The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S.
Department of Justice and prepared the following final report:
Document Title: Data and Research on Human Trafficking:
Bibliography of Research-Based Literature
Author: Elżbieta M. Goździak ; Micah N. Bump
Document No.: 224392
Date Received: October 2008
Award Number: 2007-VT-BX-K002
This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice.
To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally-
funded grant final report available electronically in addition to
traditional paper copies.
Opinions or points of view expressed are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect
the official position or policies of the U.S.
Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking:
Bibliography of Research-Based Literature
ELŻBIETA M. GOŹDZIAK, PH.D.
AND
MICAH N. BUMP, M.A.
Institute for the Study of International Migration,
Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
October 2008
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking:
Bibliography of Research-Based Literature
FINAL REPORT
September 2008
AUTHORS:
ELŻBIETA M. GOŹDZIAK, PH.D.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
AND
MICAH N. BUMP, M.A.
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
Georgetown University
Washington DC
Prepared for
Karen J. Bachar, Ph.D.
Social Science Analyst
Violence and Victimization Research Division
Office of Research and Evaluation
National Institute of Justice
U.S. Department of Justice
NIJ GRANT-2007-VT-BX-K002
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements............................................................................................................. 3
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................... 4
Abstract............................................................................................................................. 12
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 13
Compiling the Bibliography............................................................................................. 15
Sources and Databases Searched........................................................................................... 15
Search Terms Used ................................................................................................................. 17
Results of the Search Process.......................................................................................... 18
Manual Purging and Initial Analysis of Results................................................................... 18
Development of the Taxonomy........................................................................................ 21
Journal Articles................................................................................................................26
Empirical Nature..................................................................................................................... 26
Disciplinary Focus................................................................................................................... 28
Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 29
Sampling .................................................................................................................................. 30
Trafficking Type ..................................................................................................................... 31
Trafficked Populations ........................................................................................................... 33
Reports.............................................................................................................................. 35
Authoring Organization ......................................................................................................... 35
Empirical Nature..................................................................................................................... 36
Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 37
Discipline and Methodology................................................................................................... 37
Discipline and Sampling .........................................................................................................38
Empirical Nature, Peer Review and Trafficking Type........................................................ 38
Discipline and Trafficking Type ............................................................................................ 39
Trafficked Populations ........................................................................................................... 40
Books ................................................................................................................................ 41
Research Gaps.................................................................................................................. 43
Scope......................................................................................................................................... 43
Theory ...................................................................................................................................... 43
1
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 44
Neglected Issues and Topics ................................................................................................... 45
References ........................................................................................................................ 48
2
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It would not have been possible to complete this research project without the assistance
of several individuals.
At the National Institute for Justice (NIJ), we wish to convey our gratitude to our Project
Officer Dr. Karen J. Bachar, Social Science Analyst in Violence and Victimization
Research Division in Office of Research and Evaluation, for her guidance, support, and
patience at every step of this endeavor. This project would have been exceedingly more
difficult without her intellectual input and cheerful disposition. We are also very grateful
to Dr. Cindy J. Smith, Chief of the International Center at NIJ, for her support throughout
this research and invitation to present preliminary findings from this project to the Senior
Policy Operating Group on Human Trafficking.
At Georgetown University, we are thankful to our graduate research assistants Raluca
Georgiana Golumbeanu and Jitka Jerabkova who worked tirelessly in preparing the
EndNote database. We wish to thank Dr. Bill Olsen, the Principal Social Sciences
Bibliographer at the Lauinger Memorial Library, for his assistance in identifying
appropriate bibliographic databases and training our research assistants.
We thank the two anonymous peer-reviewers who provided many helpful comments that
substantially improved this report. We are particularly pleased to hear that “the depth and
extensiveness of the literature review on human trafficking is unprecedented” and that
that “the development of the taxonomy will be of great assistance to future research
efforts.”
While we received assistance from many individuals, the content of this report (including
any errors there may be) is the sole responsibility of the authors of this report. Our
interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are our own and do not necessarily
reflect the official position of the National Institute for Justice (NIJ).
3
http://isim.georgetown.edu
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The subject of human trafficking, or the use of force, fraud or coercion to transport
persons across international borders or within countries to exploit them for labor or sex,
has received renewed attention within the last two decades. In the United States, human
trafficking became a focus of activities in the late 1990s and culminated in the passage of
the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) signed into law on October 16, 2000.
With the enactment of the TVPA, the United States took a lead in combating human
trafficking, prosecuting traffickers, and protecting victims. Subsequent reauthorization
legislations, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Acts of 2003 and 2005,
further strengthened the US anti-trafficking initiatives.
While the majority of experts on human trafficking assert that the greatest number of
victims of trafficking are women and children, there is little systematic and reliable data
on the scale of the phenomenon; limited understanding of the characteristics of victims
(including the ability to differentiate between the special needs of adult and child victims,
girls and boys, women and men), their life experiences, and their trafficking trajectories;
poor understanding of the modus operandi of traffickers and their networks; and lack of
evaluation research on the effectiveness of governmental anti-trafficking policies and the
efficacy of rescue and restore programs, among other gaps in the current state of
knowledge about human trafficking.
Such information is vital to helping decision-makers craft effective policies, service
providers develop culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate and efficacious
programs, and law enforcement enhance their ability to identify and protect victims and
prosecute traffickers. Further, those responsible for addressing trafficking in persons and
related issues must be able to differentiate between the often sensational publications
intended to raise awareness about the issue and the more serious literature, based on
systematic, methodologically rigorous, and peer-reviewed empirical research
(qualitative, quantitative, legal, policy analysis, etc.).
With these assumptions and needs in mind, the Institute for the Study of International
Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University embarked on a project, supported by a grant
from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), to:
● Compile a comprehensive bibliography of English language research-
based literature on human trafficking using EndNote, an
electronic bibliographic management program;
● Develop a taxonomy to categorize the identified references according to
a set of criteria devised in consultation with the National Institute of
Justice; and
● Analyze the compiled bibliography to assess the state of the English
language research literature on trafficking in persons.
4
http://isim.georgetown.edu
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
This report provides a detailed description of the processes involved in identifying
English language research-based literature on human trafficking; the databases searched
and the keywords used to identify pertinent references; discussion of the development of
the taxonomy used to categorize identified research-based journal articles, reports, and
books; and the results of the categorization of the research according to the taxonomy.
The report ends with a discussion of research gaps.
The Bibliography
The research team used EndNote to organize and build a comprehensive bibliography of
English language research-based literature on trafficking in persons, including trafficking
for sexual and labor exploitation as well as trafficking to obtain human organs. The final
product includes 741 citations distributed among reports, journal articles, and books.
Reports, at 429, account for 58 percent of all publications. Journal articles constitute the
second largest category at 218 citations or 29 percent and are followed by books at 94
citations or 13 percent. A free-standing hard copy of the developed bibliography
accompanies this report. The EndNote database will be available for downloading from
the National Institute of Justice for those users who have access to Endnote.
Traffickin
g
Biblio
g
raph
y
- Final Citations b
y
T
y
pe of Publication - N
= 741
Reports, n=429, 58%
Books, n=94, 13%
Journal Articless,
n=218, 29%
5
http://isim.georgetown.edu
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
The Taxonomy
The research team, in consultation with the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), has
devised taxonomy to categorize identified research-based literature on human trafficking;
see table below.
Taxonomy
1. Types of publications
a. Reports b. Journal articles c. Books
2. Type of research and type of review
a. Empirical Research – Peer Reviewe
d
b
. Empirical Research – Not Peer Reviewed
c. Non-Empirical – Peer Reviewed
d. Non-Empirical – Not Peer Reviewed
3. Disciplinary framework
a. Social Sciences b. Law/Criminal Justice
c. Medicine and Epidemiology
4. Methodological issues (Sample)
a. Population b. Random c. Convenience d. Unknown
5. Methodological issues (Research Methods)
a. Qualitative research
i. Case study ii. Ethnography
iii. Evaluation iv. Comparative
b. Quantitative
i. Evaluation ii. Comparative iii. Statistical
6. Type of trafficking
a. Sex trafficking b. Labor trafficking
c. Domestic servitude d. Organ trafficking
7. Trafficked populations
a. Children
i. Girls ii. Boys
b
. Adults
i. Women ii. Men
8. Stage/Phase
a. Recruitment b. Captivity c. Rescue
d. Return/Reintegration
9. Geographical focus*
a. The Americas
b
. Europe
c. Africa
d. Asia
e. Australia and the Pacific
* For the sake of space, we only included regional distinctions here. The final classification includes both
continents and individual countries.
Major Findings
Journal Articles
The analysis of publications on human trafficking yielded 218 journal articles. Of the 218
research-based articles, 39 were based on empirical research, while 179 articles were
based on non-empirical research.
6
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
At 96 articles or 46 percent, the largest classification consisted of articles that were non-
empirical, but published in peer-reviewed journals. This challenged traditional notions of
the type of research published in peer-reviewed journals, which hold that the peer review
process tends to eliminate non-empirical research. At 83 articles or 37 percent, non-
empirical articles published in journals that do not use the peer-review process constitute
the second largest group. At 68 citations or 31 percent, articles published in law journals
constitute the bulk of journal articles in this category.
Articles based on empirical research are far less numerous. Thirty nine journal articles are
based on empirical research; 36 of these articles were published in peer-reviewed
journals, while three were not peer-reviewed. The majority of empirical research focuses
on trafficking for sexual exploitation; only three out of the 39 journal articles deal with
trafficking for labor exploitation and one focuses on domestic servitude. The remaining
35 analyze various aspects of trafficking for sexual exploitation. Of the 39 empirical
journal articles, 30 discuss trafficked women, seven discuss trafficked children, and two
include discussion of trafficked men. With one exception, all empirical articles used
qualitative methodologies. The majority of empirical articles, 27 or 66 percent, used
convenience samples; seven or 17 percent used population samples (mostly clients in a
particular program), and two articles utilized random sampling for their data collections.
All samples were quite small, ranging from case studies of one to couple hundred of
victims.
