Understanding Risk and Prevention in Midwestern Antitrafficking Efforts: Service Providers' Perspectives

Since the 2000 passage of both the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) and the U.N.’s Palermo Protocols, human trafficking has gained a notable global presence as a human rights concern. Community organizations, nonprofits, scholars, policymakers, and service providers have developed programs to identify and address human trafficking. Despite these efforts, finding reliable methods to document and quantify the instances of human trafficking continues to challenge researchers. Moreover, many believe trafficking is a problem primarily located in urban areas or along national borders. Drawing from seven years of interviews with service providers who work in this sector, combined with survey results from an additional 722 service providers, this project adds to the growing body of research on human trafficking, specifically in the Midwestern United States. The findings of this study indicate that place and location matter in antitrafficking, especially with regard to availability of and access to resources across urban and rural areas. However, these service providers also identify similar concerns across regions with regards to trafficking warning signs and risk factors—for both sex and labor trafficking—as well as community resources that could prevent trafficking or alleviate vulnerability. These findings point toward the benefit of research that is geographically focused and involves both qualitative and quantitative research. Additionally, this research has uncovered unexpected groups of community members that may be vital in the identification and prevention of human trafficking. Though there is a growing body of research about the role of medical practitioners, law enforcement, foster care workers, and social workers in the struggle to address trafficking, there are other groups that also have important insight into the risks their communities face. Interviews revealed that firefighters have particular relationships with the communities they serve and may be ideally positioned to address human trafficking, exploitation, and vulnerability because of these relationships

Understanding Risk and Prevention in Midwestern Antitrafficking Efforts: Service Providers\u27 Perspectives

Since the 2000 passage of both the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) and the U.N.’s Palermo Protocols, human trafficking has gained a notable global presence as a human rights concern. Community organizations, nonprofits, scholars, policymakers, and service providers have developed programs to identify and address human trafficking. Despite these efforts, finding reliable methods to document and quantify the instances of human trafficking continues to challenge researchers. Moreover, many believe trafficking is a problem primarily located in urban areas or along national borders. Drawing from seven years of interviews with service providers who work in this sector, combined with survey results from an additional 722 service providers, this project adds to the growing body of research on human trafficking, specifically in the Midwestern United States. The findings of this study indicate that place and location matter in antitrafficking, especially with regard to availability of and access to resources across urban and rural areas. However, these service providers also identify similar concerns across regions with regards to trafficking warning signs and risk factors—for both sex and labor trafficking—as well as community resources that could prevent trafficking or alleviate vulnerability. These findings point toward the benefit of research that is geographically focused and involves both qualitative and quantitative research. Additionally, this research has uncovered unexpected groups of community members that may be vital in the identification and prevention of human trafficking. Though there is a growing body of research about the role of medical practitioners, law enforcement, foster care workers, and social workers in the struggle to address trafficking, there are other groups that also have important insight into the risks their communities face. Interviews revealed that firefighters have particular relationships with the communities they serve and may be ideally positioned to address human trafficking, exploitation, and vulnerability because of these relationships

“I Need to Hurt You More”: Namibia’s Fight to End Gender-Based Violence

This is the published version. Copyright 2015 University of Chicago PressThe article discusses efforts to combat gender-based violence in Namibia. Particular focus is given to the relationship between legislation and social transformation. Details on parliamentary debates surrounding the Namibian Combating Rape Act of 2000 are presented. It is suggested that regressive gender roles in Namibian society have diminished the law's ability to address gender-based violence. Other topics include marital rape, the Namibian war for independence, and women resistance fighters

Policy Responses to Human Trafficking in Southern Africa: Domesticating International Norms

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published version will be available from Springer Verlag at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12142-014-0303-9.Human trafficking is increasingly recognized as an outcome of economic insecurity, gender inequality, and conflict, all significant factors in the region of southern Africa. This paper examines policy responses to human trafficking in southern Africa and finds that there has been a diffusion of international norms to the regional and domestic levels. This paper finds that policy change is most notable in the strategies and approaches that differ at each level: international and regional agreements emphasize prevention measures and survivor assistance, but national policies emphasize prosecution measures. Leaders across the region have adapted these policy norms to fit regionally specific conditions, including HIV/AIDS, conflict, traditional leaders, and prostitution. Yet, national policies often fail to incorporate preventative solutions to address gender inequality, human rights, and economic development. Until appropriate funding and preventative measures are introduced, the underlying issues that foster human trafficking will continue

Aligned Across Difference: Structural Injustice, Sex Work, and Human Trafficking

Feminist scholars and activists engage in meaningful, contentious debates about the relationships among sex, gender, power, and society. One of the most recent iterations of these arguments reinscribes the pleasure of sex positivity and danger of patriarchal exploitation onto new subjects: sex work and human trafficking. This paper brings together two separate empirically based research projects, one working with sex workers and the other working with members of the anti-trafficking community. As scholars working across these topics, we provide new normative propositions that may bridge these different approaches to resilience, survival, danger, and risk. We find that the real threat identified by our participants was the wide reach of the carceral state onto migrating, working, and trafficked bodies. Our projects find unexpected commonality in shared perceptions of pleasure, agency, and danger among sex workers, human trafficking survivors, and service providers working with trafficked persons. Current debates ignore the lived experiences of our participants, who attempt to find pleasure in context-specific agency and survival, and who locate danger in the looming forces of the security state, criminality, and structural inequalities

