Human Trafficking: Social, Economic, and Political Contexts

A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760). This special issue belongs to the section "Contemporary Politics and Society".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2021) | Viewed by 4621

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA
Interests: intersections of race, class, gender, and crime; corrections and mental health; human trafficking

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Researchers have provided a range of scholarship on the crime of human trafficking that aids in the understanding of the crime, its prevalence, and contemporary challenges. Yet, more work is needed for a full range of understanding of human trafficking worldwide. For this Special Issue, we are looking for original research on human trafficking crimes that uses a macro sociological approach to examine systematic patterns of human behavior and their connections to human trafficking through social, economic, and political systems.

Hence, we invite contributions to this Special Issue from researchers exploring how social systems interact with human trafficking crimes. Examples of relevant submission topics include, but are not limited to, the following:  

  • An examination of social, political, or economic vulnerabilities and human trafficking exploitation;
  • Case studies that examine organizational successes/failures in addressing human trafficking crimes;
  • Theoretical or conceptual frameworks that explore human trafficking from a macro sociological perspective;
  • Research that puts marginalized voices at the forefront of human trafficking research.

This Special Issue is interested in research on all forms of human trafficking, including both labor trafficking and sex trafficking.

Dr. Anna E. Kosloski
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • crime
  • human trafficking
  • macro sociological approach
  • human behavior
  • marginalized voices

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

25 pages, 362 KiB  
Article
“These Girls Never Give Statements”: Anti-Trafficking Interventions and “Victim-Witness Testimony” in India
by Vibhuti Ramachandran
Soc. Sci. 2022, 11(9), 405; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11090405 - 5 Sep 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2719
Abstract
Framing sex trafficking as primarily a law enforcement and criminal justice issue, the U.S. State Department funds global South NGOs to work with the Indian legal system to strengthen prosecutions of sex trafficking cases. Though rescuing sex workers and training them to testify [...] Read more.
Framing sex trafficking as primarily a law enforcement and criminal justice issue, the U.S. State Department funds global South NGOs to work with the Indian legal system to strengthen prosecutions of sex trafficking cases. Though rescuing sex workers and training them to testify against alleged traffickers is key to these interventions, and though rescued sex workers do sometimes testify, my ethnographic research and interviews with NGOs, legal actors, and sex workers in India revealed that this is a rare occurrence. This article explores the reasons behind this reported pattern, as well as the challenges faced by those who do testify. Through these findings, it critically examines the possibilities and limitations of the prosecutorial focus of U.S.-driven, NGO-mediated anti-trafficking interventions. It situates anti-trafficking interventions centered on “victim-witness testimony” in the Indian socio-legal context, demonstrating how prosecution is shaped by a range of factors, circumstances, and contingencies involving foreign-funded NGOs, the procedures, political economy and culture of the Indian legal system, individual legal actors’ motivations, and rescued sex workers’ complex subjectivities, experiences, choices, and perceptions of justice. It draws upon and contextualizes these findings to challenge prevalent assumptions about the victimhood of global South sex workers, about global South legal systems necessarily lacking resources and commitment, and about anti-trafficking solutions rooted in criminal justice incontrovertibly benefiting survivors of sex trafficking. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Trafficking: Social, Economic, and Political Contexts)
Back to TopTop