Central theme of this book: the coexistence of agency and vulnerability, and the interplay of trauma and resiliency in s
* Trafficked Children and Adolescents in the United States Presentation by Elzbieta M. Gozdziak, Georgetown U
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* Coexistence of of agency and vulnerability * Interplay of trauma and resiliency * Focus on resiliency and survivorship * Not on trauma and victimhood * “Best interest of the child’ * Western middle-class ideals of childhood
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Central theme of this book: the coexistence of agency and vulnerability, and the interplay of trauma and resiliency in survivors of child trafficking. Evelyn’s story is representative of the resiliency and perseverance of countless survivors of child trafficking; yet it is also unique in terms of her own approach to healing and rebuilding her life post-trafficking. It represents the vulnerabilities and calamities that do not always disappear once victims escape their trafficking ordeal. The focus on resiliency and survivorship, rather than trauma and victimhood, signifies a departure from the prevailing public discourse about trafficked children and youth that deploys gut-wrenching narratives about girls kept as sexual slaves and sold into domestic servitude. Journalists and service providers alike portray them as hapless victims forced into the trafficking situation and hardly ever as actors with a great deal of volition, often willingly participating in the decision to migrate. With an emphasis on agency, this book gives these young people a voice and allows them to ascribe their own meaning to their trafficking experiences. Ultimately, this book provides a fresh take on the social world about matters that concern them the most as they rebuild their lives in America: securing good jobs, being able to send remittances home, learning English, developing friendships, and finding love. In this book I also juxtapose programmatic responses—based on the principle of the ‘best interest of the child’—with the young survivors’ perceptions of their experiences and service needs. I explore the tensions between the adolescents’ narratives of their trafficking and the actions and discourses of foster care and child welfare programs. The former are grounded in culturally diverse conceptualizations of childhoods, and the latter are based on Western, middle-class ideals of childhood, which yield programmatic responses towards trafficked minors. My aim is to contribute to the unfolding discourse on human trafficking that takes a more agentic and harm-reductionist approach found in the works of Laura Agustín, Denise Brennan, Elizabeth Bernstein, Julia O’Connell Davidson, Pardis Mahdavi, Svati Shah, and Carole Vance. I engage theoretical questions about children and childhoods, agency and vulnerability, and trauma and resilience. Practically, I aspire to reconcile the gap between the young survivors’ perceptions of their need to recover from violence and exploitation (based on indigenous coping strategies, resiliency, and notions of agency and survivorship) and the current institutional response (based on notions of vulnerability, victimhood, and dependency on adults). . Laura Maria Agustin, Sex at the margins: Migration, Labor, Markets, and the Rescue Industry (London and New York: Zed Books, 2007). . See Denise Brennan, “Methodological Challenges in Research on Human Trafficking: Tales from the Field." International Migration 43, no. 12 (2005): 35-54; Denise Brennan, Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). . Elizabeth Bernstein, "Militarized Humanitarianism Meets Carceral Feminism: The Politics of Sex, Rights, and Freedom in Contemporary AntiTrafficking Campaigns." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, special issue on Feminists Theorize International Political Economy, eds. Kate Bedford and Shirin Rai, 36, no. 1 (2010): 45-71. . Julia O’Connell Davidson, Julia, Children in the Global Sex Trade (Polity: 2005); Julia O’Connell Davidson, “Moving Children? Child Trafficking, Child Migration and Child Rights” Critical Social Policy 31, no. 3 (2011): 454-477. . Pardis Mahdavi, Gridlock. Labor, Migration, and Human Trafficking in Dubai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). . Svati Shah, Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). . Carol S. Vance, “States of Contradiction: Twelve Ways to Do Nothing about Trafficking while Pretending to” Social Research 78, no. 3 (2011): 933.
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* Studying up * Studying down * Studying sideways * Unsited (or mobile) field * Interview moment * Collaboration with service providers
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* 142 minors (the universe) * 15 programs in 12 states * Arizona, California, Florida, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia
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* Anthropological
research can make a significant contribution to the anti-trafficking field. * Insiders’ narratives can inform the antitrafficking field “where ideology passes as knowledge.” * Contests the image of ‘the forcibly trafficked child’ whose childhood had been lost and needed to be reclaimed * Diversity of experiences and voices
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* Children * Minors * Adolescents * Young people * Boys * Girls * Survivors
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I have made intentional decisions regarding the words and phrases I use in this book. Public discourses use the word ‘children’ to refer to trafficked minors whether they are four or 17 years old. The law also designates individuals under the age of 18 as ‘children’. In this book I deliberately use words like ‘children’, ‘adolescents’, and ‘youth’ or even ‘young people’ to differentiate between age groups, to recognize the principle of the “evolving capacities” of people 18 years of age and younger, and to discuss the different levels of agency they have. I call the young people I write about ‘minors’ when I mean to stress that they are underage and that in the eyes of the law they have not attained the age of majority. I also use ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ to indicate gender. Many publications use the phrase ‘trafficked children’ as if the youngsters they write about were devoid of sex and age.
