Global points of ‘vulnerability’: understanding processes of the trafficking of children and young people into, within and out of the UK

Abstract

Within the UK, trafficking of children and young people into, within and out of the country has become an increasingly important and debated issue over the past decade. Although not a new phenomenon, human trafficking has risen up the policy agendas of many countries since the end of the Cold War. This type of forced migration is inextricably linked to the promotion and protection of human rights – be they civil, political, social, economic or cultural rights – and as such it is important that the broader social processes involved are understood and researched by sociologists. This contribution draws upon qualitative research into practitioner responses to trafficking of children conducted by the University of Bedfordshire and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in the UK. A key finding of this study was that trafficking of children is often viewed as a one-off ‘event’ by those who have a duty to care for children and young people. It is argued that viewing trafficking as a broader sociological process rather than an event enables a greater understanding of the environmental backgrounds of individual children and the human rights contexts within countries of origin as well as subsequent migration trajectories. It is suggested that this may lead to an enhanced ability to identify children as having been trafficked by those with a duty to care for children. The literature from the multidisciplinary fields of refugee studies and forced migration is drawn upon where applicable.

Keywords:

• trafficking
• children
• young people
• forced migration
• human rights
• vulnerability

Notes

The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSPCC.

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, details ‘the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution’. This does not mean that asylum will be granted, nor does it preclude states from restricting access to asylum procedures.

For an overview of current trends in forced migration see: Refugee Studies Centre, Forced Migration Research and Policy: Overview of Current Trends and Future Directions (Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre, 2010).

S. Castles, ‘Towards a Sociology of Forced Migration and Social Transformation’, Sociology 37, no. 2 (2003): 13–34; J. Morrison, Human Smuggling and Trafficking (Oxford: Forced Migration Online, University of Oxford, 2002).

Ibid.

The Palermo Protocol supplements the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

S. Bovarnick, ‘How Do You Define a Trafficked Child? A Discursive Analysis of Practitioners’ Understandings of Trafficking’, Youth & Policy, 104 (2010), 80–96.

J. Pearce, P. Hynes and S. Bovarnick, Breaking the Wall of Silence: Practitioners’ Responses to Trafficked Children and Young People (London: NSPCC and University of Bedfordshire, 2009).

See C. Zimmerman and C. Watts, WHO Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Interviewing Trafficked Women (London: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and World Health Organization, 2003) for a useful guide on the ethical implications of conducting research into trafficking; for guidelines relating to forced migration see Refugee Studies Centre, (n.d.), Ethical Guidelines for Good Practice, http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/PDFs/ethicalguidelines.pdf (accessed 5 September 2010)

Hereafter quotes from interviews with practitioners are indicated by ‘Interview’ and number. The presentation of case study material is shown by the acronym CS and the case number. Case study data is presented in the first person when written by children and young people and in the third person when recorded by practitioners involved.

B.G. Glaser and A.L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968).

S. Luthar, ed., Resilience and Vulnerability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

L. Malkki, Purity and Exile (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); R. Zetter, ‘Refugees and Refugee Studies – A Label and an Agenda’, Journal of Refugee Studies 1, no. 1 (1988): 125–46.

The concept of ‘vintages’ will be explained later in this contribution: E.F. Kunz, ‘The Refugee in Flight: Kinetic Models and Forms of Displacement’, International Migration Review 7, no. 2 (1973): 125–46.

E.V. Daniel and J.C. Knudsen, eds, Mistrusting Refugees (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1995).

E. Marx, ‘The Social World of Refugees: A Conceptual Framework’, Journal of Refugee Studies 3, no. 3 (1990): 189–203; S. Castles, ‘Why Migration Policies Fail’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 27, no. 2 (2004): 205–27.

For a useful discussion on the study of forced migration see B. Chimni, ‘The Birth of a “Discipline”: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies’, Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no. 1 (2009): 11–29.

Castles, ‘Towards a Sociology of Forced Migration’, 13–34. (see note 4).

Morrison, Human Smuggling and Trafficking.

Bovarnick, ‘How Do You Define a Trafficked Child?’.

G. Craig, A. Gaus, M. Wilkinson, K. Skrivankova and A. McQuade, Contemporary Slavery in the UK: Overview and Key Issues (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2007).

B. Anderson and J. O'Connell-Davidson, Trafficking – A Demand Led Problem? (Sweden: Save the Children, 2002).

J. O'Connell Davidson, Children in the Global Sex Trade (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005). For a different emphasis see L. Agustin, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (London: Zed Books, 2008).

A. Bloch and L. Schuster, ‘At the Extremes of Exclusion: Deportation, Detention and Dispersal’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 28, no. 3 (2005): 491–512; Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), Immigration, Nationality & Refugee Law Handbook (London: JCWI, 2002); R. Sales, Understanding Immigration and Refugee Policy (Bristol: Policy Press, 2007); J. Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); R. Zetter et al., An Assessment of the Impact of Asylum Policies in Europe 1990–2000 (London: Home Office Research Study 259, 2003).