Fifty three percent (115 articles) of the journal articles fall into the social sciences
category, while 51 percent (110 articles) fall into the law/criminal justice category. Three
of the reviewed articles are classified as medical paper and additional three as unknown.
The analysis of methodological approaches shows the predominance of qualitative
methodologies in all four categories of articles. Quantitative methodologies are
noticeably scarce; only seven articles are based on quantitative methodologies. The
scarcity of quantitative studies stems from both the unavailability of datasets on
trafficking in persons and difficulty in gaining access to the existing databases. The
significant reliance on qualitative methodologies affects trafficking researchers across all
disciplines. The vast majority of journal articles are based on unknown samples.
A great deal of research has focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation, to the
detriment of investigating trafficking for bonded labor and domestic servitude. The
uneven focus on sex trafficking and the sizeable percentage of journal articles that offer
no clear indication of the type of trafficking analyzed appears to be a constant across
disciplines. The vast majority of studies focus on women. Very little is known about
trafficking of men and boys, either for sexual exploitation or bonded labor. Only 14
journal articles include discussion of male victims of trafficking and one discusses the
plight of male children. Thirty two articles discuss child victims, but make no obvious
distinction between male and female children.
7
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Reports
In contrast to journal articles, the vast majority of reports are based on empirical research.
Sixty eight percent (or 292 reports) of all reports (n=429) are based on empirical
research. The remaining 32 percent (or 137 reports) are based on non-empirical research.
The largest number of reports based on empirical research fall into the social science
category. Reports classified as falling within the law/criminal justice domain are more
evenly distributed between those based on empirical and those not based on empirical
research; 46 and 56 reports, respectively. Similarly to journal articles, there are very few
reports which can be classified as medical and/or epidemiological; only four reports.
The analysis of methodological approaches indicates the predominance of qualitative
methodologies in all four categories. The reports follow the same pattern as journal
articles in terms of their methodological approaches and data collection methods with the
preponderance of qualitative methodologies. However, the pattern is different in terms of
quantitative approaches. Reports based, at least in part, on quantitative methodologies
are much more numerous then articles based on quantitative research; 95 versus seven,
respectively.
Convenience sampling is the most prevalent sampling method; the majority of social
science and law/criminal justice reports use convenience samples. Somewhat
surprisingly, four medical/epidemiological reports rely on convenience sampling as well.
Random sampling was used in 23 or 5.3 percent of the analyzed reports. Interestingly,
200 reports (or 46.6 percent) are based on unknown samples.
Similarly to journal articles, the highest concentration of reports in every category
focuses on trafficking for sexual exploitation; 383 reports or 89 percent discuss sex
trafficking, while 238 or 55 percent analyze trafficking for labor exploitation. As the
numbers suggest, some reports deal with both types of trafficking in persons. There are
also 12 reports in the “unknown” category as the authors use a generic descriptor “human
trafficking” to depict the phenomenon under discussion.
The majority of reports discuss women (296 reports or 34 percent) and girls (243 reports
or 28 percent). Far fewer reports focus on men (89 reports or 10 percent); slightly higher
number of reports include discussion of boys (175 reports or 20 percent). Sixty one
reports include discussion of children without differentiating between boys and girls.
Books
The analysis of publications on human trafficking yielded 94 books. Books did not lend
themselves to an easy categorization according to the four-domain taxonomy used to
classify journal articles. We were unable to determine which book was peer-reviewed
and which was not as there are no formal review standards for trade and university
presses, and often no standards at all for popular presses.
8
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
With very few exceptions, all books in this bibliography are based on research or a
systematic inquiry or examination and collection of information about a particular
subject. However, very few books are based solely or in large part on empirical research
and empirical data collected by the author/s. The vast majority of the 94 books are based
on non-empirical research. Similarly to journal articles, these books include policy
analyses; compilations of information from secondary sources on a particular facet of
human trafficking; critiques of trafficking frameworks; or authors’ views on the human
trafficking debate.
Research Gaps
The analysis of the compiled bibliography on trafficking in persons suggests that the
dominant anti-trafficking discourse is not evidence-based but grounded in the
construction of particular mythology of trafficking (Sanghera 2005: 4). Despite the
increased interest in human trafficking, relatively little systematic, empirically grounded,
and based on solid theoretical underpinnings research has been done on this issue.
‘In no area of the social sciences has ideology contaminated knowledge more
pervasively than in writings on the sex industry,’ asserts Ronald Weitzer, a sociologist at
the George Washington University. This claim certainly extends to trafficking for sexual
exploitation, an area ‘where cannons of scientific inquiry are suspended and research
deliberately skewed to serve a particular political and moral agenda (Weitzer 2005: 934;
see also Weitzer 2007; Rubin 1984 and 1993; Goode 1997). Much of the research on
human trafficking for sexual exploitation has been conducted by activists involved in
anti-prostitution campaigns (e.g. Raymond 1998, 2004; Hughes 2004, 2005). These
activists adopt an extreme (i.e., absolutists, doctrinaire, and unscientific) version of
radical feminist theory, which does not distinguish between trafficking for forced
prostitution and voluntary migration (legal or irregular) for sex work. Few of the radical
feminist claims about sex trafficking are amenable to verification or falsification (Weitzer
2005: 936).
Research on human trafficking for labor exploitation is disconnected from theory as well.
There are few attempts to analyze issues of cross-border trafficking for labor exploitation
within existing international migration theories. There is also no attempt to develop a new
theoretical framework in which to comprehensively analyze the phenomenon. Poverty
and the aspiration for a better way of life are by far the most discussed ‘push factors’ and
principal reasons for explaining why women and, in particular, children are at risk for
trafficking (Williams and Masika 2002: 5).
Similarly to theoretical approaches, development of innovative methodologies to study
human trafficking is also in its infancy. Reliance on unrepresentative samples is
widespread. Most studies relay on interviews with ‘key stakeholders.’ Studies that do
include interviews with victims are limited to very small samples. There is a need to
emphasize the limitations of small samples for generalizations and extrapolations, while
9
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
at the same time stressing the value of ethnographic investigations for formulating
hypotheses for further studies, including preparation of survey questionnaires.
Predominant methodologies include qualitative data collection techniques, mainly
interviews. Victims’ and stakeholders’ narratives are important but need to be
augmented by participant observation. Participant observation is needed, but difficult.
The main obstacle to conducting empirical qualitative research on human trafficking is
related to gaining access to trafficked persons. There is a need to facilitate researchers’
access to victims while protecting victims who are willing to participate in research
projects.
In order to acquire the broadest possible picture of the trafficking phenomenon, several
different data collection methods, including quantitative and qualitative methods, need to
be tested. Estimation methods that have been gaining currency in studies of hidden
populations include rapid assessment, capture-recapture methodology and Respondent-
Driven Sampling (RDS). These methods have been successfully used to study the
homeless (Williams and Cheal 2002), street children (Gurgel et al. 2004), and women in
street prostitution (Brunovskis and Tyldum 2004). Researchers in Norway, for example,
were quite successful in employing telephone surveys of sex workers operating through
individual advertisements (Tyldum and Brunovskis 2004).
There is a need for both quantitative and qualitative research that would provide both
macro-and micro-level understanding of the trafficking phenomenon. Rigorous
ethnographic and sociological studies based on in-depth interviews with trafficking
survivors would provide baseline data on trafficking victims and their characteristics. Too
often victims of trafficking remain one-dimensional figures whose stories are condensed
and simplified, which does not bode well for the development of culturally appropriate
services. In order to develop appropriate assistance and treatment programs for
trafficking survivors, increased attention needs to be paid to the expertise and practical
knowledge of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their experience in working
with different groups of trafficking survivors, including women, men, and children.
Given the fact that services to trafficked persons are in their infancy, monitoring and
evaluation studies should be an integral part of every assistance program, public and
private. Well-designed monitoring and evaluation studies, particularly external
evaluations, can identify effective policies and ‘best practice’ approaches as well as
assess the success of different programs. Particularly important are longitudinal studies of
the effects of rehabilitation programs on the ability of survivors to integrate into the new
society or re-integrate into their native one.
There is also a need for effective cooperation and coordination of research within and
among different regions of the world. In addition, there is a need to establish a forum
where research results can be exchanged between different scholars as well as shared
with policy makers and service providers; such a forum can take a form of a specialized
publication or an international task force. This forum should be free of moral and
10
http://isim.georgetown.edu
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
political influences and devoted solely to scholarly pursuits. The need to fill in the gaps in
our knowledge and share research results is urgent. As Liz Kelly observed, ‘Lack of
research-based knowledge may inadvertently deepen, rather than loosen the factors that
make trafficking both so profitable and difficult to address. (Kelly, 2002: 60).
11
http://isim.georgetown.edu
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
ABSTRACT
The subject of human trafficking, or the use of force, fraud or coercion to transport
persons across international borders or within countries to exploit them for labor or sex,
has received renewed attention within the last two decades. While the majority of experts
on human trafficking assert that the greatest number of victims of trafficking are women
and children, there is little systematic and reliable data on the scale of the phenomenon;
limited understanding of the characteristics of victims (including the ability to
differentiate between the special needs of adult and child victims, women, girls, men, and
boys), their life experiences, and their trafficking trajectories; poor understanding of the
modus operandi of traffickers and their networks; and lack of evaluation research on the
effectiveness of governmental anti-trafficking policies and the efficacy of rescue and
restore programs, among other gaps in the current state of knowledge about human
trafficking. Such information is vital to helping decision-makers craft effective policies;
service providers develop culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate and
efficacious programs, and law enforcement enhance their ability to identify and protect
victims and prosecute traffickers.
This report presents findings from a 12-month project undertaken by the Institute for the
Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University to:
• Compile a comprehensive bibliography of English language research-based
literature on human trafficking using EndNote, an electronic bibliographic
management program;
• Develop a taxonomy to categorize the identified references according to a set of
criteria devised in consultation with the National Institute of Justice; and
• Analyze the compiled bibliography to assess the state of the English language
research literature on trafficking in persons.
The report provides a detailed description of the processes involved in identifying
English language research-based literature on human trafficking; the database searched
and the keywords used to identify pertinent references; discussion of the development of
the taxonomy used to categorize identified research-based journal articles, reports, and
books; and the results of the categorization of the research according to the taxonomy.
