Abstract
Six experts, Sutapa Basu, Anne T. Gallagher, Denise Brennan, Elena Shih, Kari Lerum, and Ronald Weitzer, examine human trafficking and whether rescue efforts really help.
Keywords
In the 2008 Luc Besson-directed thriller, Taken, Liam Neeson is a former CIA operative whose daughter is kidnapped by an Albanian human trafficking ring in France. The Albanians sell his daughter, a virgin and thus quite valuable, to a French auctioneer, who then sells her through intermediaries to an Arab sheikh who is about to take her virginity when Neeson climbs aboard the yacht and shoots the sheikh in the head.
Taken is one of a growing number of movies and documentaries that examine and often sensationalize the story of human trafficking. Human trafficking, and its correlate human slavery, came into global consciousness with the U.S. Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, which established the U.S. Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which ranks countries on their work to end human trafficking. Those that perform poorly—by the State Department’s judgment—are subject to various sanctions. Around the same time, the United Nations established a trafficking protocol through the U.N. Transnational Organized Crime Convention in 2000, which presumed trafficking was a product of organized criminal activity, and that trafficking is a result of calculated and organized conduct. In other words, traffickers are evil and powerful, and victims are unaware, innocent and weak, and need to be saved. Their saviors are sometimes police, sometimes NGOs like sociologist Kevin Bales’ Free the Slaves, and sometimes journalists like Nicholas Kristof.
Recently, there has been a backlash to the savior ideology. Scholar-activist Laura Agustin coined the term “rescue industry” to describe and criticize people who want to rescue migrant sex workers from their plight, even though many sex workers neither want nor need to be rescued. This critical perspective has gained traction among a growing number of scholars.
Two of the articles here describe forms of human trafficking. Sutapa Basu writes that human trafficking, especially sex trafficking of women and girls, is a massive underground economy. She argues that poverty, structural inequalities between nations and men and women, and the cultural devaluation of women are at the root of sex trafficking. Anne Gallagher takes on the supposed urban myth of trafficking in human organs and provides evidence that it is actually increasing in frequency and global scope. She argues that as demand for organs has grown among the wealthy, organized syndicates have harvested the organs of poor people from poor countries through deception, extortion and violence.
What happens to the former victims of trafficking? Denise Brennan suggests the plight of victims of labor exploitation in the United States remains precarious even after they escape. While they often get government assistance and some get visas that let them stay, they are commonly shunned by their ethnic communities and live in poverty. Elena Shih offers a critical examination of anti-trafficking NGOs that offer rescue, rehabilitation, and vocational training to former sex-trafficking victims. Shih questions who really profits in this endeavor.
The concluding essays provide a critical perspective on human trafficking as a global social problem. Kari Lerum contends that U.S. anti-trafficking policies reflect Hollywood action-adventure scripts, but need to be more pragmatic and evidence-based. Ronald Weitzer claims that the evidence for the prevalence and scope of human trafficking, especially “sex slavery,” is scant and has been overblown by anti-trafficking activists and governments. Both suggest that sensationalizing sex trafficking detracts attention from other forms of labor trafficking and exploitation can be counter-productive in helping trafficking victims.