (this volume) makes to great effect.

Seen in comparative and historical perspective, slavery is one of humanity’s most durable institutions. While its particular forms have changed—humans are more likely to be controlled than owned, for example—slavery has maintained a distinctive core. No matter what particular cultural or historic form it takes, slavery always involves the control of one person by another, through violence or threats of violence, for the purpose of economic exploitation. If we take the historical significance of slavery seriously, then we must account for its current manifestations in situations of forced labor, bonded labor, or trafficking for sexual or labor exploitation. Conceptualized in this way, human trafficking can be better understood as the modern slave trade—a critical but specific form of slavery. Perhaps those trading in humans are using new technologies, drawing on innovative organizational structures, and conducting their business with cutting-edge technology. Yet the core of our story—the ends—continues to be enslavement. We should not be surprised by new means.

But it is newly highlighted means that seem to generate the most consternation, and confusion. Not all prostitution is trafficking, not all smuggling is trafficking, and not all slavery is sexual. More heat than light has been generated in the explication of each of these relationships, and considerable confusion persists within the general public (as well as within sectors that should know better). Centralizing scholarly, policy, and advocacy energies around the rubric of contemporary slavery will allow for a welcome narrowing of these debates to focus on the critical social relation in question: when one person holds another against their will, through violence or threats of violence, with little or no pay, for the purpose of economic exploitation. A clear contribution to this end can be found in Quirk’s chapter (this volume) in which he argues that contemporary slavery is not new. In fact, slavery never ended in some parts of the world. Examples abound: chattel slavery based on descent in Mauritania, Mali, and Niger, caste-and temple-based slavery in India based on debt or descent, and even the “white slavery” (1905) frame preceding the contemporary understanding of “sex trafficking” in the United States. Highlighting the continuity between seemingly historic manifestations and contemporary forms of slavery requires an identification of what Quirk (this volume) has called “enduring historical themes.” As I argue below, current scholarship and advocacy have made more headway in conceptualizing slavery than analyzing emancipation. If the recent popularity of William Wilberforce has rightly emphasized the importance of social movement strategy and bold leadership, it has done so at the expense of the more complicated political and economic dynamics that ultimately determine the space in which social movement actors strategize (McAdam 1999). The goal of freedom will be best served by a round of issue consolidation that directs our attention to the issue at hand—slavery—and to the ways this issue has changed and evolved over time.

Power: From Coercion to Domination

Scholarship on contemporary slavery lacks a coherent treatment of the role of power. Theories of oppression, resistance, and the intersection of the two are under-theorized. Across the literature, a notion of control predominates, with few exceptions.¹ The most sophisticated development of a theory of power is found in Bales’s (2004) direct adaptation of Gibbs’s work on control, which Gibbs defines as: “overt behavior by a human in the belief that 1) the behavior increases or decreases the probability of some subsequent condition and 2) the increase or decrease is desirable” (1996, 27). As Brysk argues in this volume, however, anti-trafficking efforts are often hampered by “concentration on coercion rather than more complex structural violence.” Both Gibbs and Bales draw on power as control—what has been called power’s first dimension. Additional purchase can be obtained through the incorporation of power’s two additional dimensions, as identified by sociologist Stephen Lukes.

Lukes’s fundamental contribution is the argument that power has three dimensions: the first entailing overt decisions, the second entailing non-decisions, and the third comprised of structural power (the “sheer weight and shape of institutional frameworks”) (Barrett 2002). In this way Lukes focused scholars’ attention on: (1) explicit decision-making and control over specific political and cultural contexts; (2) hidden strategies for keeping potential issues out of these contexts; and (3) the prevalence of false consciousness in eliminating concern over one’s real interest. While it has faced subsequent criticism, this approach provides an opening to explore slavery in light of cultural forms of power as well as the more explicit interpersonal use of force.

The prevailing conceptualization of power in the literature appears to have rested at Lukes’s first dimension of power: overt control. Yet a rapid review of contemporary slavery’s manifestations readily demonstrates that enslavement is a complex process and the forms of control, coercion, and power exercised by slaveholders are not only physical (power’s first dimension) but also psychological and cultural (power’s second and third dimensions). This approach is exactly that described by Lukes’ structural power—the process of precluding the thought of resistance. This more nuanced approach to power can be applied with great effect to contemporary studies of slavery. Part of the utility in this approach lies in the way it foregrounds the role of culturally embedded power structures such as caste, class, citizenship, and gender. Historians of the American experience of slavery have done significant work on this issue, and Quirk’s chapter in this volume begins to apply these theories to contemporary cases.

Seen from this perspective, therefore, power operating in Lukes’s third dimension—through culture, assumptions, and pretexts—must be identified and named if there is any chance for emancipation, eradication, and abolition. Within the literature on social movements and social change, the dominant assumption has been that social-movement activity targets the state, as it has often been considered the actor of greatest significance. Recent scholarship has challenged this approach, observing that social movements for human rights target a number of institutions, both state and non-state (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008). Moreover, private authority within and across borders can be challenged by transnational campaigns (Brysk 2002; Keck and Sikkink 1998).

Such multi-institutional and transnational approaches allow for a more comprehensive mapping of the power systems involved in the patterning and enforcing of quiescence. These approaches also suggest novel and complex targets for movement challengers and human rights activists. For this reason the authority targeted by the anti-slavery efforts may range broadly, from the authority of a local landowner to dominant cultural conceptions of rightful personhood (Macwan et al. 2010). In the caste system—illegal but widespread—individuals live at the intersection of economic power systems, cultural power systems, and gendered power systems and within often corrupt political systems. In rural India, for example, the state often represents a distant and abstract force, while power dynamics related to caste, class, and gender occupy far more of the life-world. Efforts to end slavery must challenge the articulation of power at these points—caste, class, gender—as well as in more traditionally recognized seats of power (the slaveholder’s coercive force; the judge’s gavel; the legislator’s pen). Additional attention to the complex nature of power will add to our understanding of individual power over the enslaved as well as structural power through culture and institutions. This shift—from power over to power through—also provides an opportunity to more usefully conceptualize agency and emancipation. Emancipation is more than abolition; it is a transformation in consciousness, social structure, and political empowerment.

Beyond Abolition: Toward Emancipation

The literature on contemporary slavery suggests there are a number of paths out of slavery: (1) escape, death and disappearance, about which very little is known and almost no data exists; (2) externally initiated raids, from sympathetic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or police; and (3) internally or externally initiated collective action, from within the community itself or facilitated by sympathetic NGOs. While collective action interventions occasionally occur, most contemporary anti-slavery efforts are focused on the second of these three paths: externally initiated raids. Indeed, raids lie at the center of the themed approach advanced by the U.S. State Department: Rescue, Rehabilitation, a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Halftitle
• Introduction: Rethinking Trafficking
• Part I. From Sex to Slavery
• Part II. From Prostitution to Power
• Part III. From Rescue to Rights
• Notes
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Acknowledgments