DISTINGUISING BETWEEN HUMAN MIGRATION, SMUGGLING, AND TRAFFICKING

Human migration is the act of moving from one place to another, usually across political boundaries; in order to establish permanent or semi-permanent residence at the migratory destination.  (National Geographic, 2015).  In order to legally cross political boundaries, migrants must generally meet all applicable immigration requirements.  If migrants are not able to meet the applicable immigration requirements for whatever reason; they can either choose to abandon their current plans to migrate, or risk crossing the political boundary illegally.  Due to the difficulties involved in illegally crossing political boundaries without being detected, migrants will often choose to enlist the help of human smugglers in order to decrease their chances of being detected by immigration authorities.

Human smugglers are individuals that specialize in illegally transporting migrants across political boundaries by purposefully helping them evade the immigration laws of the migratory destination.  (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2015).  Migrants that choose to enlist the help of smugglers, enter into a financial arrangement in exchange for the smuggler’s services, which either requires the migrants to compensate the smuggler upfront or in the future.  Since the majority of illegal migrants are economically disadvantaged, many of them will accept the smuggler’s offer to defer payment, which unfortunately leaves many of them vulnerable to potential exploitation by human traffickers.

Human traffickers are individuals that use force or fraud in order to coerce others to engage in prostitution or other forms of forced labor against their will.  (NHTRC, 2015).  Migrants are commonly victimized by human traffickers, who often excessively inflate the migrants’ smuggling debt in order to exploit the fruits of their labor for personal gain.  (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2015).  The victims are then forced to work off this debt by either forced prostitution, or by some other form of forced labor.  Traffickers gain compliance from their victims by using a combination of physical and psychological abuse in order to break the victim’s will. 

As of today, human trafficking is a 150 billion dollar industry, and it’s the second most profitable criminal enterprise after drug trafficking. (Polaris Project, 2015).  The International Labor Organization estimates that there are currently 20.9 million trafficking victims globally, 26 percent of which are children.  (Polaris Project, 2015).  The profitability of the human trafficking industry stems from the fact that labor can be sold multiple times as compared to other commodities, and because it’s a relatively low-risk enterprise due to prosecution difficulties.  Despite the global prohibition against slavery, the human trafficking industry continues to prosper, because the demand for the victim’s labor continues to exist.  The only effect that the prohibition against human trafficking has had on the human trafficking industry, is that it has forced the industry underground.  Consequently, any effective eradication strategy must target the economic factors that drive the industry, the motivations of the industry’s stakeholders, and the value systems that contribute to those motivations.

SEX TRAFFICKING

Sex trafficking is an even darker side of human trafficking, in which the victims are forced to prostitute themselves for the economic benefit of the trafficker.  In most instances of sex trafficking, the victims are either paid very little, or not paid at all.  These victims are often lured into the sex industry by traffickers who promise the victims legitimate jobs, and a better life.  After being trafficked to their destination however, the victims face the horrifying reality of their enslavement, as the traffickers begin the process of brutally solidifying their absolute control over the victims through a process of physical and psychological abuse. 

One such victim of sex trafficking was Sveta who was a little girl from Belarus, who had her life stolen from her by sex traffickers. (Sveta, 2006).  Like most girls of her age, Sveta was an innocent, curious, and happy little girl who enjoyed spending time with her friends.  When Sveta was only eleven years old, her innocence was stolen from her by six boys who brutally raped her at the local “gym”. (Sveta, 2006).  The boys were eventually prosecuted for the crime, but only two of them were convicted for the rape, and neither them received a particularly harsh punishment because they were underage. (Sveta, 2006).  As a result of the court’s failure to give Sveta the justice she deserved, her eighteen-year-old brother decided to hunt down the remaining rapists on his own, and was sentenced to sixteen years in prison as a result. (Sveta, 2006).

A couple of years after the rape, Sveta and her cousin Jenya struck up a fateful conversation with a thirty-year-old man at a bus stop in her home town.  (Sveta, 2006).  This man knew how to talk, and it seemed as if he was able to read their minds.  (Sveta, 2006).  In fact, this man already knew everything about the girls prior to their encounter at the bus stop, and he used that knowledge to convince both of them to go to Moscow to pursue their dreams at his expense. (Sveta, 2006).  After arriving in Moscow, their dreams of a better life came crashing down around them when reality struck.  The man at the bus stop told the girls that they owed him for all the money he spent on them, and that they had to work off their debt as prostitutes. (Sveta, 2006). 