The report ends with a discussion of research gaps.
12
http://isim.georgetown.edu
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
INTRODUCTION
The subject of human trafficking, or the use of force, fraud or coercion to transport
persons across international borders or within countries to exploit them for labor or sex,
has received renewed attention within the last two decades. Trafficking for forced labor
or sexual exploitation is believed to be one of the fastest growing areas of criminal
activity. A study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that the
criminal profits of human trafficking could exceed $31 billion dollars, which would make
it the second largest source of illegal income worldwide after drug trafficking (Belser
2005). Combating trafficking has become an increasingly important priority for many
governments around the world (Laczko 2005).
In the United States, human trafficking became a focus of activities in the late 1990s and
culminated in the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) signed into
law on October 16, 2000. With the enactment of the TVPA, the United States took a lead
in combating human trafficking, prosecuting traffickers, and protecting victims.
Subsequent reauthorization legislations, the Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Acts of 2003 and 2005, further strengthened the US anti-trafficking
initiatives. However, despite tremendous efforts by the federal as well as local
governments, non-governmental organizations, and the research community working
together to fight human trafficking, solutions remain elusive.
While the majority of experts on human trafficking assert that the greatest number of
victims of trafficking are women and children, there is little systematic and reliable data
on the scale of the phenomenon; limited understanding of the characteristics of victims
(including the ability to differentiate between the special needs of adult and child victims,
girls and boys, women and men), their life experiences, and their trafficking trajectories;
poor understanding of the modus operandi of traffickers and their networks; and lack of
evaluation research on the effectiveness of governmental anti-trafficking policies and the
efficacy of rescue and restore programs, among other gaps in the current state of
knowledge about human trafficking. Such information is vital to helping decision-
makers craft effective policies, service providers develop culturally sensitive and
linguistically appropriate and efficacious programs, and law enforcement enhance their
ability to identify and protect victims and prosecute traffickers.
Further, those responsible for addressing trafficking in persons and related issues must be
able to differentiate between the often sensational publications
intended to raise
awareness about the issue and the more serious literature, based on systematic,
methodologically rigorous, and peer-reviewed empirical research (qualitative,
quantitative, legal, policy analysis, etc.), intended to help explain the root causes of
human trafficking; provide estimates of the number of trafficked victims; map and
analyze trafficking trends and routes; examine the different types of exploitation;
understand the resiliency and the suffering of trafficked victims; and assess the
appropriateness of treatment modalities and psycho-social programs aimed at
13
http://isim.georgetown.edu
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
rehabilitating victims; as well as other dimensions of this extremely complex
phenomenon.
With these assumptions and needs in mind, the Institute for the Study of International
Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University embarked on a project, supported by a grant
from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), to:
● Compile a comprehensive bibliography of English language research-based
literature on human trafficking using EndNote, an electronic bibliographic
management program;
● Develop a taxonomy to categorized the identified references according to
a set of criteria devised in consultation with the National Institute of
Justice; and
● Analyze the compiled bibliography to assess the state of the English
language research literature on trafficking in persons.
The subsequent sections of the report provide a detailed description of the processes
involved in identifying English language research-based literature on human trafficking;
the database searched and the keywords used to identify pertinent references; discussion
of the development of the taxonomy used to categorize identified research-based journal
articles, reports, and books; and the results of the categorization of the research-based
literature according to the taxonomy. The report ends with a discussion of existing
research gaps.
14
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
COMPILING THE BIBLIOGRAPHY
As indicated in the introduction, the first task of this project was to compile a
comprehensive bibliography of English language research-based literature on trafficking
in persons, including trafficking for sexual and labor exploitation as well as trafficking to
obtain human organs. Media reports, opinion pieces, essays, and journal articles not
based on research were excluded from the final bibliography. This section of the report
discusses the sources and databases as well as the process used to identify pertinent
references.
The research team used EndNote to organize and build the bibliography. EndNote is a
software package that facilitates bibliographic management by allowing users to search
and import references from online bibliographic databases, organize references by
grouping, tagging, and sorting as well as creating custom fields. Users can easily export
custom-made reference lists to quickly create specialized bibliographies or conduct
further analysis in statistical programs. By organizing the research and the analysis in
EndNote, the research team has created a dynamic document that will benefit researchers,
students, and policymakers. All future users of the document will be able to use the file as
a point of departure for their own research and analysis and can easily add new references
or modify exiting entries by categorizing them according to their own taxonomies, built
using those created by the research team, or by devising totally new categorizations.
EndNote allows users to create up to seven custom fields to categorize documents.
Furthermore, users have the option to re-title unused fields according to their individual
research needs. EndNote also allows users to create bibliographies in different styles
(e.g.; APA, American Anthropologist, annotated, etc.) or by types of work (e.g., journal
articles, books, reports, etc.).
The bibliography on human trafficking developed in the course of this project includes
journal articles, books, and dissertations from the catalogues and online databases of
several major US universities. It also contains reports and conference papers issued by
international organizations, governmental institutions, think-tanks, universities, and
international and national non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The list below
indicates where we searched to compile the bibliography. A free-standing hard copy of
the developed bibliography accompanies this report. The EndNote database will be
available for downloading from the National Institute of Justice.
Sources and Databases Searched
Journal Articles
In order to identify journal articles, the research team searched the following databases:
Social Science Databases
- EBSCO Academic Search Premiere
- JSTOR
15
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
- PAIS
- ProQuest Social Science
- Social Science Index
- Sociological Abstracts
Medical Databases
- Medline
- PubMed
Government/Law/Politics Databases
- Government and Politics
- HeinOnline
- International Political Science Abstracts
- Legal Trac
- LexisNexis
- LexisNexis Academic
- PolicyFile
- Westlaw
- Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Reports and Papers
In order to identify reports, white papers, and other publications not appearing in
academic journals, the research team searched the following sources:
International organizations
- ILO
- IOM
- UNICEF Innocenti Research Center
- UNICRI
- UNIFEM
- UNESCO
- UNODC
- www.ungift.org
NGOs/think-tanks/ programs
- Alliances against Human Trafficking
- Amnesty International
- Anti-Slavery International
- childtrafficking.com
- Human Rights Watch
- The National Criminal Justice Reference Service
- Polaris Project
- Protection Project (The Johns Hopkins University)
-
RAND Corporation
16
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
- Save the Children
- Terre des hommes
- Vital Voices Global
- Women’s Studies Program (University of Rhode Island )
Books and Dissertations
Library Catalogues
- American University
- Columbia University
- Georgetown University
- George Washington University
- Harvard University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Princeton University
- Stanford University
- University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
- Yale University
Online Bookstores
- Amazon.com
- Powells Bookstore
- Alibris
Bibliographies
- The research team also cross-checked the compiled bibliography against the
bibliography published in the 2005 International Migration Special Issue on Data
and Research on Human Trafficking (Laczko and Goździak 2005).
- Selected bibliographies of certain books and journal articles were also consulted
to cross-check and supplement the results of the electronic databases searches.
Search Terms Used
When searching electronic databases the research team used variations of the truncation
search mechanism for the term “traffic*” in order to capture all relevant literature on
human trafficking. Therefore, we applied this mechanism using the following terms:
“human traffic*,” “child traffic*,” “labor traffic*,” “sex traffic*,” and “youth traffic*.”
We also used the following keywords: “human trafficking,” “labor trafficking,” “sex
trafficking,” “youth trafficking,” as well as all related combinations resulting from our
primary search such as “human trafficking and law enforcement,” “human trafficking and
prostitution,” “human trafficking and child abuse and neglect,” or “human trafficking and
crime,” to illustrate just a few possible combinations.
17
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Results of the Search Process
The search process described above produced 6,374 raw citations that were imported into
EndNote. The list of raw citations was immediately reduced to 2,388 citations through
the use of EndNote’s “delete duplicates” filter. Figure 1 presents the breakdown, by type
of publication of the 2,388 citations. Figure 1 shows that reports constitute the largest
group of publications and account for 52 percent of all publications found through the
preliminary search process. Journal articles are the second largest category and account
for 31 percent of all initially identified publications, while books account for 17 percent.
Figure 1: Trafficking Bibliography - Initial Citations by Type of
Publication - N= 2388
Books, 403, 17%
Reports, n=1249,
52%
Journal Article,
n=736, 31%
Manual Purging and Initial Analysis of Results
The manual purging and initial analysis of the preliminary results consisted of three
steps:
1. Purging duplicates not caught by EndNote;
2. Purging citations not related to trafficking; and
3. Separating non-research based publications from research-based literature.
This phase of the research has been carried out for 1,249 reports, 736 journal articles, and
403 books. Reports and journals were the main focus of our analysis because they are the
most numerous of the three categories.
18
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Purging duplicates not filtered by Endnote
We compiled most of the initial 2,388 citations by importing search results from the
sources listed above into EndNote. Many of these initial entries were duplicates. While
EndNotes’ duplicate filter eliminated the majority of redundant references, it only
captured duplicates with perfectly matched information in all fields. For instance, if one
database used a first or middle initial of a particular author while a different database
used the full first name for the same author or if different keywords were used by
different databases for the same reference, the citation will not be considered a duplicate
by Endnote. Additionally, some databases listed reports by the organization which
commissioned them while other databases listed reports by the authors who actually
wrote them; thus, some reports were listed twice. Given these differences in listing
references, all entries had to be manually double checked for further duplicates not
caught by the EndNote filter. This was a very time-consuming but necessary effort.
Purging citations not related to trafficking
In addition to manually filtering duplicates, the research team removed citations not
related to human trafficking. Many citations tangentially related to the topic of human
trafficking--such as child abuse, violence against women, commercial sexual exploitation
of children, child labor, child fostering, and HIV/AIDS--were automatically included in
the search results imported into Endnote. This automatic inclusion might have resulted
from the fact that the phrase ‘human trafficking’ was used in the abstract and/or as a
keyword. These references were eliminated from the preliminary search results unless the
research and the resulting publication indicated, for example, a correlation or a causal
relationship between child labor and child trafficking or discussed child fostering as a
risk factor for child trafficking. If there was no substantial discussion of any dimension of
human trafficking, the reference was removed.
