Misconceptions Of Human Trafficking

As Wyngaard (2006) points out, many different perspectives can be used to approach the problem of trafficking, which can depend on the organization, personal motivations, and academic backgrounds, etc. He specifically suggests six such views:
1. As a moral problem, calling into question the entire sex industry.
2. As a problem of corruption and organized crime, calling for development of law enforcement agencies and legislative frameworks.
3. As a migration problem, calling for an examination of migration policy and border controls.
4. As a public order problem, calling for increased awareness and participation of local communities.
5. As a labour problem, calling for improved working conditions, the abolishment of child labour and labour monitoring
systems.
6. As a human rights problem or gender issue, calling for intervention to address violence against, and exploitation of women and children.
However, I would like to add one more to this list, and that would be, as an investigative problem, calling for increased objective, critical research of the facts surrounding trafficking. Every ST route is different in its complexities and calls for its own research. This is especially important since trafficking is a process which began in one location and then ended in another, requiring law enforcement to investigate the entire route that the process went through. Vijeyarasa’s book, ‘Sex, slavery, and the trafficked woman: myths and misconceptions about trafficking and its victims’ (2015), inspired this objective approach.
Throughout the literature regarding trafficking, and within the anti-trafficking community, a strong feeling resounds that you cannot criticize certain aspects of the phenomenon, especially that of victimhood. However, it is only by taking a critical approach that we can actually understand the problem and effectively address it. Vijeyarasa looks critically at victimhood, and particularly at voluntary victimhood, arguing that in many cases of trafficking the victim definitely has some sense of agency. However, this does not remove their title of victim as they are still deceived, exploited, and subjected to inhumane treatment. She also criticizes the use by many authors of external push and pull factors affecting victims’ decisions. These criticisms that she made led to the adoption of an objective search for the truth during my interviews, analyzing VoTs internal push and pull factors between the phases of the ST
cycle. Further influencing my view of anti-trafficking efforts as a whole was Chuang’s, ‘Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law’ (2014).
In this paper, Chuang points out how global views towards trafficking have changed over time due to certain events. During the time of legal slavery, global efforts were on freeing the slaves, but currently, with the creation of the anti-trafficking protocol, the focus has shifted towards catching the criminals, which means that the focus has shifted from the well-being of the victims, to the legal prosecution of the offenders, leaving many VoTs without protection or concern. She also discusses the effects that different actors, such as governments, IGOs, and NGOs can have on each other in anti-trafficking efforts, and in pointing out that trafficking is not rooted in the behaviour of individual actors, but is a “product of global disparities in wealth and of social exclusion and discrimination in labor and migration frameworks” (Chuang, 2014, p. 636). These views helped me during my research to analyze the effects that the various agencies in the anti-trafficking sphere have on the phenomenon of trafficking as a
whole.