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Sex and Labor Trafficking: Trauma-Informed Themes Toward a Social Justice Approach

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Handbook of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse Across the Lifespan

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Abstract

Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery that involves multiple types of exploitation, including sex and labor trafficking, as well as extreme force in the form of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, fraud, and/or coercion. Human trafficking is conceptualized as a human rights, social justice, and public health issue. Traffickers recruit and exploit the most vulnerable individuals they can identify, typically those who have previously suffered prior traumas within their families and have faced ongoing forms of economic and social oppression. This chapter will discuss vulnerability factors, such as cultural stigma, poverty, and lack of supports that highlight human trafficking as an issue that intersects with various levels of systemic oppression, such as sexism, racism, and classism. It will also explore and define sex and labor trafficking as a social justice issue and address effective response to include a multidisciplinary and ecological approach. Relevant research on developmental and trauma theories will frame the discussion of psychological and health outcomes related to interpersonal trauma exposures that take place throughout various phases of trafficking. Common trauma responses will be considered to exemplify variable impacts of traumatic exposures. Furthermore, intervention and treatment issues will be discussed within a complex trauma-informed framework, embedded in a systemic approach (Multimodal Social Ecological; Hopper, The Multimodal Social Ecological (MSE) approach: A trauma-informed framework for supporting trafficking survivors’ psychosocial health. In: Chisolm-Straker M Stocklosa H (eds) Human trafficking is a public health issue: A paradigm expansion in the United States, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2017a). Considerations for prevention of sex and labor trafficking will explore the continuum of violence and demand for commercial sexual exploitation and low-cost goods and services. Finally, justice-oriented recommendations for education and policy, as well as best practices to advance future directions in the field, include discussion of intentional survivor leadership engagement.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Dominique A. Malebranche

  2. The Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, Brookline, MA, USA

    Elizabeth K. Hopper

  3. Beating Trauma, Richmond, VA, USA

    Elisabeth Corey

Authors
  1. Dominique A. Malebranche
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  2. Elizabeth K. Hopper
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  3. Elisabeth Corey
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dominique A. Malebranche .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma, Alliant International University, San Diego, CA, USA

    Robert Geffner

  2. School of Health and Human Sciences, University of North Carolina at Greensbo, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Jacquelyn W. White

  3. Dept of Family and Community Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    L. Kevin Hamberger

  4. Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA

    Alan Rosenbaum

  5. Ethelyn R. Strong School of Social Work, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, VA, USA

    Viola Vaughan-Eden

  6. Education and Research, Zero Abuse Project, St. Paul, MN, USA

    Victor I. Vieth

Section Editor information

  1. School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA

    Michael B. Greene

  2. Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA

    Robert L. Johnson

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Malebranche, D.A., Hopper, E.K., Corey, E. (2020). Sex and Labor Trafficking: Trauma-Informed Themes Toward a Social Justice Approach. In: Geffner, R., White, J.W., Hamberger, L.K., Rosenbaum, A., Vaughan-Eden, V., Vieth, V.I. (eds) Handbook of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse Across the Lifespan. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62122-7_43-1

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