Separating documents not based on research
The preliminary results of the literature search indicated that there is a plethora of
published works dealing with the topic of human trafficking, but many of these
publications are not research-based. Therefore, the research team had to separate out
references based on research from non-research based writings such as opinion pieces,
essays, manuals and guides for identifying trafficking victims, accounts of anti-
trafficking activities undertaken by various entities, and descriptions of task forces, to
name a few examples.
Figure 2 demonstrates the results of the first three stages of the manual purging process
for reports and journal articles. Seventy percent of the 736 citations categorized as
“journal articles” in the preliminary search results were eliminated because they were
either duplicates, not based on research, or not related to human trafficking. More than 63
percent of “reports” were purged for the same reason.
19
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Figure 2: Trafficking Bibliography – Journal Articles and Reports Eliminated because of
Redundancy, Lack of Relevance to Trafficking, and Not Being Research Based
Journal Articles
Reports
Pu rg ed
Purged
Journal
Articles, 518,
Rep orts , 746,
63.4%
70.4%
Remain ing
Re ma ining
Reports , 429,
36.6%
Journal
Articles, 218,
29.6%
Figure 3 depicts the final distribution of the literature after completing the manual
purging process. In total, there are 741 citations distributed among reports, journal
articles, and books. Reports, at 429, accounted for 58 percent of all publications. Journal
articles constitute the second largest category at 218 citations or 29 percent and are
followed by books at 94 citations or 13 percent.
Figure 3: Trafficking Bibliography - Final Citations by Type of
Publication - N = 741
Reports, n=429, 58%
Books, n=94, 13%
Journal Articless,
n=218, 29%
20
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
DEVELOPMENT OF THE TAXONOMY
Agencies, disciplines, and professions concerned with human trafficking are very diverse
and so is the growing number of publications on this issue. As a result both a novice
scholar of human trafficking and an expert on the topic have increasingly more difficulty
embracing the scope of this field. Therefore, there is a need for a schema or a
classification of existing literature that would provide decision-makers, service providers,
and scholars with an access to research results on trafficking in persons most appropriate
for their goals and objectives: be it legislative pursuits aimed to introduce a new policy
or amend an existing one; practical pursuits aimed at evaluating program outcomes; or
research endeavors aimed at identifying research gaps and designing new studies.
“Over the last two centuries systematics or taxonomies have proven to be of great value
[…] to disciplines as diverse as chemistry via Dimitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of
chemical elements circa 1889, genetics as a consequence of Gregor Mendel’s 19
th
century
study of pea, which in turn led to the human genome project” (Reisman, forthcoming).
Anthropologists have observed that taxonomies are generally embedded in local cultural
and social systems, and serve various social functions.
In this project, the research team, in consultation with representatives of the National
Institute of Justice (NIJ), has devised a taxonomy sufficiently robust to categorize
identified research-based literature on human trafficking and flexible enough to expand
existing categories to accommodate new research-based publications. The taxonomy is
also simple enough to be user-friendly.
This taxonomy is not meant to be a ranking system of research-based publications in the
English language; rather it is conceived as a mechanism that allows for tailored
assessment of available research by an individual user. For example, policy-makers
trying to decide what kind of anti-trafficking activities to fund might give the highest
marks to publications based on evaluation research. Furthermore, those tasked with
assessing cost-effectiveness of projects they fund might value quantitative evaluations
over qualitative research. Since most law journals are not peer-reviewed, legal scholars
might never use the ‘peer-reviewed’ category to assess the quality of legal research.
Instead, they might want to cross-reference legal studies with the titles of the most
prestigious law journals to evaluate existing legal scholarship on human trafficking.
Conversely, an academe-based anthropologist might cross-reference empirical, peer-
reviewed publications with a particular type of qualitative methodology—ethnography, or
case study—to arrive at publications most valuable to their work.
The table below presents the taxonomy used to categorize English language publications
included in the final bibliography of research-based literature on human trafficking.
21
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Taxonomy
1. Types of publications
a. Reports b. Journal articles c. Books
2. Type of research and type of review
a. Empirical Research – Peer Reviewe
d
b
. Empirical Research – Not Peer Reviewed
c. Non-Empirical – Peer Reviewed
d. Non-Empirical – Not Peer Reviewed
3. Disciplinary framework
a. Social Sciences b. Law/Criminal Justice
c. Medicine and Epidemiology
4. Methodological issues (Sample)
a. Population b. Random c. Convenience d. Unknown
5. Methodological issues (Research Methods)
a. Qualitative research
i. Case study ii. Ethnography
iii. Evaluation iv. Comparative
b. Quantitative
i. Evaluation ii. Comparative iii. Statistical
6. Type of trafficking
a. Sex trafficking b. Labor trafficking
c. Domestic servitude d. Organ trafficking
7. Trafficked populations
a. Children
i. Girls ii. Boys
b
. Adults
i. Women ii. Men
8. Stage/Phase
a. Recruitment b. Captivity c. Rescue
d. Return/Reintegration
9. Geographical focus*
a. The Americas
b
. Europe
c. Africa
d. Asia
e. Australia and the Pacific
* For the sake of space, we only included regional distinctions here. The final classification includes both
continents and individual countries.
As can be seen from the table above, the first task the research team had undertaken in
classifying the identified publications was to sort them by type of publication; i.e. report,
journal article or book. Secondly, we classified each publication according to a type of
research—empirical or non-empirical—and according to whether the publication was
peer-reviewed or not.
We read each publication to ascertain the methodology used and assess whether the
publication was based on empirical research. We emphasized empiricism because the
existing knowledge base on human trafficking is limited and largely not based on
empirical research. A 2005 analysis of trafficking research indicated that the field had not
moved beyond estimating the scale of the problem; mapping routes and relationships
between countries of origin, transit, and destinations; and reviewing legal frameworks
and policy responses (Goździak and Collett 2005). The situation is not much different in
2008; there is still no reliable data on the number of trafficking cases and the
22
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
characteristics of the victims and perpetrators. The methodologies used to produce
estimates of the scope of trafficking, especially in North America, are not very
transparent; therefore it is hard to evaluate the validity and reliability of the data.
One element contributing to this limited knowledge is the fact that development of
research methods on human trafficking remains in its infancy. Many studies rely on
overviews, commentaries, and anecdotal information. By focusing on the empirical
nature of the articles we aimed to examine the extent to which the field has moved
beyond stating that there is a problem to a more systematic and rigorous collection of
empirical data and analysis of a wide range of human trafficking issues. Empirical
research encompasses studies that base their findings on direct or indirect observations to
analyze a problem or test a hypothesis and reach a conclusion. We have conducted our
analysis of the empirical nature of the studies in this bibliography with an understanding
of the complexity of scientific research and the fact that the various disciplines involved
in trafficking research operate in very different ways.
In addition to focusing on the empirical nature of the publications, we investigated
whether or not a particular publication was peer-reviewed. Peer review is the process of
subjecting a work to the critical eye of experts in the same field and has the important
function of promoting high standards and preventing poorly researched or unwarranted
claims. For this reason, studies that are not subject to peer review are often considered to
lack scientific rigor and to be of lesser quality. Scholars and editors deem peer review
necessary because it allows for mistakes and oversights to be caught and provides an
opportunity to improve the analysis or presentation of research results. While some have
critiqued the peer review system as “biased, incomplete, and unaccountable,” it is one of
the standard benchmarks of academic rigor and quality, and thus we have taken it into
account (Horton 2000). It is important to note that many university-based law journals in
the United States do not rely on the peer review process. In addition, legal scholarship is
mostly non-empirical. Social science research, on the other hand, tends to be both
empirical and non-empirical, but published in peer-reviewed publications. Medical
research is almost exclusively empirical and published in peer-reviewed journals.
The peer-review determination for journal articles was made using two approaches:
1. Visiting the journal’s website, which usually describes the peer review
process if it exists; and/or
2. Cross-checking the journal’s title with Ulrich's International Periodicals
Directory, which is a source of bibliographic and publisher information,
including peer-review information, on more than 300,000 periodicals of
all types.
We did not determine reports or books to be peer reviewed unless the authors specifically
stated that the report had been subject to such scrutiny and explained the process.
23
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Taking into account our focus on the empirical nature of the research and peer review, we
categorize the reports and journal articles under one of the following categories:
• Empirical Research and Peer Reviewed
• Empirical Research and Not Peer Reviewed
• Non-Empirical and Peer Reviewed
• Non-Empirical and Not Peer Reviewed
In order to better understand the academic disciplines engaged in trafficking research as
well as the methodologies they employ, we analyzed each reference for its disciplinary
focus and methodological approach. The three broad categories used for discipline were:
• Social Sciences
• Law/Criminal Justice
• Medicine/Epidemiology
While it is possible to further subcategorize each of these disciplines, many articles and
reports did not mention the exact disciplinary approach, thus necessitating the usage of
broader categories. Where evident, we noted the specific discipline of the study. In some
instances, the articles were inter-disciplinary and thus required dual categorization. The
process of dual categorization was carried out for all the different elements of the
taxonomy.
In terms of the methodologies employed in trafficking research, we assessed the type of
sample used by the investigators and the nature of the methodology. We divided the
sample types into three categories: population, random, and convenience. Whether or not
the research was qualitative or quantitative was also determined. If the authors indicated
the exact nature of the qualitative or quantitative research we were able to further
categorize and indicate whether a particular article or report were based on case studies;
stakeholder and/or victim interviews; evaluation; comparative research; rapid assessment;
survey; or statistical analysis.
We also analyzed each article according to several elements of human trafficking, which
included: the type of trafficking; the trafficked population; and the stage of the trafficking
situation. One of the early criticisms of the worldwide political response to trafficking has
been that it is too focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation to the detriment of
trafficking for labor exploitation, domestic servitude, and organ trafficking. In order to
see how the research reflected these issues, we categorized each article based on the type
of trafficking studied. This category included sex, labor, domestic servitude, and organ
trafficking. We made note of studies that addressed more than one category.
