Commentary on Hughes, Chon, and Ellerman

Concerns about trafficking arise at the turn of the 21st century in the context of burgeoning migration. Generated by increasing economic inequalities in a neoliberal global economy, the legal & illegal flows of people across borders pose both symbolic & material threats to national borders & security. Simultaneously, the abuses to which mobile populations are subjected challenge the human rights ideals pledged by the global community. Human trafficking involves the movement of people, often by illegal means, for the purpose of forced labor. The undocumented & underground natures of these activities & the lack of accurate data give much leeway to assumptions, conjectures, & generalizations. The abundance of writing on human trafficking in the past decade does not mean that these tendencies have abated. Four problems are particularly detrimental to the well-being of the populations vulnerable to the abuses that take place in human trafficking: (a) conflation of human trafficking with trafficking into forced prostitution, (b) haphazard use of questionable statistics & secondary sources, (c) deployment of sensational rhetoric that obscures the complex reality on the ground, & (d) emphasis on human trafficking as a consequence of transnational organized crime & thus the need for a law enforcement approach. They are harmful because they give a skewed representation of the situation, leading to falsely premised but emotionally appealing solutions. References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2008.]