Debating Trafficking

While activists against human trafficking—the illegal trade of human beings mainly for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor—claim that it is one the most egregious forms of exploitation, scholars say that such claims are vastly overstated.

Sociologist Ronald Weitzer (Sex Trafficking and the Sex Industry: The Need for Evidence-Based Theory and Legislation, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 2012) notes that dominant discourse, influenced by anti-trafficking activists, inaccurately presents human trafficking as a problem involving millions of victims, and that it makes sweeping generalizations about the individuals involved. But as criminal justice scholars Ko-Lin Chin and James Finckenauer (Selling Sex Overseas: Chinese Women and the Realities of Prostitution and Global Sex Trafficking, 2012) show, migrants’ degree of consent and knowledge of working conditions vary widely. What they have in common is the desire for upwardly mobility.

These and other scholars also challenge sinister caricatures of the trafficker, showing that many third-party recruiters and facilitators are parents, relatives, friends, and associates, and are not necessarily exploiting innocent victims.

While sex and labor trafficking can be coercive and highly exploitative economically, these more nuanced social science analyses can help policy analysts identify specific risk factors for genuine cases of victimization.