Observers have also voiced concern about lack of clarity with regard to the type of
populations studied in trafficking research. This is particularly true in regard to the
distinction between “women” and “girls.” Often times a research abstract and title will
24
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
indicate that the study focuses on women and girls, but then fails to adequately
distinguish the two groups. Lack of research on trafficked men and boys is another area
of concern. Thus, the categorization of the trafficked population according to the age and
sex of the population studied is an important part of the taxonomy.
The fact that trafficking is an ongoing process with several different stages underscores
the need for researchers to define what phase or aspect of trafficking they investigate.
This could include recruitment mechanisms; treatment while in captivity; escape or
rescue from the hands of the traffickers; and return and reintegration of the survivor into
society. Given these different elements of the trafficking process, we categorized the
research according to which aspect (or aspects) the researchers focused on.
Lastly, we categorized the research according to the geographical focus of the study. This
analysis included a regional and country level categorization. As with the other elements
of the taxonomy, many studies included more than one categorization.
25
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
JOURNAL ARTICLES
The analysis of publications on human trafficking yielded 218 journal articles. As
indicated above, only research-based articles in English were included. Media articles,
essays, and opinion pieces were excluded. Of the 218 research-based articles, 39 were
based on empirical research, while 179 articles were based on non-empirical research.
Figure 4 presents the results of the classification of the 218 journal articles included in
this bibliography.
Figure 4: Categorization of Journal Articles, n = 218
N
on-Empirical/Not
Peer Reviewed,
n=83, 37%
N
on-Empirical/Peer
Reviewed, n=96,
46%
Empirical
Research/Peer
Reviewed, n=36,
16%
Empirical
Research/Not Peer
Reviewed , n=3, 1%
Empirical Nature
Non-empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals
At 96 articles or 46 percent, the largest classification consisted of articles that were non-
empirical, but published in peer-reviewed journals. This challenged traditional notions of
the type of research published in peer-reviewed journals, which hold that the peer review
process tends to eliminate non-empirical research. It seems that peer-reviewed journals
have published non-empirical research on trafficking in persons because of the dynamic
created by the sudden and intense political and academic interest in human trafficking
following the debate and passage of the Palermo Protocol and the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act of 2000.
26
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Additionally, the difficulty of conducting empirical research on human trafficking,
including impeded access to trafficked victims, law enforcement representatives, and
prosecutors, as well as the length of time it takes to conduct empirical research have also
contributed to the predominance of non-empirical research on trafficking in persons.
Editors realized that their readership desired more information on trafficking, but little
empirical research was being done, thus, non-empirical studies, mostly in the form of
literature and data reviews (e.g.; Adepoju 2005; Andrees 2005; Goździak 2005; Schauer
2006) or description and analysis of anti-trafficking policies (e.g.; Obuah 2006; Raymond
2004), have been published. Our analysis demonstrates that the peer-review element,
which is used as a measure of quality in academia, is not a good indicator of whether
trafficking research is empirical in nature.
Non-empirical articles published in non-peer-reviewed journals
At 83 articles or 37 percent, non-empirical articles published in journals that do not use
the peer-review process constitute the second largest group. At 68 citations or 31 percent,
articles published in law journals constitute the bulk of journal articles in this category.
In the United States, legal research is leading the way among the still scarce academic
research on human trafficking. Legal scholarship encompasses a wide range of journal
articles, including articles published before the adoption of the UN Protocol on
Trafficking or shortly after the passage of the TVPA of 2000. Most of these articles focus
on the legal analysis of the scope and practical efficacy of the proposed legal protections
applicable to victims of trafficking (e.g.; Chuang 1998) or on the analysis of the
provisions of the TVPA of 2000 (e.g.; Ryf 2002; Chapkis 2003).
Empirical journal articles
Articles based on empirical research are far less numerous. We identified 39 journal
articles based on empirical research; 36 of these articles were published in peer-reviewed
journals, while three were not peer-reviewed (Allred 2006; Petros 2005; Spear 2004).
Empirical research is most prevalent in social sciences (e.g.; Aghatise 2004; Bastia 2005;
Coonan 2005; Erokhina 2007; Goździak 2007; Silverman 2007). The majority of
empirical research focuses on trafficking for sexual exploitation; only three out of the 39
journal articles deal with trafficking for labor exploitation (Goździak 2007; Lange 2007;
Shigekane 2007) and one focuses on domestic servitude (Constable 1996). The
remaining 35 analyze various aspects of trafficking for sexual exploitation. Of the 39
empirical journal articles, 30 discuss trafficked women, seven discuss trafficked children,
and one includes a discussion of trafficked men (Augustin 2005; Wilson 2006).
1
With
one exception (Aghatise 2004), all empirical articles used qualitative methodologies. The
majority of empirical articles, 27 or 66 percent, used convenience samples; seven or 17
percent used population samples (mostly clients in a particular program), and two articles
utilized random sampling (Erokhina 2007; Okonoufa 2004) for their data collections. All
samples were quite small, ranging from case studies of one to couple hundred of victims.
1
Some are double counted because they include discussion of more than one population.
27
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Disciplinary Focus
As shown in Table 1, 115 articles or 53 percent of the journal articles fall into the social
sciences category, while 110 or 51 percent fall into the law/criminal justice category.
Three of the reviewed articles are classified as medical paper and additional three as
unknown.
The distribution shown in Table 1 indicates that the non-empirical nature of trafficking
research is prevalent across academic disciplines.
Table 1: Cate
g
orization of Journal Articles b
y
Em
p
irical Nature/Peer Review and
Disci
p
line
Discipline
Criminal Justice/Law Medicine
Social
Sciences
Unknown
Total
Empirical Research -
Not Peer Reviewed
1 0 2 0
3
Empirical Research - Peer
Reviewed
7 7 30 0
44
Not Empirical Research -
Not Peer Reviewed
74 0 11 2
87
Not Empirical Research -
Peer Reviewed
28 1 72 1
102
Total 110 8 115 3 236
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of journal articles due to multiple
categorizations (i.e. a single journal article could be categorized under both “Criminal Justice/Law”
and “Social Sciences”).
The largest concentration of social science articles is based on non-empirical research
and is published in peer review journals; 72 or 65 percent of the social science journal
articles are based on non-empirical research and are published in peer-reviewed journals.
An additional 11 articles based on non-empirical research are published in journals that
have not undergone a peer-review process. Thirty two social science journal articles are
based on empirical research; with two exceptions, all are published in peer-reviewed
journals.
The category law/criminal justice includes a total of 110 journal articles. The majority
of these articles are not based on empirical research; a total of 102 articles are non-
empirically based. Of these 102 articles 74 are published in journals—mainly law
journals—which do not use a peer review process, while 28 are published in peer-
reviewed journals. Needless to say, the preponderance of law/criminal justice articles
analyzes the various legal provisions related to prevention of human trafficking,
protection of victims, and prosecution of perpetrators.
While eight journal articles deal with medical issues and human trafficking, only three
are solely devoted to discussion of medical problems faced by trafficked victims. Seven
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
are published in peer-reviewed journals and six are based on empirical research. All deal
with issues of trafficking for sexual exploitation. All three of the journal articles solely
devoted to medical issues focus on HIV/AIDS and all are authored by the same
researcher (Silverman 2006, 2007).
Methodology
Table 2 indicates the type of methodology employed by the articles in each of the four
classifications based on the empirical nature of the research and peer review.
2
The
analysis of methodological approaches applied by authors of journal articles shows the
predominance of qualitative methodologies in all four categories of articles. Quantitative
methodologies are noticeably scarce; only 7 articles are based on quantitative
methodologies (e.g.; Curtol 2004; Hennink 2004). The scarcity of quantitative studies
stems from both the unavailability of datasets on trafficking in persons or difficulty in
gaining access to the existing databases. It is not uncommon for authors of research
articles on trafficking in persons to address the difficulty of accessing quality data on the
topic. Some analysts suggest that quantitative research is impossible without access to the
existing—very few—databases on the topic. For instance, the IOM database on
trafficking described in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report is not
yet available to outside researchers (GAO 2007). The US Federal Government is also not
sharing much statistical information on trafficked victims in federal care. Lack of datasets
on the number and characteristics of trafficked victims, the number of traffickers, and the
number of prosecutions has forced researchers to rely on qualitative methodologies.
Table 2: Categorization of Journal Articles by Empirical Nature/Peer Review and
Methodology
Methodology
Legal Review Qualitative Quantitative
Total
Empirical Research -
Not Peer Reviewed
1 2 0
3
Empirical Research - Peer
Reviewed
0 34 6
40
Not Empirical Research -
Not Peer Reviewed
57 75 0
132
Not Empirical Research -
Peer Reviewed
17 88 1
106
Total 75 199 7 281
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of journal articles due to multiple
categorizations (i.e. a single journal article could be categorized under both “Qualitative” and
“Quantitative”).
2
Please note that some journal articles employ more than one methodology hence some of the journal
articles are counted more than once.
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The significant reliance on qualitative methodologies affects researchers across all
disciplines. Table 3 indicates that the majority of journal articles use qualitative
methodologies no matter what the discipline. Ninety-nine of the criminal justice/law
articles and 107 social science articles relied on qualitative methodologies. Even medical
research is based on qualitative methodologies. Only seven journal articles rely on
quantitative methodologies.
Table 3: Categorization of Journal Articles by Discipline and Methodology
Methodology
Discipline
Legal Research Qualitative Quantitative
Total
Social Sciences
9 107 4
120
Law/Criminal Justice
70 99 2
171
Medicine and Epidemiology
0 8 1
9
Total 79 214 7
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of journal articles due to multiple
300
categorizations (i.e. a single journal article could be categorized under both “Qualitative” and
“Quantitative”).
Sampling
The vast majority of journal articles are based on unknown samples (see Table 4). While
the majority of the law/criminal justice articles focus on legislative and/or policy analysis
and for obvious reasons the authors did not need to sample victims, many of these articles
claim that they are based on interviews with policy makers and law enforcement
representatives but fail to indicate both the number of interviewed individuals and the
way they selected study participants. Eighty five of the social science articles are based
on unknown samples. Only two social science articles are based on random sampling
and three on populations; the majority (25 articles) are based on convenience samples.