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When I want to stress the girls’ and boys’ strength and resiliency, I opt for the word ‘survivor.’ It is not a perfect term—some of the girls and boys are still dealing with the aftermath of the suffering they endured—but it is better than the alternative: victim. I do realize the legal necessity to use the term ‘victim’ in some circumstances; after all, to be eligible for services and immigration relief, these young people—or their pro bono attorneys—had to prove that they were victims of the crime of human trafficking. Money set aside by the federal government for victims of crimes pays for the assistance they receive. However, in the context of this research the narratives I elicited speak to the ability of the children and adolescents to survive, sometimes against all odds. Furthermore, therapeutically speaking, assigning them the identity of victims is counter-productive. I explore all of these issues in-depth later in the book. Here, I want to signal that the terminological choices I made throughout were not purely stylistic, but rather quite purposeful.
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Finally, I do use the term ‘child trafficking’ although very few of the girls and boys I studied were small children when they were trafficked. There were two children under three years of age, and the youngest girls were 10 years old, but the majority of the cases were older adolescents. My choice is again deliberate. Regardless of the age at the time they escaped or were rescued from their traffickers, all of the survivors were referred to programs specifically designed to serve victims of child [my emphasis] trafficking, aimed at assisting these young people in reclaiming their ‘lost childhoods.’ Legal provisions and service eligibility determination were also tied to the phenomenon termed child trafficking.
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* Capture * Rescue * Restore
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Traffickers are
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‘restless merchants of modern slavery’, operate ‘alien stash houses’, deal and barter slaves with little retribution across vast international networks evil, powerful, calculating and all-knowing entity
Researchers make this connection based on a variety of disparate facts:
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people of different nationalities are often part of the same group of trafficked victims, trips over a long distance require a well-oiled organization, substantial amounts of money are involved, itineraries are able to change quickly, legal services are available on a moment’s notice, and traffickers are able to speedily react to counter-offensives mounted by law enforcement agencies
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* Family involvement in smuggling the children and
adolescents to the United States was pervasive. * Close family members—parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles—facilitated the journey of the majority of the girls and boys. * Parental involvement was most common among Honduran cases, but close family members also trafficked girls from other Latin American countries, including Guatemala, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Argentina, and Mexico. Families were also involved in trafficking youth from China, Ghana, Morocco, and Cameroon. * Only three girls indicated that their parents played no role in their trafficking.
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Many children did not condemn the actions of their relatives. Instead, they thought the parents, aunts, and uncles were helping them get an education or access to employment that would improve the family financial situation. This perception of relatives as ‘helpers’ was often a conceptual challenge, both for the prosecutors and for social workers. The children’s perception of relatives as facilitators of a better life in America and the resulting conceptualization of their trafficking as ‘work’ sometimes interfered with gathering information by the prosecution team. The children were reluctant to provide law enforcement with details about their journey to the U.S. and identify their relatives as perpetrators of crimes. The notion that the traffickers were ‘helpers’ and the trafficking experience was ‘work’ made the girls’ initial adjustment to rehabilitation services difficult in the eyes of the social workers. Several boys and girls, particularly the older adolescents, regarded themselves as labor migrants and thought that attending school and pursuing high school diplomas deprived them of the ability to make money, which was the main reason they wanted to be in the United States in the first place.
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* Best interests and the rights of the child * Victimhood and vulnerability * Trauma and treatment
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* Focus on rehabilitation and healing * Less attention to the economic well-being * Everyday struggles continue
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* The
fact that these young people are now green card holders or U.S. citizens with access to legal employment does not mean that they are not discriminated against in the labor market. Similarly to other migrants— documented and undocumented—they face language barriers, wage exploitation, and lack of upward mobility. The anti-trafficking field needs to rethink easy charity and focus on labor force participation as a source of both economic stability and healing.
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