From Human Trafficking to Human Rights

Over the last decade, public, political, and scholarly attention has focused on human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery. Yet as human rights scholars Alison Brysk and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick argue, most current work tends to be more descriptive and focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation.In From Human Trafficking to Human Rights, Brysk, Choi-Fitzpatrick, and a cast of experts demonstrate that it is time to recognize human trafficking as more a matter of human rights and social justice, rooted in larger structural issues relating to the global economy, human security, U.S. foreign policy, and labor and gender relations. Such reframing involves overcoming several of the most difficult barriers to the development of human rights discourse: women's rights as human rights, labor rights as a confluence of structure and agency, the interdependence of migration and discrimination, the ideological and policy hegemony of the United States in setting the terms of debate, and a politics of global justice and governance.Throughout this volume, the argument is clear: a deep human rights approach can improve analysis and response by recovering human rights principles that match protection with empowerment and recognize the interdependence of social rights and personal freedoms. Together, contributors to the volume conclude that rethinking trafficking requires moving our orientation from sex to slavery, from prostitution to power relations, and from rescue to rights. On the basis of this argument, From Human Trafficking to Human Rights offers concrete policy approaches to improve the global response necessary to end slavery responsibly.

Over the last decade, public, political, and scholarly attention has focused on human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery. Yet as human rights scholars Alison Brysk and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick argue, most current work tends to be more descriptive and focused on trafficking for sexual exploitation.In From Human Trafficking to Human Rights, Brysk, Choi-Fitzpatrick, and a cast of experts demonstrate that it is time to recognize human trafficking as more a matter of human rights and social justice, rooted in larger structural issues relating to the global economy, human security, U.S. foreign policy, and labor and gender relations. Such reframing involves overcoming several of the most difficult barriers to the development of human rights discourse: women's rights as human rights, labor rights as a confluence of structure and agency, the interdependence of migration and discrimination, the ideological and policy hegemony of the United States in setting the terms of debate, and a politics of global justice and governance.Throughout this volume, the argument is clear: a deep human rights approach can improve analysis and response by recovering human rights principles that match protection with empowerment and recognize the interdependence of social rights and personal freedoms. Together, contributors to the volume conclude that rethinking trafficking requires moving our orientation from sex to slavery, from prostitution to power relations, and from rescue to rights. On the basis of this argument, From Human Trafficking to Human Rights offers concrete policy approaches to improve the global response necessary to end slavery responsibly.

Introduction. Rethinking Trafficking-Alison Brysk and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick

PART I. FROM SEX TO SLAVERY
1. Rethinking Trafficking: Contemporary Slavery
-Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick
2. Uncomfortable Silences: Contemporary Slavery and the 'Lessons' of History
-Joel Quirk
3. Representing Trafficking: Media in the United States, Great Britain and Canada
-Jeff Gulati

PART II. FROM PROSTITUTION TO POWER
4. Rethinking Trafficking: Human Rights and Private Wrongs
-Alison Brysk
5. The Sexual Politics of U.S. Inter/National Security
-Laura Hebert
6. Rethinking Gender Violence: Battered and Trafficked Women in Greece and the United States
-Gabriela Wasileski and Mark J. Miller
7. Peacekeepers and Human Trafficking: The New Security Dilemma
-Charles Anthony Smith
8. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Assessing the Impact of the OAS and the UN on Human Trafficking in Haiti
-Heather T. Smith

PART III. FROM RESCUE TO RIGHTS
9. Making Human Rights Accessible: The Role of Governments in Trafficking and Migrant Labor Exploitation
Christien van den Anker
10. Human Rights and Human Trafficking: A Reflection on the Influence and Evolution of the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Reports
-Anne Gallagher
11. The Anti-slavery Movement: Making Rights Reality
-Kevin Bales and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick

List of Contributors
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments