The Ignored Facet of Human Trafficking: Forced Labor

For the first three parts of this article series on human trafficking, see here, here, and here.

 

21 million people.

There are 21 million people trafficked today throughout the world for labor purposes.

Yes, this is just one of many human trafficking statistics — a number so high that it’s almost incomprehensible. Statistics like these are easy to dismiss sometimes as meaningless. In a sense, they are; it’s impossible to get any sort of accurate number on something so concealed.

But take a minute to consider this number anyway. It’s about the same number of people as the respective populations of Cote d’Ivoire, Romania, or Sri Lanka. It’s about the same number of people worldwide as those who have schizophrenia. It’s about 0.03% of the world’s population, which doesn’t sound like much at first until you consider that number in relation to your workplace or school. If you’re like me and go to a high school with well over 1,000 students, you’re getting into the statistical equivalent of 3 to 4 of your peers and classmates in forced labor.

In short, it’s an enormous issue that affects an incomprehensible number of people, and for something that is quite literally slavery, you’d think it would get more recognition in the media. It doesn’t.

I gave a general definition of human trafficking in my first article in this series, but what exactly is forced labor? The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC) explains it as “a form of modern day slavery in which individuals perform labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion… [It] includes situations of debt bondage, forced labor, and involuntary child labor.”

The NHTRC also gives some examples of labor trafficking, including the following:

• domestic servitude, based inside the trafficker’s home
• farmworkers and factory workers given little to no pay and forced to stay in their situation through threats, violence, or blackmail

In a study done by researchers at San Diego University, there were found to be approximately 38,000 Spanish-speaking victims of labor trafficking (according to the definition given by US federal law) in San Diego County, California — representing 31% of the county’s unauthorized Spanish speaking workers. The six largest labor sectors in which victims were trafficked were the following:

• agriculture
• construction
• landscaping
• janitorial/cleaning services
• food processing
• manufacturing

These numbers were shocking to me. I live in Orange County, which is adjacent to San Diego County. Before researching this article, I had expected the numbers to be large, but not this large. With the organizations and professionals I’ve talked to, there’s mainly a focus on sex trafficking — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing since this type of trafficking involves a unique breach of human dignity, and, practically, there may be more to do in the way of prevention and aftercare. However, that doesn’t excuse the fact that the issue of labor trafficking doesn’t get nearly enough attention.

It’s ignored by the United States media for the most part, which tends to focus more on sex trafficking. In January 2015, ABC released a spotlight on sex trafficking called “Hidden America: Chilling New Look at Sex Trafficking in the US.” It’s an excellent video clip with plenty of information that I would definitely recommend watching. But its focus is on sex trafficking, so the entire length of the video fails to mention other components of human trafficking.

Other videos that do call attention to labor trafficking include Radiohead’s “All I Need” video. This video is one of my personal favorites, and I’ll admit that I cried both a) when I found out it existed and b) when I finished watching it. Not only is Radiohead my favorite artist of all time, but the video is also incredibly touching and vivid. Developed for a series for MTV’s EXIT campaign rather than a series of ads, the video depicts the side by side daily routines of a young boy in the West and a young boy in an East Asian sweatshop that produces shoes. At the end of the video, it is revealed that the first boy’s shoes are a product of the second boy’s forced labor.

While videos like these are admirable and very informative — and in fact two of my personal favorites — they perpetuate the idea that labor trafficking is an international issue present only in developing nations and that the only forms of trafficking present in the US or other developed nations are sex-related, which is just incorrect. Radiohead’s focus in the video is not wrong, necessarily. Southeast Asia is the area in which trafficking is most prevalent, with an estimated 11,700,000 victims. It can be easy to forget, though, that there may be more labor trafficked than sex trafficked victims in the US and that there are 1,500,000 victims in the US, Canada, and Europe.

My past two articles in this series have focused primarily on sex trafficking. But upon further research and consideration, I think it’s important to remember that the same topics apply to labor trafficked victims. They, too, suffer a unique breach of dignity and psychological manipulation. They are ignored by the Western media, and they also need aftercare and services just as much as sex trafficked victims do.