read those articles and answer the question.(3 double-spaced pages)
Sz841932383
GTFall2020Oct14lecture.pptxGlobal Trafficking Fall 2020
October 14 2020
Is Human Trafficking “Modern-Day Slavery?”
Today we will go over
Main Issue/ Questions:
Prison labor: an actual legacy of slavery
Janie Chuang article
Noy Thrupkaew video
Comparison: Thrupkaew and Bales
To what extent is the "slavery" analogy relevant or helpful, and what are its limitations in understanding trafficking and developing anti-trafficking responses today?
What if discussions about “modern-day slavery” also included actual legacies of slavery like prison labor?
Optional reading: LA times article: “California kept prison factories open. Inmates worked for pennies an hour as COVID-19 spread.”
Discusses a women’s prison in Chino where inmates were required to manufacture masks but were not provided any to wear. Then there was a Covid-19 outbreak among the inmate workers sewing the masks.
Prison Labor: a legacy of Transatlantic slavery.
Legal scholars and civil rights advocates have long criticized prison labor as exploitative and part of the historical legacy of slavery: a deep injustice magnified by COVID-19.
Contemporary prison labor is a form of slavery allowed by the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery and involuntary servitude “except as a punishment for crime.” The language was a compromise — a way to preserve slavery in a different configuration: in which people can do unpaid or minimally paid labor.
Michele Goodwin, chancellor’s professor of law at UC Irvine.
After the Civil War, Southern states passed laws targeting Black people for frivolous crimes such as vagrancy. Imprisoned in droves, they were forced to work for private industry in coal mines, brickyards, plantations and elsewhere — a “convict-leasing” system.
U.S. incarceration rates by race and ethnicity (per 100,000 people)
Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-04-21/states-are-putting-prisoners-to-work-manufacturing-coronavirus-supplies
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/incarcerated-women-risk-their-lives-fighting-california-fires-its-part-of-a-long-history-of-prison-labor
Further optional reading for those interested
Does Prison labor meet the criteria for “slavery?”
Bales’ criteria: total control for economic exploitation.
Incarcerated people do not have the right to refuse to work. If they don't volunteer to participate in a certain type of labor, they can be assigned to work in another area that might offer significantly less pay or even no pay.
Once on the job, those who refuse work or fail to perform satisfactorily face disciplinary action, which can lead to denial of parole.
State minimum wage laws don’t apply to prisoners.
Hall was one of thousands of incarcerated workers who stayed on the job in high-risk positions during the pandemic, making wages that ranged from 8 cents to $1 an hour. They cooked the food. They walked from cell to cell delivering meals. They cleaned everything from communal showers to COVID-19 units in prison hospitals. And they labored in prison factories making products, such as masks, hand sanitizer and furniture, that were sold to state agencies for millions of dollars.
Quote 1 from the article about prison labor
Anti-trafficking or anti-slavery campaigns do not take up this issue as “modern-day slavery.”
“
”
Factory staff, they said, warned that workers would lose their jobs — their only source of income — if they missed a day. Some said they were threatened with discipline that could jeopardize their chances for release from prison if they refused to work because of COVID-19 fears.
Quote 2 from the article about prison labor
Anti-trafficking or anti-slavery campaigns do not take up this issue as “modern-day slavery.”
“
”
Then why is prison labor not addressed in anti-trafficking or anti-slavery campaigns?
Not seen as “innocent” or lacking agency.
Not distant “others” but rather, U.S. minorities seen through a racialized lens as deviant and criminal, not objects of compassion.
Today’s Article
Chuang, Janie (2013). “Exploitation Creep and the Unmaking of Human Trafficking Law,” American University, WCL Research Paper.
Janie Chuang
Professor of Law at Ameircan University: Washington College of Law.
Expertise: international law, human trafficking and labor migration.
“Exploitation Creep”
“Creep” as in a takeover, an encroachment.
