Why "Human Trafficking" Sucks as a Term

Do you ever wonder why it's sometimes difficult to get what human trafficking is really about?  It's confusing, in part, because the phrase "human trafficking" kind of sucks at portraying the heart of the issue.  Robin Sax has got a great article over at HuffPo on this, but here's my take.

The problem I have with "human trafficking" is the "trafficking" part of the term.  "Trafficking" has a number of definitions, but most of them have to do with movement or trade of goods.  In fact, before "human trafficking" became a term and a crime, many people understood trafficking in the context of moving drugs or weapons across international boarders.  So in hearing the phrase "human trafficking", they picture people being moved across international boarders. 

But human trafficking is not a crime of movement, it is a crime of exploitation.  According to the U.S. law, for example, human trafficking is defined as "recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining and person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery; sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age."  Note that transportation is one action of many that can make someone a trafficker.  For example, if John and Judy live next door to each other and John recruits Judy into prostitution at his house through force, fraud or coercion, then John has trafficked Judy, even though they've never left their street.  On the flip side, if Stan drives men from Albania to Greece to work, he may be helping them illegally cross a border, but he is not trafficking them.  However, if Stan drives men from Albania to Greece intending to subject them to debt bondage, he is trafficking them.  It's not the transportation which matters, it's the exploitation. 

The reason language is so important is that when we assume movement is the centerpiece of human trafficking, we miss out on helping huge populations of victims who are trafficked within their own countries, towns, and sometimes even within their own families.  Their exploitation is just as real as the exploitation of victims who were moved overseas, but they may not be identified as trafficking victims based on an imperfect understanding of their situations. 

Personally, I prefer the term "modern-day slavery" because I think it better describes the victims' experience and what the perpetrators do.  On this blog, however, I use the two terms interchangeably, in part because many more people are familiar with the term "human trafficking" than the term "modern-day slavery".  Even the phrase "modern-day slavery," though, can be problematic. Most people connect slavery with physical bondage.  Victims of modern-day slavery are sometimes held in physical bondage, but are often held by emotional, financial, and psychological chains.

Despite the imperfections in terminology, the need for better understanding of human trafficking/modern-day slavery remains as strong as ever.  For until we can name it, how can we fight it?