Challenges and Survival Modes of the Smuggled and Trafficked who Face Community Disconnections

• In Event: Community Reentry

Abstract

The proposed presentation is part of an ongoing study on migrants in various countries including the United States, Finland, and parts of Asia. It explores qualitative approaches of data collection and analyses to examine reactions to irregular migration leading to labor exploitation and extreme forms of abuses and human trafficking. It will further highlight diverse methods through which individuals move transnationally in pursuit of upward social mobility but end up in slavery-like living and labor conditions with little to no community support systems. Participants were interviewed virtually through phone calls and zoom. Irrespective of the initiator of the travel, i.e. either the migrant or “travel agents” manipulating the desperation of the impoverished, the misery of the victims and survivors of such varied forms of “migrational exploitation” heightened in the absence of readily accessible support systems upon which to fall for survival. Participant experiences at the pre-migration preparatory stage, their journeys, arrival, and the challenges they suffered partially due to disconnections from community support are other areas this proposal will address.

Author

• C. Nana Derby, Virginia State University