The Role of the Private Sector in Labor Trafficking

• In Event: Unusual Actors in Human Trafficking

Abstract

Public discourse typically depicts human trafficking as an underground economy. While true for certain human trafficking situations, this study demonstrates that the rigid separation of licit from illicit activities is limiting in the context of labor trafficking. The presentation includes the results of an in-depth systematic qualitative study that addresses the role of more than 200 firms engaged with 30 labor trafficking court cases. The findings illustrate how labor trafficking is strongly embedded in a legal corporate context: in addition to the employment venues where human labor was exploited, a number of other corporations were less directly engaged with the practice by means of business transactions, finance or personal connections. These corporations appear to be constituent elements that shape the context in which labor trafficking occurs. With the aim of providing an analytical framework upon which to evaluate labor trafficking, the study puts forward a typology to represent the different ways in which firms were engaged with labor trafficking. It subsequently takes the corporate involvement at the center of re-defining and classifying labor trafficking situations. The presentation will discuss research and policy implications in the realm of quantitative measurements and informing private-sector responses to labor trafficking, respectively.

Author

• Ieke de Vries, Northeastern University, Boston