“Exploitation Creep:”
“Partly well-intentioned, strategic deployment of powerful rhetoric and imagery to galvanize support for eradicating a broader range of wrongful practices than “trafficking” was likely ever intended to encompass.” p. 3
2 kinds: Wielding its outsized influence over global anti-trafficking policy, the U.S. government has sought to:
(1) recast all forced labor as trafficking,
(2) label all trafficking as slavery.
Connections/ Differences from Chacon last week
Chacon: Bush era, when the focus was on sex trafficking (equated with all prostitution) and other situations seen as “most severe,” typically in the context of transnational movement, This left out a range of other forms of exploitation and abuse faced by migrant workers as well as U.S. workers, as discussed in the last 2 lectues.
Chuang: Obama era, when it is clarified that only forced prostitution is a form of trafficking + the 2 “exploitation creeps” have occurred:
Creep (1) recasting all forced labor as trafficking,
Creep (2) labeling all trafficking as slavery.
“Creep 1”
Recasting all forced labor as trafficking.
BACKGROUND
New perspective: Previously, both the UN Protocol and the US TVPA prioritized a crime control, border control, law enforcement and criminal justice approach to trafficking.
Initially, the modern anti-trafficking movement lacked a labor perspective.
Workers’ rights organizations and labor unions were largely absent from anti-trafficking platforms and worked separately.
Now, labor advocates have been able to capitalize on the political will behind anti- trafficking interventions to shed light on a broader range of worker exploitation issues.
Creep 1: Potential
Brings long-overdue attention to a broader spectrum of labor abuse.
Brings to light the underlying structures and power relationships that create vulnerability to forced labor and trafficking.
Problems in migration and labor structures: global restructuring of work away from direct employment and towards subcontracting.
Role of state-created/sanctioned mechanisms + third party actors who offer potentially abusive and exploitative opportunities + corporations.
Provides a more nuanced understanding of coercion: not necessarily direct threat or harm, how poverty and immigration status can render workers vulnerable to forced labor and trafficking.
Read in detail: case of Filipino teachers trafficked into the U.S. to teach in Louisiana public schools (p. 44-45): documented migrant workers trafficked into formal, public sector jobs by a third party, insurmountable debt, ever-increasing recruiter’s fees and repeated threats of deportation.
Viewing trafficking through a labor lens has exposed just how deeply invested states and their corporate partners are in the labor and migration structures that enable and sustain human trafficking.
Chuang, p.46.
Impact of Creep 1
“
”
Creep 1: Solutions
Calls for strengthened labor protections to target structural vulnerability to trafficking.
Advocates collective action and bargaining by workers to transform the structures that create vulnerability to trafficking.
Creep 1: Problems
Bureaucratic “turf” wars: Tensions within the U.S. administration, with different approaches and competition between different agencies.
Fraught questions such as: What is the tipping point? When is it trafficking/forced labor and when is it “regular” exploitation? See discussion on p. 55.
Sex workers have been mostly left out of the labor framework, which could have provided them a space to organize and ask for rights and protections in the sex industry so that those who want to stay in that industry will be less vulnerable to abuse and exploitation (more on this topic next week!).
The rhetorical marrying of trafficking practices with slavery has proven an enormously successful tool for galvanizing outrage and create incentives for anti-trafficking advocacy and support. The slavery analogy packs a particular punch in the U.S. context, given this country’s past as a major slaveholding country – its invocation by the United States’ first African-American President all the more powerful.
Chuang, p. 30
“Creep 2”: Rhetorical conflation of human trafficking and slavery that has galvanized political will and led to policy action.
“
”
Important: Please read in detail
Contributions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (among others) to the use of the “slavery” framework. See p. 29-30 and further discussion on p. 32-37, including Kevin Bales’ impact on framing trafficking as “slavery” and the use of this frame by NGOs, media, etc.
Draw connections to Monday’s lecture: historically and conceptually flawed analogy and U.S. “mantle of righteousness.”
