Human Trafficking Awareness

What types of human trafficking crimes are being committed here in the United States? Who are the victims of traffickers? How do we all unknowingly consume the services and products of slavery? And why are human traffickers able to maintain their illicit operations with relative impunity--indeed, with less than .01 percent of human traffickers ever being held accountable for their crimes? Hidden in Plain Sight: America's Slaves of the New Millennium documents how human trafficking and its byproducts touch every community in America, from impoverished inner-city neighborhoods to middle-class suburbs and alcoves of wealthy estates. It presents information derived from narrative accounts of real-life trafficking cases, interviews with convicted human traffickers, empirical research, and criminal case files to expose the grim realities of human trafficking in America, perpetrated by Americans. Readers will grasp the origins, evolution, and extent of the problem; understand how trafficking plays an unrecognized role in our day-to-day lives; and see why advancements in awareness and anti-trafficking resources have not changed the status quo. The victims of trafficking continue to be criminalized by law enforcement, and the offenders continue to exploit and profit from new recruits. This book equips readers with the knowledge needed to identify human trafficking cases and advocate for policy changes to end this scourge in America.

This book explores women's stories of agency in a lived experience of trafficking. The idea of agency is a difficult concept to fathom, given the unscrupulous acts and exploitative practices which define trafficking. In response to the '3-P' anti-trafficking paradigm--to prevent and protect victims and prosecute traffickers--official discourse constructs agency in singular opposition to victimhood. The 'true' victim of trafficking is reified in attributes of passivity and worthiness, whereas signs of women's agency are read as consent in their own predicament or as culpability in criminal justice and immigration rule-breaking. Moving beyond the official lack or criminal fact of agency, this collection of stories adds knowledge on agency constructed with, on, and by, women possessing a trafficking experience. Based on the stories of twenty-six women, agency is seen to exist in relationship to women's victimisation under trafficking. Exploring well-being agency (women's physical safety and economic needs), and agency freedom (women's capacity to construct choices and the conditions affecting choice), women demonstrate agency in their identity, decision making, and actions. Acknowledging the existence of a migration-crime-security nexus in contemporary human trafficking, the narratives of fifteen anti-trafficking professionals highlight how official actions mediate women's achievement of well-being and agency freedoms. This book will be of interest to students undertaking courses in modern slavery, human trafficking, human geography, police studies, social work, and criminology.

Human trafficking is a crime that undermines fundamental human rights and a broader sense of global order. It is an atrocity that transcends borders with some regions known as exporters of trafficking victims and others recognized as destination countries. Edited by three global experts and composed of the work of an esteemed panel of contributors,

This book examines film and media representations of the social, political, and economic issue of human trafficking, one of the most dramatic challenges of today's globalized world. Productively combining field work at NGOs in South Eastern Europe, social science data discussion, and analysis of Western and East European anti-trafficking film and media and their reception in the United States and in the Balkans, Hashamova uncovers the tension between the global flow of trafficking images and their local comprehension. The detailed critical analysis of documentaries, feature films, video clips, and NGOs' media materials and their varied spectators' responses explores the flaws of these products and the ideological structures that define them and their audiences. Acknowledging the uneven quality and potential impact of all films and media products, the book, guided by trauma theory, concludes with an analysis of their effectiveness and ability to shock the viewer and create a citizen who is ready to take action against trafficking. The book seeks to explain why, despite the attention to the problem, communities continue to grapple with indifference, denial, and turning a blind eye to the existence of trafficking. Screening Trafficking: Prudent and Perilous offers fresh insights to readers interested in human trafficking and its representations as well as policymakers who are invested in well-informed decisions.

Erin Heil explores the global problem of human trafficking in the context of a small Florida town¿one typical of the many rural communities that confront modern day slavery in their own backyards.

Drawing on two years of interviews and observation, Heil lays out the dynamics that allow both agricultural and sexual forced labor to flourish. She also highlights community antitrafficking responses. Including the perspectives of traffickers, victims, and community members in one rich portrait, her work ably contributes to the fight against human trafficking at the local, state, and national levels alike.

"The best book ever written on human trafficking for sexual exploitation"--the basis for the feature film, Trafficked, starring Ashley Judd (Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves).   Every year, hundreds of thousands of women and children are abducted, deceived, seduced, or sold into forced prostitution. These trafficked sex slaves form the backbone of one of the world's most profitable illicit enterprises and generate huge profits for their exploiters, for unlike narcotics, which must be grown, harvested, refined, and packaged, sex slaves require no such "processing," and can be repeatedly "consumed." In this book, Kara provides a riveting account of his four-continent journey into this unconscionable industry, sharing the moving stories of its victims and revealing the shocking conditions of their exploitation. He draws on his background in finance, economics, and law to provide the first ever business analysis of contemporary slavery worldwide, focusing on its most profitable and barbaric form: sex trafficking. Kara describes the local factors and global economic forces that gave rise to this and other forms of modern slavery over the past two decades and quantifies, for the first time, the size, growth, and profitability of each industry. Finally, he identifies the sectors of the sex trafficking industry that would be hardest hit by specifically designed interventions and recommends the specific legal, tactical, and policy measures that would target these vulnerable sectors and help to abolish this form of slavery, once and for all. The author will donate a portion of the proceeds of this book to the anti-slavery organization, Free the Slaves.   "Sex trafficking is more of a problem than most people realize. Read this well-written book and find out."--Kirk Douglas

This book is a critical feminist analysis of sex trafficking. Arguing that trafficking in girls and women is a product of the social construction of gender and other dimensions of power and status within a particular culture and at a particular historical moment, this book offers the necessary locally grounded analysis. Focusing on the case of Nepal, from where 5,000 to 7,000 thousands of Nepali girls and women are trafficked each year primarily to India, Mary Crawford assesses how the social construction of trafficking - the concept and its representation in discourse - are influenced by the dynamics of gender, caste, and the development establishment. The defining figure is an innocent, naïve young girl being lured or duped into leaving the safety of her village. The trafficking victim is portrayed as "backward"; however, she is "backward" in specific ways that resonate with Nepal's struggle to resist and yet encompass Western influence. This view may lead to paradoxical effects in which efforts to protect girls and women instead restrict their human rights. Rather than seeing women as universalized victims, Crawford assesses how the social construction of trafficking in a particular society affects girls and women who live in that society. In this book, the author's voice as a woman, a feminist, and a social scientist immersed in a "foreign" way of life, illuminates aspects of this process and highlights the subjectivity of urban women. It makes the connection between Nepali subjectivities and a problem of international significance, the trafficking of girls and women. The book provides a model for other locally grounded accounts of sex trafficking to counter the universalizing rhetoric of the mass media and some anti-trafficking activists, filling a niche in South Asian Studies and Women's Studies.