Correlates of Labor Trafficking among Migrant Farmworkers

• In Event: Understanding the Scope, Scale, and Perpetration of Human Trafficking in the U.S.

Abstract

Scholars have suggested that labor trafficking is an under-identified crime and most research on labor trafficking has focused on known cases through conducting stakeholder interviews and reviewing police and court case files. Our research has included developing methods for identifying and recruiting migrant farmworkers in North Carolina in two NIJ-funded projects. In the first study, we conducted 380 in-person interviews with a convenience sample of migrant farmworkers. We used responses from the interviews to identify the level and type of abuse and exploitation workers experienced as well as potential individual-level indicators that are associated with trafficking and other forms of abuse. We are currently expanding this research by using an innovative GIS-based enumeration strategy that enables us to build a sampling frame of migrant farmworkers with a goal of generating a statewide prevalence estimate of labor trafficking among migrant farmworkers. The results from the analyses of the first study, as well as a discussion of the new methods be developed for the follow-up study, will be discussed.

Author

• Pamela K. Lattimore, RTI International