Human Trafficking

This is an educational and clinical resource for health care practitioners from any discipline who may encounter sex- or labor-trafficked persons. The book provides the background knowledge and frontline clinical strategies providers need to identify, relate to, and treat these psychologically wounded, yet resilient patients.

Just outside Toronto, a 14-year-old Canadian girl was auctioned on the internet for men to purchase by the hour. A young woman was taken by slave traders from an African war zone to Edmonton to earn greater profits by exploiting her in prostitution. A gang called Wolfpack recruited teenagers in Quebec and sold them for sex to high-profile men in the community. The global problem of human trafficking is only beginning to be recognized in Canada, even though it has been hidden in plain sight. In Invisible Chains, Benjamin Perrin, an award-winning law professor and policy expert, exposes cases of human trafficking, recording in-depth interviews with people on the front lines—police officers, social workers, and the victims themselves—and bringing to light government records released under access-to-information laws.

An overview of sex trafficking, forced labor, organ trafficking, and sex tourism across twenty-four nations, providing detailed accounts of the victims' experiences and discussing anti-trafficking measures and the conflicting policies that make trafficking so pervasive.

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 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 has moved from relative obscurity to a major area of research, policy and teaching over the past ten years. Research has sprung from criminology, public policy, women’s and gender studies, sociology, anthropology, and law, but has been somewhat hindered by the failure of scholars to engage beyond their own disciplines and favoured methodologies. Recent research has begun to improve efforts to understand the causes of the problem, the experiences of victims, policy efforts, and their consequences in specific cultural and historical contexts. Global Human Trafficking: Critical issues and contexts foregrounds recent empirical work on human trafficking from an interdisciplinary, critical perspective. The collection includes classroom-friendly features, such as introductory chapters that provide essential background for understanding the trafficking literature, textboxes explaining key concepts, discussion questions for each chapter, and lists of additional resources, including films, websites, and additional readings for each chapter. The authors include both eminent and emerging scholars from around the world, drawn from law, anthropology, criminology, sociology, cultural studies, and political science and the book will be useful for undergraduate and graduate courses in these areas, as well as for scholars interested in trafficking.

This book offers a brand-new perspective on human trafficking as an illegal business. It also proposes a new form of networked action: combining the perspectives of academic researchers with those of highly skilled professionals involved in policymaking in this area, this book is a unique contribution and a first step toward a networking paradigm, promoting collaboration in preventing and combating human trafficking crime, and in raising awareness of this ongoing problem. This book was born within the CINETS group – Crimmigration Control International Net of Studies (www.crimmigrationcontrol.com), which was established in 2011 with the aim of bringing together expertise from different fields, professions, universities and countries. It aims to form a new paradigm for sharing knowledge and advancing research on topics related to human trafficking, crimmigration control, immigration and crime, immigrant detention and all types of violence that may affect victims of crimes, helping to create a fairer society.

Written specifically for undergraduates and graduate students, this text is designed to increase the extent to which issues related to human trafficking are understood and addressed. Human Trafficking makes the expertise of those with experience in the anti-slavery movement of this century available to others.