Graduate student alumni discuss human trafficking, exploitation

Human trafficking survivors have been instrumental leaders of movements to reduce economic exploitation and labor exploitation, journalism visiting professor Noy Thrupkaew said at a panel she moderated on Friday.

Elaine Pearson GS ’13, the Australia director of Human Rights Watch, defined trafficking as the movement of a person through deceptive or coercive means into a situation of exploitation.

“What makes it a situation of trafficking is that it’s a situation where people can’t just freely get up and leave,” Pearson said, noting that today’s compulsion often involves psychological rather than physical constraints and can happen through both legal and illegal channels.

Pearson distinguished trafficking from smuggling, which she described as the illegal movement of someone across a border for a fee. She noted that smugglers provide a service without necessarily coercing anyone.

Forty-five percent of trafficking victims are men, Pearson said, noting that people often do not realize the high percentage of men because the stereotypical victim is female. Seventy-five percent of victims are adults.

Trafficking affects about 21 million people in the world, Thrupkaew said.

Kay Warren GS ’74, an international studies and anthropology professor at Brown, noted that the traditional victim-predator dichotomy, in which an individual predator manipulates a victim who completely lacks agency, does not account for trafficking’s broader social and cultural context.

Instead, she recommended analyzing trafficking in terms of organized crime, a larger system often connected with police.

“There are lots of cases in what I’ve studied where people who were recruited for transnational labor end up working for organized crime, so don’t see this as absolutely separate groups of people,” Warren said. "In some cases, workers in transnational settings end up looking for better salaries, better economic opportunities, by moving up to supervisory and managerial positions in organized crime.”

Lori Bishop GS '06, a senior human rights adviser for the Resiliensea Group, said theprivate sector must follow labor laws, as well as ensure humane conditions for production, she said, noting that some progress toward responsibility for one's supply chain had been made.

Civil society encompasses a number of agents, including media that raise awareness and accountability and activists who research and advocate against trafficking, she added.

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In addition, the United States government responds to human trafficking at home through legislative and reform efforts, as well as issuing key reports and holding purchasing power as the single largest purchaser of goods in the world. However, Pearson noted that while hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into anti-trafficking interventions since 2000, leading to the harmonization of laws and improved services for victims, the scale of trafficking remains nearly unchanged.The real problem remains unresolved because government efforts have been too often driven by other agendas, such as those against immigration, crime and prostitution, Pearson said.

Pearson also said mass sweeps of places where trafficking is suspected are detrimental. Even if there are trafficking victims there, they often will avoid disclosing their situation because of the threats in their environment, and raids frequently provide excuses for police to expel immigrants or sell the victims to other people, she explained.

At a shelter for trafficking victims in Bangkok, Pearson said she spoke with women who described their treatment in the shelter as very similar to their treatment when being trafficked: They were detained, told to sign forms they did not understand and informed that they could not leave. Pearson said officials should have instead offered improved the shelter conditions or provided a residency permit for the survivors.

Another flawed intervention is the prosecution of traffickers, Warren said. Such an approach fails to catch head traffickers, who often do not live in the countries where the crimes are being committed, she explained, adding that it is disappointing that the U.S. includes vigorous prosecution as a strategy in its training of other countries on anti-trafficking.

Globally, the most effective anti-trafficking initiatives result from police and health workers collaborating with victims and their communities to identify cases of exploitation and rescuing people from them, Pearson said.

Sponsored by the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni, the Reunions panel, “Voiceless: Human Trafficking in 2015,” took place at 9 a.m. in Robertson Bowl 016.