The difficulty of conducting empirical research on different aspects of human trafficking
goes beyond lack of access to quality datasets; it is also related to the overall lack of
access to key informants, including victims and survivors of human trafficking as well as
representatives of law enforcement, policy-makers, health and mental health, and social
service providers engaged in anti-trafficking activities and service provision to victims.
Several authors discuss methodological challenges involved in studying the unobserved
(Tyldum and Brunovskis 2005); gaining access to victims and program staff serving
survivors of trafficking for labor or sexual exploitation (Brennan 2005; Goździak and
Collet 2005). In order to conduct research on trafficking to the United States, particularly
research that highlights the perspectives of the trafficked persons themselves, researchers
have to work closely with service providers. Trafficked victims are considered an
extremely vulnerable population and service providers are charged with protecting them
from further exploitation as well as from the possible adverse effects of recounting their
trafficking experiences in the course of a research project. Many social service providers
do not see research as a way to empower trafficking survivors by providing an
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
opportunity to bring about justice and to affect policy-making and program design from
the ground-up. Researchers often lament how difficult it is to convince practitioners—
service providers, attorneys, law enforcement—about the value of research and gain their
permission to recruit survivors and their care takers to participate in empirical studies
(Brennan 2005).
Gaining access to advocates and service providers seems more manageable than gaining
access to victims and survivors. Numerous studies rely in whole or in part on interviews
with service providers and are often based on convenience samples (Gozdziak and Collett
2005). Our analysis of the journal articles indicates, however, that even these studies are
in the minority. As indicated in Table 4, the majority of articles across disciplines do not
indicate the sampling methodology used in their trafficking research.
Table 4: Categorization of Journal Articles by Discipline and Sample Type
Criminal
Justice/Law
Medicine
Convenience
4
3
Sampling Type
Random Population
1 1
1 3
Unknown/NA
104
1
Total
110
8
Social Sciences 25 2 3 85
115
Total 32 4 7 190 233
Discipline
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of journal articles due to multiple
categorizations (i.e. a single journal article could be categorized under both “Criminal Justice/Law”
and “Social Sciences”).
Trafficking Type
A great deal of research has focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation, to the
detriment of investigating trafficking for bonded labor and domestic servitude. The
emphasis on trafficking for sexual exploitation can be attributed to a variety of reasons.
The increased influence of the American religious right on policy decisions in a variety of
arenas is one such reason. At the same time, groups with roots in the American feminist
movement, such as CATW and GAATW, have been at the forefront of the push to raise
awareness about trafficking in human beings, and have thus promoted research on
women in the sex industry. Despite a number of high profile cases of domestic servitude
and other labor exploitation, there is less interest in trafficking for bonded labor than in
trafficking for sexual exploitation. In recent years, the anti-trafficking discourse has
emphasized the need to investigate the demand side of human trafficking. However,
most of emphasis is on the demand for sex to the detriment of discussion and analysis of
demand for cheap labor that might affect the scope of trafficking in persons. The limited
focus on trafficking for labor can be attributed to the prominence of the business
community in the United States.
31
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Table 5 indicates the type of trafficking (labor, sex, or other) discussed in the articles in
each of the four classifications based on the empirical nature of the research and peer
review. This table numerically depicts two of the major criticisms of the body of
trafficking research developed thus far. First, the highest concentration of articles in
almost every category focus exclusively on sex trafficking. Some analysts argue that the
overwhelming focus on sex trafficking by policymakers (and the researchers funded by
government grants) is a result of “conservative religious approaches to dealing with
gender and sexuality” that have resulted in a “raid-and-rehabilitation method of curbing
sex trafficking” that has impaired our understanding of the more comprehensive nature of
trafficking (Soderlund 2005). The second largest concentration of articles according to
the type of trafficking focused upon in the article appears in the “labor trafficking”
category. There are also 16 articles in the “unknown” category. The lack of a clear
designation by authors as to what type of trafficking situations they study is a
shortcoming in many articles.
Table 5: Categorization of Journal Articles by Empirical Nature/Peer Review and
Trafficking Type
Empirical Research - Not Peer
Reviewed
Sex Trafficking
2
Trafficking Type
Labor Trafficking
0
Other
0
Unknown
1
Total
3
Empirical Research - Peer
Reviewed
31 11 1 0
43
Not Empirical Research - Not
Peer Reviewed
Not Empirical Research - Peer
Reviewed
67
86
12
23
4
0
8
7
91
116
Total 186 46 5 16 253
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of journal articles due to multiple
categorizations (i.e. a single journal article could be categorized under both “Sex Trafficking” and
“Labor Trafficking”).
The uneven focus on sex trafficking and the sizeable percentage of journal articles that
offer no clear indication of the type of trafficking analyzed appears to be a constant
across disciplines. Table 6 shows that among articles published in criminal justice,
medicine, and social science journals, most have focused on sex trafficking and a smaller
number on labor trafficking.
32
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Table 6: Categorization of Journal Articles by Trafficking Type and Discipline
Discipline
Law/Criminal Medicine and
Social Sciences
Total
Justice Epidemiology
Trafficking type
Sex Trafficking
93 8 100
201
Labor Trafficking
17 0 30
47
Other
4 0 1
5
Unknown
8 0 7
15
Total
122 8 138 268
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of journal articles due to multiple
categorizations (i.e. a single journal article could be categorized under both “Sex Trafficking” and
“Labor Trafficking”).
Trafficked Populations
The majority of studies focus on women. Table 7 shows that 173 or 79 percent of all
journal articles deal with women. Females have been the focus of research on trafficking
for sexual exploitation as well as studies on matchmaking and arranged marriages. Very
little is known about trafficking of men and boys, either for sexual exploitation or bonded
labor. Only 14 journal articles include discussion of male victims of trafficking and one
discusses the plight of male children. Thirty two articles discuss child victims but make
no obvious distinction between male and female children.
Table 7: Trafficked Population
Discussed inJournal Articles
Women 173
Men 14
Girls 6
Boys 1
Children (No distinction) 42
Unknown 20
*Totals presented in this table exceed
the actual number of journal articles
due to multiple categorizations (i.e. a
single journal article could be
categorized under both “Women”
and “Girls”).
Interestingly, works on child trafficking outside the United States are more readily
available and include articles that address a variety of issues, such as the trafficking of
children into the sex industry in Thailand (Andrews 2004; Arnold and Bertone 2002).
There are also a number of works on trafficking issues in particular regions (e.g.; Tumlin
2000; Burke, et al. 2005 and Finger 2003 on Latin America; Chase and Statham 2005 and
Somerset 2001 on the United Kingdom; Denisova 2001 and Steiger 2005 on Eastern
33
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Europe; and Dottridge 2002, Salah 2001 on West and Central Africa). It seems that
access to child victims of trafficking is easiest in developing countries.
34
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REPORTS
Authoring Organization
Reports are produced by numerous organizations, many of whom do not publish in
academic outlets. By forgoing the double blind peer review process often used in
academic publishing, the organizations publishing reports are able to control content and
dissemination of their research. The reports are authored and/or commissioned by the US
government, foreign governments, the United Nations, intra-governmental organizations,
international organizations, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and
US NGOs.
3
Figure 5 indicates that authorship by intra-governmental organizations,
International NGOs and the United Nations account for almost 90 percent of the research
reports on human trafficking.
Figure 5: Trafficking Bibliography - Reports by Type of
Authoring Organization
United Nations
23%
Intra-Governmental Orgs
35%
NGOs (Int'l)
30%
NGOs (US)
4%
US Government
7%
Foreign Government
1%
The fact that more than two-thirds of the 429 reports were authored by international
NGOs and intra-governmental organizations is an important factor in the analysis of
where and how the most trafficking research is currently being conducted. Much of the
research conducted by these organizations takes place in developing countries. Research
in the developing world by non-university and non-government entities may face fewer
3
While not a focus of this report, it is highly likely that many of the reports conducted by international
NGOs and Intra-Governmental Organizations were supported by US funds.
35
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barriers than in the developing world. The methodological challenges posed by studying
vulnerable populations seem to be resulting in less empirical research conducted in
developing countries by institutions subject to an Institutional Review Board evaluation.
The remaining analysis and classification of reports by sampling type, methodology,
discipline, type of trafficking and other variables will cast more light on this subject.
Empirical Nature
In contrast to journal articles, the vast majority of reports are based on empirical research.
Sixty eight percent (or 292 reports) of all reports (n=429) are based on empirical
research. However, only one percent (or six reports) has been peer reviewed. These are
mainly reports commissioned by governmental agencies, such as the National Institute
for Justice (NIJ), which have incorporated a peer review process in the assessment of
final reports produced as part of research projects NIJ funds.
The remaining 32 percent (or 137 reports) are based on non-empirical research. With
three exceptions, all of the reports not based on empirical research have not been peer
reviewed.
Figure 6: Categorization of Reports by Empirical Nature, n = 429
Non-Empirical/Not
Peer Reviewed,
n=134, 31%
Non-Empirical/Peer
Reviewed, n=3, 1%
Empirical
Research/Peer
Reviewed, n=6, 1%
Empirical
Research/Not Peer
Reviewed , n=286,
67%
The largest number of reports, 287 reports to be exact, is based on empirical research fall
into the social science category (see Table 8 below). Reports classified as falling within
the law/criminal justice domain are more evenly distributed between those based on
empirical and those not based on empirical research; 46 and 56 reports, respectively.
Similarly to journal articles, there are very few reports which can be classified as medical
and/or epidemiological; only four reports. All four are based on empirical research, but
none has been peer reviewed.
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Table 8: Categorization of Reports by Empirical Nature/Peer Review and Discipline
Discipline
Criminal Social
Medicine Unknown Total
Justice/Law Sciences
Empirical Research - Not Peer Reviewed 46 4 281 1 332
Empirical Research - Peer Reviewed 0 0 6 0 6
Not Empirical Research - Not Peer Reviewed 56 0 106 0 162
Not Empirical Research - Peer Reviewed 0 0 3 0 3
Total 102 4 396 1 503
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of reports due to multiple categorizations
(i.e. a single report could be categorized under both “Criminal Justice/Law” and “Social Sciences”).