Women's Activism in South Africa: Working Across Divides

Women's Activism in South Africa provides the most comprehensive collection of women's experiences within civil society since the 1994 transition. This book captures South African women's stories of collective activism and social change at a crucial point for the future of democracy in the country, if not the continent. Pulling together the voices of activists and scholars, South Africa's path to democracy and the assurance of gender rights emerge as a complex journey of both successes and challenges. The collection elucidates a new form of pragmatic feminism, building upon the elasticity between the state and civil society. What the cases demonstrate is that while the state itself may not be a panacea, it still represents a key source of power and the primary locus of vital resources, including the rights of citizenship, access to basic needs, and the promise of protection from genderbased violence - all central to women's particular needs in South Africa

Wanderers, dwellers, exiles : reading Wordsworthian spatial poetics in the poetry of Lord Byron and John Keats

This thesis is concerned with Wordsworth’s spatial poetics, with the formation and articulation of spatial identities and poetic geographies in his verse, and with the informing influence of those spatial poetics on the poetry of John Keats and Lord Byron. This thesis contends that Keats’s and Byron’s reception of Wordsworth’s poetry was intimately entwined with their understanding of the poet’s place: his geographical location in the Lake District and his place amongst the poets to whom they were heir. My research suggests that attending to the moments in Byron’s and Keats’s verse in which Wordsworthian spatial poetics emerge, are contested, and are reformed or absorbed, enables a deeper understanding of the poetic relationships between the poets and draws out strands of influence that have hitherto been overlooked. This thesis uncovers new areas of complex textual engagement between the Romantic poets by refocusing the discussion on the second-generation poets’ allusions to Wordsworth. Although Wordsworthian echoes and borrowings have been well traced in biographical and editorial work on Byron and Keats, there have been no extended critical studies. While building on the work of formal inheritance, this thesis also suggests a modification of the critical approach to the poetics of the nineteenth century that is implicitly, and often explicitly, framed as a question of Wordsworth or Byron. By uncovering complex intertextualities, this thesis suggests that there is more to be said on the moments in which the Romantic poets coalesce. The discussion is structured around an exploratory engagement with Wordsworth’s poetics in Lyrical Ballads (1800), which then informs readings of Byron and Keats. Through a selective engagement with their intertextual dialogue with Wordsworth, the thesis complicates previous studies of Romantic allusion by considering the experience of bodies in space and how those bodies are rendered textually

A Prototype Comparison of Human Trafficking Warning Signs: U.S. Midwest Frontline Workers’ Perceptions

Guided by the cognitive prototype approach, this article examines the prototype structure of the frontline workers’ perceptions concerning warning sign indicators in human trafficking. Online survey responses across a range of workplace sectors were analyzed using multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) for three groups. These groups were based on respondents’ self-reported human trafficking experiences: no witness (no encounter of human trafficking), sex trafficking witness, and labor trafficking witness. The MG-CFA analysis revealed a three-factor structure – physical condition, reproductive health, and personal risk – representing the participants’ perceptions of the warning signs. Further analysis showed group-level mean (latent intercept) and variance differences between the prototype structures of the three witness groups. The final structural model results indicate that these group-level prototype differences can be explained by two organizational resource variables: identification protocol and training. The results are discussed in light of the current empirical literature on human trafficking identification, stereotypical frames of victimhood, and policy practices

Frontline Workers’ Perceptions of Human Trafficking: Warning Signs and Risks in the Midwest

Research on human trafficking in the U.S. has centered overwhelmingly on coastal regions, border states, and urban hubs. In an attempt to understand perceptions of exploitation and human trafficking more broadly, this paper focuses on frontline workers in the Midwest. Service providers in the legal/law enforcement, medical, non-profit, social service, and foster care sectors often encounter exploited or trafficked persons in their work. Their perceptions offer a unique insight into how trafficking may manifest and how frontline workers interface with vulnerable, exploited, or trafficked persons seeking resources or assistance. Using survey data from 667 participants across two Midwestern states, we find important similarities in perceived trafficking warning signs and risk factors, as well as differences in how these providers can address their clients’ immediate needs. We present these findings through both descriptive statistical summaries of questions regarding micro-level and macro-level trafficking factors and qualitative data from a set of open-ended survey questions. Results indicate the need for better site-specific policy to address the nuances of anti-trafficking work across the Midwest

Midwestern Service Provider Narratives of Migrant Experiences: Legibility, Vulnerability, and Exploitation in Human Trafficking

This exploratory study examined the vulnerability and exploitation of migrants from the perspective of service providers who work in social service organizations. Researchers conducted 16 interviews and 1 focus group with service providers whose clientele had direct experience with migration. These service providers indicated that there is incongruence, even tension, between a welcoming local response to migrant populations and the state-level political rhetoric and policy initiatives, which are predominantly anti-immigration. This study demonstrates that there are contradictions and tensions related especially to exploitation in Midwest migrant populations. Service providers acknowledged complexity in the problems related to migrant vulnerability and exploitation and were interested in change. Findings of this study highlight particular vulnerabilities of migrant populations, a lack of legibility of human trafficking in social service organizations, and a difference between political rhetoric and local responses to migrant populations. Policies and practices in social service delivery need to reflect the subtleties of risk for exploitation and offer broad preventive support for migrant populations through education and advocacy