Sveta and Jenya had to endure years of physical and psychological abuse before they were able to escape their lives as sex slaves, and return home to Belarus.  (Sveta, 2006).  After returning home, the girls agreed to assist the police in apprehending the man at the bus stop, and they were given a measure of legal and psychological assistance to aid them in their recovery.  (Sveta, 2006).  Despite the assistance that was made available to Sveta, she failed to fully adjust to a normal life in Belarus.  (Sveta, 2006).  This led Sveta to eventually return to Moscow, but this time, Sveta wasn’t the victim, she was the trafficker.   (Sveta, 2006).  At the time Sveta narrated her account of being a victim of human trafficking, she was serving a prison sentence for being a human trafficker herself.  Fortunately, Sveta was released from prison after being recognized as a human trafficking victim, and she was then provided the support she needed to properly recover. (Sveta, 2006).

Sveta’s story is unfortunately a common one, and it’s a clear-cut cases of sex trafficking.  The trafficker in this story carefully studied his two victims, and then used that knowledge to convince them to move to Moscow.  He promised the girls a life of luxury that was too hard to resist.  Once the girls were in his custody, the trafficker informed them that all of the gifts that were bestowed upon them were not gifts, and that they would have to pay him back by becoming prostitutes.  The trafficker gained compliance from the two girls by using physical and psychological threats to discourage any attempt to escape.  Though Sveta’s terrible ordeal is clearly a case of human trafficking, many others are not as obvious, even to the victims who may not even realize that they are being trafficked.

In the case of sex trafficking, understanding the economics behind this market is critical to finding a way to eradicate it.  Sex traffickers are in business only because there is a demand for paid sex.  In most countries around the world, prostitution is criminalized, and trafficking victims unjustly end up being victimized twice:  Once by the trafficker, and the second time by the law. (Lee & Persson, 2012).  In “Human Trafficking and Regulating Prostitution” Lee and Persson suggest that current prostitution laws are not effective at protecting voluntary prostitutes, or trafficking victims, and go on to state that neither criminalization nor legalization is exclusively the answer to the problem. (Lee & Persson, 2012).  Instead they argue that governments should consider a hybrid policy that criminalizes the purchasers of illegal sex, and legalize voluntary prostitution to protect the voluntary prostitutes.

Lee and Person point out that criminalizing the purchase of sex can be sufficient in countries where there is a negligible variance in male to female income, because in such countries voluntary prostitutes are unlikely to exist. (Lee & Persson, 2012).  In contrast, countries in which male income is relatively greater than that of females, voluntary prostitution is more likely to exist. (Lee & Persson, 2012).  Lee and Persson point out that if such governments permit strictly regulated prostitution, and severely punish illegal purchases of sex; human trafficking can be effectively eliminated in theory, because voluntary prostitutes will choose to operate under the color of the law, and the Johns will only purchase legal sex to avoid prosecution.  (Lee & Persson, 2012).  As a result, human traffickers will effectively be driven out of the prostitution market, and the potential victims will be spared from such victimization.  (Lee & Persson, 2012). 

Though such analysis seems dehumanizing, it is necessary due to the socioeconomic paradigm we live in.  The ideal solution, would be one in which we the socioeconomic paradigm promotes equality, and consequently marginalizes the profit incentive.  Since this is not a near term possibility, we must address the problem within the confines of the current socioeconomic paradigm, which means that we must address the problem by targeting the economic principles that create a market for human trafficking.

 

REFERENCES

Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (2015, February 14). Human Smuggling. Retrieved from Immigration and Customs Enforcement: http://www.ice.gov/human-smuggling

Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (2015, February 14). Human Trafficking. Retrieved from Immigration and Customs Enforcement: http://www.ice.gov/human-trafficking

Lee, S., & Persson, P. (2012, June 27). Human Trafficking and Regulating Prostitution. New York, New York, United States of America: New York University.

National Geographic. (2015, February 14). Human Migration Guide (6-8). Retrieved from National Geographic: www.nationageographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/09/g68/migationguidestudent.pdf

NHTRC. (2015, February 15). What is Human Trafficking? Retrieved from National Human Trafficking Resource Center: http://www.traffickingresourcecenter.org/

Polaris Project. (2015, February 15). Human Trafficking Overview. Retrieved from Polaris: Freedom Happens Now: http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview

Sveta. (2006). Atop the Second Wave. In A. A.-S. Group, Enslaved (pp. 163-176). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.