Methodology
Table 9 indicates the type of methodology employed by the reports in each of the four
classifications based on the empirical nature of the research and peer review process. The
analysis of methodological approaches employed by authors of reports examined in the
course of this project indicates the predominance of qualitative methodologies in all four
categories. The reports follow the same pattern as journal articles in terms of their
methodological approaches and data collection methods with the preponderance of
qualitative methodologies. However, the pattern is different in terms of quantitative
approaches. Reports based, at least in part, on quantitative methodologies are much more
numerous then articles based on quantitative research; 95 versus seven, respectively.
There is also a sizeable group of reports based on literature reviews or reviews of laws
and policies. Not surprisingly, the bulk of these reports are based on non-empirical
research.
Table 9: Categorization of Reports by Empirical Nature/Peer Review and Methodology
Methodology
Qualitative Quantitative
Legal/Literature
Unknown
Review
Total
Empirical And Not Peer Reviewed 263 87 10 4
364
Empirical And Peer Reviewed 6 1 0 0
7
Non-Empirical And Not Peer Reviewed 32 7 108 5
152
Non-Empirical And Peer Reviewed 1 0 2 0
3
Total
302 95 120 9 526
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of reports due to multiple categorizations
(i.e. a single report could be categorized under both “Qualitative” and “Quantitative”).
Discipline and Methodology
As Table 10 shows, the majority or 57 percent of the analyzed reports relied on
qualitative methodologies. Sixteen percent of the reports are based on quantitative
methodologies and 24 percent include legal reviews. While the preponderance of social
science reports relies on qualitative methodologies, social science reports also utilize
quantitative methods and incorporate legal reviews. Reports in the law/criminal justice
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Methodology
category make an almost equal use of legal reviews and qualitative methodologies. Only
one of the reports in the medical/epidemiology category uses quantitative methodology.
Table 10: Categorization of Reports by Discipline and Methodology
Discipline
Medicine and N/A or
Law/Criminal Justice Social Sciences
Epidemiology Unknown
Total
150
Qualitative
60 290 8 1
359
Quantitative
9 94 1 0
104
N/A or Unknown
3 12 0 0
15
Total
123 493 11 1 628
Legal Review
51 97 2 0
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of reports due to multiple categorizations
(i.e. a single report could be categorized under both “Qualitative” and “Quantitative”).
Discipline and Sampling
Convenience sampling is the most prevalent sampling method; the majority of social
science and law/criminal justice reports use convenience samples (Table 11). Somewhat
surprisingly, four medical/epidemiological reports rely on convenience sampling as well.
Random sampling was used in 23 or 5.3 percent of the analyzed reports. Interestingly,
200 reports (or 46.6 percent) are based on unknown samples. The majority of the
law/criminal justice reports in this category are based on legislative and/or policy analysis
and sampling issues are not applicable to this type of publications. However, one-third of
social science reports are based on unknown samples, which can give readers a pause.
Table 11: Categorization of Reports by Sampling Type and Discipline
Discipline
Law/Criminal
Justice
Social
Sciences
Medicine and
Epidemiology
Unknown
Total
Convenience
40 248 4 1
293
Sample
Population
0 2 0 0
2
Random
221 0 0
23
N/A - Unknown
62 138 0 0
200
Total
104 409 4 1 518
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of reports due to multiple categorizations
(i.e. a single report could be categorized under both “Criminal Justice/Law” and “Social Sciences”).
Empirical Nature, Peer Review and Trafficking Type
Table 12 indicates the type of trafficking (labor, sex, or other) discussed in the analyzed
reports in each of the four classifications based on the empirical nature of the research
and peer review. Similarly to journal articles, the highest concentration of reports in
every category focuses on trafficking for sexual exploitation; 383 reports or 89 percent
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
discuss sex trafficking, while 238 or 55 percent analyze trafficking for labor exploitation.
As the numbers suggest, some reports deal with both types of trafficking in persons.
There are also 12 reports in the “unknown” category as the authors use a generic
descriptor “human trafficking” to describe the phenomenon under discussion.
Table 12: Categorization of Reports by Empirical Nature/Peer Review and
Trafficking Type
Trafficking Type
Labor Sex
Other Unknown
Total
Trafficking Trafficking
Empirical And Not Peer Reviewed
149 254 1 6
410
Empirical And Peer Reviewed
4 5 0 0
9
Non-Empirical And Not Peer Reviewed
83 121 0 6
210
Non-Empirical And Peer Reviewed
2 3 0 0
5
Total
238 383 1 12 634
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of reports due to multiple categorizations
(i.e. a single report could be categorized under both “Sex Trafficking” and “Labor Trafficking”).
Discipline and Trafficking Type
The majority of all reports discuss issues of human trafficking for sex exploitation; 60
percent of analyzed reports deal with sex trafficking, while 38 percent include discussion
of issues related to labor trafficking. Law/criminal justice reports are fairly evenly
distributed between those focused on sex trafficking (55%) and labor trafficking (42%).
Almost twice as many social science reports focus on sex trafficking (61%) as on labor
trafficking (37%).
Table 13: Categorization of Reports by Trafficking Type and Discipline
Discipline
Law/Criminal Medicine and Social
Unknown
Total
Justice Epidemiology Sciences
Sex Trafficking 90 4 353 1
448
Trafficking type
Labor Trafficking 69 3 215 1
288
Other 1 0 1 0
2
Unknown 4 0 10 0
14
Total 164 7 579 2 752
*Totals presented in this table exceed the actual number of reports due to multiple categorizations
(i.e. a single report could be categorized under both “Sex Trafficking” and “Labor Trafficking”).
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Trafficked Populations
As indicated in table 14, the majority of reports discuss women (296 reports or 34
percent) and girls (243 reports or 28 percent). Far fewer reports focus on men (89 reports
or 10 percent); slightly higher number of reports include discussion of boys (175 reports
or 20 percent). Sixty one reports include discussion of children without differentiating
between boys and girls.
Table 14: Trafficked Population
Discussed in Reports
Women
296
Men
89
Boys
175
Girls
243
Children (no distinction)
61
*Totals presented in this table exceed
the actual number of reports due to
multiple categorizations (i.e. a single
report could be categorized under
both “Women” and “Girls”).
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Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
BOOKS
As indicated above, we have treated books somewhat differently than journal articles in
this project. First, we had to decide what kind of publication we consider to be a book for
the purpose of this project. Popular dictionaries define a ‘book’ as ‘a set or collection of
written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment or other material,
usually fastened together to hinge at one side’ (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). In
library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from
serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. In this report we define
books in a similar way. According to this definition, any publication taking a form of a
bound volume could be considered a book.
However, given the fact that modern technology allows many organizations to publish
their publications—reports, manuals, directories, etc.—in-house in the form of a bound
volume with a professionally looking cover, we decided to make a distinction between
such publications and books. We are reserving the term ‘books’ for collections of written
materials published by mainstream scholarly or popular presses. Thus, we differentiate
between ‘books’ and ‘reports.’ The latter might have similar form and length as books
but are published in-house by governmental and non-governmental organizations. We
felt compelled to make this arbitrary distinction to achieve some uniformity, particularly
since different databases and on-line bookstores use different criteria for categorizing
publications as books.
As indicated above, the analysis of publications on human trafficking yielded 451
‘books.’ Most databases defined books as bound, free standing publications. After
manual purging of duplicates, the list was reduced to 344 ‘books.’ Close analysis of the
type of publisher (academic or commercial press) and the content (focus on human
trafficking as opposed to related topics such as violence against women; labor
exploitation; irregular migration; etc.) of each reference reduced this category to 94
books. The content analysis indicates that publishers and book marketing experts often
classify books only tangentially related to human trafficking as books on human
trafficking.
Second, not unlike many other book publications, books on human trafficking did not
lend themselves to an easy categorization according to the four-domain taxonomy used to
classify journal articles, namely: Empirical Research and Peer Reviewed; Empirical
Research and Not Peer Reviewed; Non-Empirical and Peer Reviewed; and Non-
Empirical and Not Peer Reviewed.
Peer review. While presses increasingly use outside reviewers to assist them in deciding
which manuscripts to accept and which ones to reject, the book review process is quite
different from the more stringent peer-review of journal articles. There are no formal
review standards for trade and university presses, and often no standards at all for popular
presses. There is also no way of knowing, without contacting each individual publisher,
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whether a particular book has been reviewed by an outside reviewer or not. Hence, the
inability to determine which book was peer-reviewed and which was not.
Empirical/non-empirical research. With very few exceptions (Cadet 1998; Mushen and
Crofts 2000)
4
, all books in this bibliography are based on research or a systematic inquiry
or examination and collection of information about a particular subject. However, very
few books are based solely or in large part on empirical research and empirical data
collected by the author/s. Notable exceptions include: (Skrobanek et. al. 1997); (Cole and
Booth 2007); and selected chapters from an edited volume by Cameron and Newman
(2008). Some books are based on investigative reporting (e.g. Malarek 2004) and the
data, while empirical, has not been collected with the same rigor that a scholar might
apply to a research project. The vast majority of the 94 books are based on non-empirical
research. Similarly to journal articles, these books include policy analyses; compilations
of information from secondary sources on a particular facet of human trafficking;
critiques of trafficking frameworks; or authors’ views on the human trafficking debate.
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4
These books are written by victims or victims’ families.
This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
RESEARCH GAPS
The analysis of the compiled bibliography on trafficking in persons suggests that the
dominant anti-trafficking discourse is not evidence-based but grounded in the
construction of particular mythology of trafficking (Sanghera 2005: 4). Despite the
increased interest in human trafficking, little systematic research has been done on this
issue. The body of empirical research on human trafficking is particularly limited. Much
of public resources for combating human trafficking has been earmarked almost
exclusively for provision of services to trafficked persons and technical assistance to
service providers assisting them. Media campaigns have also raised public awareness and
concern for the trafficked victims. However, these activities have taken place without a
clear idea of the extent of the problem or a uniformed methodology for determining the
scope of the issue (Bump et al. 2005). Assistance to victims has been provided without
the benefit of empirical research aimed to identify their service needs or evaluate
rehabilitation programs implemented to integrate survivors of human trafficking into the
wider society and prevent repeat victimization.