The greatest risk to efforts to reap the benefits of Creep 1, however, lies in Creep 2’s ability to entrench approaches to anti-trafficking interventions that focus on individual deviant behavior and enable States to resist structural change.
Chuang, p. 57.
Summary of Problems with Creep 2
“
”
Creep 2: Problems
Creates a moral imperative and political consensus that frames forced labor/trafficking/slavery as rooted in deviant behavior and thus mandates a strong criminal justice response.
Narrows the target of intervention to the extreme (slavery) end of the abuse spectrum, implicitly normalizing “lesser” forms of exploitation.
Read the impact of “Creep 2” on the Filipino teachers case, p. 62.
“Savior” complex (illustrated in Bales + analyzed by Anam in her post!) that treats “victims” as devoid of agency.
Doesn’t focus on the conditions that create and sustain vulnerability to a range of labor abuses or on empowering individual and collective resistance.
Depoliticizing: Absolves states and corporations of responsibility to not promote labor and migration structures that create and foster vulnerability to exploitation.
Problems with prioritizing criminal justice as a solution to trafficking: p 39-40.
Prosecutions tend to be mostly for sex trafficking, very rarely for trafficking into other sectors (also in Thrupkaew talk).
“Slavery” framework raises the threshold of who qualifies as a “victim,” thus reducing the possibility of successful prosecution.
Law enforcement, immigration officers and prosecutors are looking for the most extreme cases involving physical violence (O’Connell Davidson).
Strong disincentives against participating in the CJS: Victims don’t want to testify due to fear of traffickers + are re-traumatized by the CJS + undocumented migrants fear deportation.
Rights protections and benefits are tied to participating in CJS.
In Summary: Impact of “exploitation creep”
Though forced labor issues are now seen as falling within anti-trafficking policy and activism, the overall institutional framework (in the U.S. and at the UN) “remains wedded to a criminal justice paradigm,” due to the “slavery” rhetoric focusing on the most extreme cases.
“Continued adherence to a criminal justice paradigm reinforces the understanding of trafficking as a problem created and sustained by individual bad actors….” p. 17.
Watch Noy Thrupkaew Video (approx. 19 minutes)
Journalist researching and writing about human trafficking and labor exploitation
Also tells a personal story about her childhood caregiver.
Main Points Thrupkaew raises
Human trafficking is all around us. We are all implicated in the problem + solution.
Advocates a more systemic approach of solidarity with workers as opposed to criminal justice solution to trafficking.
“Trafficking happens in sectors where workers are excluded from protections and denied the right to organize.”
E.g. under “guestworker” visas in the U.S. (also discussed in Chuang article).
Corrects dominant misconceptions of the problem.
Explains how “look at her scars” journalism “lets us off the hook.”
Similarities between Bales and Thrupkaew talks
Both discuss situations of labor exploitation and abuse rampant in different parts of the world.
Both emphasize the need for each of us to do something about it.
Both move beyond the hype of sex trafficking (which has dominated discourse and activism) to exploitation and abuse in a variety of sectors: brick kiln workers, farm workers, fishing industry, hair salon, childcare, etc.
Differences between Bales’ and Thrupkaew’s approaches: Problem
Bales
Focus on the most severe and extreme situations of forced labor, to meet the “slavery” criterion.
Describes how “slaves” are treated as objects being traded and “disposable.”
Focus on cases of “distant others:” mainly situations in the Global South. Only discussion of global North context is hypothetical (spoof).
Uses images, but from an “outsider’s” perspective rather than a fuller understanding of those individuals’ situations.
Thrupkaew
Discusses widespread exploitation and abuse, with details, but doesn’t use the language of slavery + talks about a broader range of cases.
Describes trafficking survivors as migrants and workers who make difficult choices and also face constraints, abuse, and exploitation.
Discusses cases across the globe: North and South. Specifically discusses the role of corporations.
Uses far fewer images, instead tells stories with context and nuance.
