In Search Of Perspective: Discerning The Faces Of Human Trafficking

• In Event: Comparative Perspectives on Human Trafficking

Abstract

Redressing the scandal of incidences of trafficking in human beings has become a political priority in many Western countries, in part because of the adoption of the Palermo Protocol, but also because such incidences conceive, in journalistic renditions, a perfect storm in which the unsettling thunder of unmanaged migration is galvanised by the lightening strike of foreign slavers in our midst. The relative absence of criminological commentary on human trafficking creates a discipline lacking a platform from which to calm such storms, reliant as they become on a stereotype of the trafficker - cast as a ruthless, if elusive, mafia type from lawless parts of the world – masterminding the perpetration of many social ills. In this paper we urge criminologists to rectify this lacuna by attempting to discern what is empirically demonstrable about the face of human traffickers from five key approaches to the problem: Legal, Victimological, Rescuer, Social Constructionist and Undocumented Workers’. We conclude by arguing the need to discern in these faces glimpses of what traffickers’ look like in the hope that stereotypes can be recognised for what they are and tested against the empirical evidence which is so hard to come by in this field.

Authors

• David Gadd, Manchester University, UK

• Rose Broad, University of Manchester, UK