Scope
The number of people trafficked worldwide is notoriously difficult to measure. Many
scholars have discussed the challenges of estimating the scale of human trafficking and
the production of reliable statistics and called for improved methodologies to describe the
unobserved (Laczko and Gramegna 2003; Tyldum and Brunovskis 2005; Goździak and
Collett 2005). While the United States has allocated a significant amount of resources
and expanded considerable efforts to the anti-trafficking campaign and other counter-
trafficking activities, the scope of the problem remains vague. A recent front page article
in The Washington Post (Markon 2007) criticized the US Government’s alarming
statements about ‘tidal waves’ of human trafficking victims entering the country, which
are based on methodologically flawed estimates. The same criticism about worldwide
estimates promulgated by the US Department of State has been expressed by UNESCO,
the US Justice Department (2005), and most recently by the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) which concluded in a major report in 2006 that statistics provided by the
G/TIP office were problematic because of “methodological weaknesses, gaps in data, and
numerical discrepancies” (GAO 2006). There is no evidence in the literature that the
situation is any different in other countries.
Theory
‘In no area of the social sciences has ideology contaminated knowledge more pervasively
than in writings on the sex industry,’ asserts Ronald Weitzer, a sociologist at the George
Washington University. This claim certainly extends to trafficking for sexual
exploitation, an area ‘where cannons of scientific inquiry are suspended and research
deliberately skewed to serve a particular political and moral agenda ((Weitzer 2005: 934;
see also Weitzer 2007; Rubin 1984 and 1993; Goode 1997). Much of the research on
human trafficking for sexual exploitation has been conducted by activists involved in
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
anti-prostitution campaigns (e.g. Raymond 1998, 2004; Hughes 2004, 2005). These
activists adopt an extreme (i.e., absolutists, doctrinaire, and unscientific) version of
radical feminist theory, which does not distinguish between trafficking for forced
prostitution and voluntary migration (legal or irregular) for sex work and claims that all
sex workers are victims of trafficking. As Weitzer points out few of the radical feminist
claims about sex trafficking are amenable to verification or falsification (Weitzer 2005:
936).
Moral crusades propagated by activists and to a certain extent by service providers whose
funding depends on maintaining the gravity of the trafficking problem ‘typically rely on
horror stories and “atrocity tales” about victims in which the most shocking exemplars of
victimization are described and typified” (Weitzer 2007: 448). In reality, limited
numbers of victims have been identified and even fewer have been studied to be able to
make such gross generalizations. The radical feminist theory conflates trafficking for
sexual exploitation with prostitution and suggests, among others, that there is a causal
link between legal prostitution and sex trafficking. Research does not support these
claims. Both conceptually and empirically, it is inappropriate to fuse prostitution and sex
trafficking (Weitzer 2007). There is no evidence that the majority of prostitutes have been
trafficked and the causal link between legal prostitution and sex trafficking has not been
empirically established. There is a need to study these relationships in an objective and
scientific way, without fear of being accused of supporting prostitution.
Research on trafficking for labor exploitation is also disconnected from theory. There are
virtually no attempts to analyze the issue of cross-border trafficking for labor exploitation
within exiting international migration theories. There is also no evidence in the literature
of attempts to develop a theoretical framework in which to comprehensively analyze the
phenomenon. Poverty and aspirations for a better way of life are the major “push factors”
discussed in the literature on risk factors for trafficking (Wiliams and Masika 2002).
Methodology
Similarly to theoretical approaches, development of innovative methodologies to study
human trafficking is also in its infancy. Reliance on unrepresentative samples is
widespread. Most studies relay on interviews with ‘key stakeholders’ who do have a
stake in promoting certain view/s of human trafficking and its victims. Studies that do
include interviews with victims are usually limited to very small samples. The well-
known dangers of generalizing from small convenience samples and from anecdotal
stories are routinely ignored in the literature about human trafficking. There is a need to
emphasize the limitations of small samples for generalizations and extrapolations, while
at the same time stressing the value of ethnographic investigations for formulating
hypotheses for further studies, including preparation of survey questionnaires.
Predominant methodologies include interviews. While in-depth, open-ended and
systematic ethnographic interviews are very valuable to the understanding of the nuances
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
of trafficking in persons, interviews conducted by untrained researchers often amount to
no more than an anecdote. Victims’ and stakeholders’ narratives are important but need
to be augmented by participant observation. People do not necessarily do what they say.
Participant observation is needed, but difficult. The main obstacle to conducting
empirical qualitative research on human trafficking is related to gaining access to
trafficked persons. For obvious reasons, to study them while they are still in the hands of
traffickers is impossible and dangerous, but neither is it easy to engage trafficked persons
in research once they have been rescued.
Neglected Issues and Topics
Research fulfills a number of roles, one of which is to offer an independent and critical
assessment of current policy and practice. The list of issues that need to be explored in
future research projects is long, but the most important arena which needs urgent
exploration is the way the knowledge upon which the public debate about trafficking for
sexual and labor exploitation is based is generated. Where does this knowledge come
from and how is it used? The US government prides itself in leading the anti-trafficking
movement and providing policy and programmatic guidance to other governments. The
data and the knowledge the government uses must therefore be valid, reliable, and based
on empirical research.
In order to acquire the broadest possible picture of the trafficking phenomenon, several
different data collection methods, including quantitative and qualitative methods, need to
be tested. Estimation methods that have been gaining currency in studies of hidden
populations include rapid assessment, capture-recapture methodology and Respondent-
Driven Sampling (RDS). These methods have been successfully used to study the
homeless (Williams and Cheal 2002), street children (Gurgel et al. 2004), and women in
street prostitution (Brunovskis and Tyldum 2004). Researchers in Norway, for example,
were quite successful in employing telephone surveys of sex workers operating through
individual advertisements (Tyldum and Brunovskis 2004).
Despite the fact that the US government requires all researchers conducting research
project on sex trafficking, supported by federal grants, to sign an affidavit stating that
they oppose prostitution, the researchers should not be deterred from collaborating with
scholars who have had a long history of conducting research on prostitution and test if
data collection methods developed and utilized within the sex work research arena are
applicable to studies of trafficking.
Trafficking in persons is often portrayed as the world’s fastest growing criminal
enterprise, with profits that rival the illegal drugs and arms trade. Reports repeatedly
quote the number of seven billion dollars in profit to indicate the magnitude of the
phenomenon (Spangenberg 2002; Denisova 2001; Scarpa 2006; Roby 2005). Reports
also talk about networks of international organized crime which are attracted to the trade
in human beings because of low risk and because the criminal penalties for human
trafficking are light in most countries (Pochagina 2007; Tiefenbrun 2002; Sheldon 2007).
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
Different TIP Reports produced by the US Department of State reiterate this assertion,
describing how traffickers enjoy virtually no risk of prosecution by using sophisticated
modes of transportation and communication; avoid punishment by operating in places
where there is little rule of law, lack of anti-trafficking laws, poor enforcement of such
laws, and wide-spread corruption (DOS 2003-2007). Media and international
organizations also talk about the fact that the crime of trafficking in persons offers
international organized crime syndicates a low-risk opportunity to make billions of
profits by taking advantage of unlimited supply and unending demand for trafficked
persons (Claramunt 2002; Burke et al 2005; ILO, 2002; Reuters 2000).
Given the lack of research findings and statistical data, it is difficult to accurately assess
the scope of organized crime’s involvement in human trafficking (Bruckert and Parent
2002: 13). The distinction between trafficking and smuggling is not always easy to
make. According to John Salt (2000: 43) the notion that human trafficking and organized
crime are closely related is widespread despite lack of evidence-based data to support this
assertion. This alleged connection is based on the fact that people of different
nationalities are part of the same group of trafficked victims; that trips over along
distance require a well-oiled organization; that substantial amounts of money are
involved; that itineraries change quickly; that legal services are available very quickly;
and that there is a strong reaction to counter-offensives by law enforcement agencies
(Bruckert and Parent 2002). These arguments developed by Europol (Salt 2000) are also
shared by others (e.g. Taibly 2001; Juhasz 2000). Some researchers point to a close
connection between organized crime and trafficking for sexual exploitation indicating
that the magnitude and geographic scope of the sex industry are phenomenal and
organized crime is involved at various levels (Shanon 1999; Caldwell et. al. 1997).
Rigorous ethnographic and sociological studies based on in-depth interviews with
trafficking survivors would provide baseline data on trafficking victims and their
characteristics. Too often victims of trafficking remain one-dimensional figures whose
stories are condensed and simplified, which does not bode well for the development of
culturally appropriate services. In order to develop appropriate assistance and treatment
programs for trafficking survivors, increased attention needs to be paid to the expertise
and practical knowledge of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their experience
in working with different groups of trafficking survivors, including women, men, and
children.
Given the fact that services to trafficked persons are in their infancy, monitoring and
evaluation studies should be an integral part of every assistance program, public and
private. Well-designed monitoring and evaluation studies, particularly external
evaluations, can identify effective policies and ‘best practice’ approaches as well as
assess the success of different programs. Particularly important are longitudinal studies of
the effects of rehabilitation programs on the ability of survivors to integrate into the new
society or re-integrate into their native one. The US has spent considerable amount of
resources supporting ‘Rescue and Restore’ initiatives around the world but no follow-up
study has been conducted on any of the victims returned to their home countries. Have
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
survivors of trafficking for sexual exploitation been accepted by their families and local
communities? Are survivors of trafficking for labor exploitation at risk for re-
victimization? How are the children who had been trafficked with the approval of their
families doing?
There is also a need for effective cooperation and coordination of research within North
America and between North America and other regions of the world, particularly source
countries. In addition, there is a need to establish a forum where research results can be
exchanged between different scholars as well as shared with policy makers and service
providers; such a forum can take a form of a specialized publication or an international
task force. This forum should be free of moral and political influences and devoted solely
to scholarly pursuits. The need to fill in the gaps in our knowledge and share research
results is urgent. As Liz Kelly observed, ‘Lack of research-based knowledge may
inadvertently deepen, rather than loosen the factors that make trafficking both so
profitable and difficult to address. (Kelly, 2002: 60).
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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Data and Research on Human Trafficking Goździak & Bump
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and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