Differences between Bales’ and Thrupkaew’s approaches: Solutions
Bales
Calls for the rule of law and prosecutions as solutions.
Says we need to “save” or “liberate” slaves.
Focus is on prosecuting evil and “menacing” slavers in Global South countries.
Thrupkaew
CJS has limitations: creates further problems for marginalized populations. Advocates a labor rights perspective instead.
“Survivors of trafficking don’t need saving, they need solidarity.”
Says we need to investigate supply chains in all industries across the globe where multiple agents including states, corporations, and recruiters are involved.
In relation to “exploitation creep”
“Creep 1 has helped bring trafficking out of the bedroom and shadowy alleys and into our everyday lives – making more visible for the mainstream public the possibility that the produce we eat, the clothes we wear, the household caregivers we employ, and the services that sustain our military abroad may be tainted by trafficking,” Chuang p.
Illustrated by Thrupkaew’s talk.
In relation to “exploitation creep”
Creep 2: Invoking slavery dredges up a tragic and shameful past and its attendant imagery of people laboring in fields, sometimes in chains and beaten into submission. But that imagined scenario comprises one extreme and an exceptionally small fraction of a wide range of trafficking practices involving varying types and levels of force or coercion, not necessarily physical violence.”
Illustrated by Bales’ talk.
This week’s Discussion Board and Quiz
Important Instructions and Reminders
Discussion Board Questions for Today
Compare the TED talks by Kevin Bales (Monday’s lecture) and Noy Thrupkaew (today’s lecture).
Keeping in mind either or both the lectures this week, think about:
How the two talks impacted you: Are they equally powerful? How and why? Did one seem more powerful than the other? How and why?
What do you think is gained or lost in these two different approaches?
What does it mean for Thrupkaew to describe trafficked survivors as workers and for Bales to describe them as “slaves”?
Anything that struck you about the similarities and differences I outlined between Bales and Thrupkaew? Agree/ Disagree?
Any other thoughts related to this week’s material (including prison labor)?
Assigned Discussion Board Posts start this week
The first group of students will be posting assigned discussion posts this week, for which they’ll be graded.
Anyone else is welcome and encouraged to post, but won’t be graded if not assigned to post this week.
Those assigned to post for this week can choose to respond to either Monday’s or Wednesday’s lecture/ discussion questions, or both.
Read the Instructions and Rubrics:
Posted under Modules: Syllabus or under Assignments: Assigned Discussion Board Posts.
Remember the required length is not more than a paragraph!
Remember that you are required to reference at least one reading from this week.
You can use the discussion questions provided to frame your response, but:
You don’t have to answer all of them! Pick some/ a combination of them.
You don’t have to stick to these questions.
Write about what sparked your interest, rather than trying to summarize or cover everything.
In connection with this week’s lecture and reading
Assigned Discussion Posts
Deadline: Sunday night 11:59 p.m.
Grace Period: Till 9 a.m. Monday morning.
Week 2 Quiz:
Will be available after this lecture is posted. Wait for announcement.
Deadline: Sunday night 11:59 p.m.
Grace Period: Until Sunday Night of week 5 Nov 8 at 11:59 p.m.
Can’t find your discussion group and assigned week?
Make sure you know which week you are assigned to post!
Please read Shannon’s announcement.
If you still cannot find your group and assigned date, please email Shannon. She can help you locate where to find the information.
Assignment Reminders
Deadlines Coming Up
Participation Assignments: Short, Quick and Easy
Remote Learning Accessibility Survey (full points just for doing it)
Introduce Yourself Discussion Board (full points just for doing it)
Syllabus Quiz (multiple attempts allowed)
1 and 2 are worth 5 points each. 3 is worth 10 points.
Deadline: Sunday Oct. 18 11:59 p.m.
Please complete these assignments as soon as possible. The deadline is mainly to accommodate those adding the class late.
.MsftOfcThm_Accent1_Fill { fill:#F09415; } .MsftOfcThm_Accent1_Stroke { stroke:#F09415; }
