Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is an urgent contemporary human and labor rights issue. It is prevalent in a wide range of sectors, from the commercial sex sector to the construction industry to begging. Human trafficking also (increasingly) occurs in situations where the body is rendered ‘divisible,’ such as in cases of organ trafficking. The ratification of the United Nations Protocol on Human Trafficking (formally known as the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children) in December 2003 has led to a proliferation of legislative and policy responses by states, interventions by international and nongovernmental organizations, and scholarly and third-sector research on the subject. International organizations, such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), have also become important players in the field of counter-trafficking, including through the publication of numerous guidelines and manuals, research publications, and other resources. With ‘human trafficking’ defined by the UN Protocol as involving the three linked elements of recruitment, movement, and exploitation, responses have centered on what are commonly labeled the ‘3 Ps’; prevention of trafficking, protection of victims, and prosecution of offenders. By nature a clandestine and illicit activity, human trafficking has proven both challenging to study and, as a transnational crime, difficult to investigate and prosecute. Research with victims and survivors is often not undertaken well because trafficked persons are viewed as a ‘hidden population’ and because of a range of ethical challenges. As a result, published research on human trafficking is often largely bereft of victims’ voices; is overly reliant on information provided primarily by key stakeholders; and exhibits a bias toward estimates, mapping the problem, and criminal justice responses. In 2022, almost twenty years after the Trafficking Protocol came into international force, critical scholarly work evaluating the achievements, shortcomings, and effects of the UN Protocol has produced a robust engagement not only with human trafficking as an important subject, but also with counter-trafficking responses as a corpus of knowledge and practice, with its own attendant institutional and political infrastructures. Geographical scholarship on the subject is, in large part, motivated by these concerns for critical and progressive engagements with the ways human trafficking and counter-trafficking responses impact the rights and dignity of victims. This focus has directed much scholarly engagement by both geographers and those in cognate disciplines, such as anthropology and gender studies, to interrelated modes of human exploitation through modern-day slavery, forced labor, and precarious work.