J. Morrison and B. Crosland, ‘The Trafficking and Smuggling of Refugees: The End Game in European Asylum Policy?’ (Working Paper No. 39, New Issues in Refugee Research, Geneva: UNHCR, 2001), 1.

Morrison, Human Smuggling and Trafficking.

Bovarnick, ‘How Do You Define a Trafficked Child?’; Pearce, Hynes and Bovarnick, Breaking the Wall of Silence.

V. Robinson, Spreading the ‘Burden’?: A Review of Policies to Disperse Asylum Seekers and Refugees (Bristol: Polity Press, 2003), 177.

R. Sales, ‘The Deserving and the Undeserving? Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Welfare in Britain’, Critical Social Policy 22, no. 3 (2002): 456–78.

S. Castles and S. Loughna, ‘Globalization, Migration and Asylum’, in Global Social Problems and Global Social Policy, ed. V. George and R.M. Page (London: Polity Press, 2004).

Craig et al., Contemporary Slavery in the UK: Overview and Key Issues; F. Bokhari, ‘Falling Through the Gaps: Safeguarding Children Trafficked into the UK’, Children & Society 22, no. 3 (2008): 201–11.

Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, A Scoping Project on Child Trafficking in the UK (London: CEOP, 2007); CEOP, Strategic Threat Assessment: Child Trafficking in the UK (London: CEOP, 2009); ECPAT UK, Missing Out: A Study of Child Trafficking in the Northwest, Northeast and West Midlands (London: ECPAT UK, 2007); ECPAT UK, Stolen Futures: Trafficking for Forced Child Marriage in the UK (London: ECPAT UK and Hull: Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, 2009).

International Labour Organisation, A Global Alliance Against Forced Labour (Geneva: ILO, 2005).

ECPAT UK, Stolen Futures; Pearce, Hynes and Bovarnick, Breaking the Wall of Silence.

For example, ‘Someone Else's Child’ is a national campaign by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF). It seeks to raise awareness of the invisibility of privately fostered children.

P.M. Garrett, ‘Protecting Children in a Globalized World: “Race” and “Place” in the Laming Report on the Death of Victoria Climbié’, Journal of Social Work 6, no. 3 (2006): 315–36.

P. Hynes, ‘Contemporary Compulsory Dispersal and the Absence of Space for the Restoration of Trust’, Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no.1 (2009), 97–121.

J. Benetto, ‘Torso in the Thames Inquiry Leads to 21 Arrests’, The Independent, 30 July 2003, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/torso-in-the-thames-inquiry-leads-to-21-arrests-588446.html

See Pearce, Hynes and Bovarnick, Breaking the Wall of Silence for a comprehensive list of forms.

ECPAT UK, Stolen Futures.

For a full list of relevant Acts see DCSF, Safeguarding Children Who May Have Been Trafficked (London: Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008).

March 2007, updated July 2008 and October 2009.

The National Referral Mechanism was set up in response to the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, ratified by the UK government in December 2008 and implemented from 1 April 2009.

At the time of writing discussions were underway for the Serious Organised Crime Agency to take on this role for EU cases.

See for example, C. Jenks, Childhood (London: Routledge, 1996); A. James, C. Jenks and A. Prout, Theorizing Childhood (Cambridge, Polity Press).

The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees outlines how anyone fleeing persecution may need to obtain false documentation in order to seek sanctuary in a country of asylum and, as such, this indicator cannot be acted upon in isolation.

A. Jobe, ‘A New Sexual Story: Trafficking, Immigration and Asylum: The Converging of Discourses’, in Gender and Interpersonal Violence: Language, Action and Representation, ed. F. Alexander and K. Throsby (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), 66–82; A. Jobe, ‘Accessing Help and Service in the UK: Trafficking ‘Victims’/'Survivors’ Experiences’, in European Slave Trade, ed. P. McRedmond and G. Wylie (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 279–296.

Ibid.

A. Zolberg, A. Suhrke and S. Aguayo, Escape from Violence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Castles, see notes 4 and 16.

Marx, ‘The Social World of Refugees’.

Ibid.

Ibid.; Castles, see note 17.

Castles, see notes 4 and 16.

R. Black, ‘Fifty Years of Refugee Studies: From Theory to Policy’, International Migration Review 35, no. 1 (2001): 57–78.

R. Baker, ‘The Refugee Experience: Communication and Stress, Recollections of a Refugee Survivor’, Journal of Refugee Studies 3, no. 1 (1990).

K. Koser, ‘Social Networks and the Asylum Cycle: The Case of Iranians in the Netherlands, International Migration Review 31, no. 3 (1997): 591–611.

Castles, see notes 14 and 16.

D. Turton, ‘Refugees, Forced Resettlers and ‘Other Forced Migrants’: Towards a Unitary Study of Forced Migration’ (Working Paper No. 94, New Issues in Refugee Research, Geneva: UNHCR, 2003).

Zetter, ‘Refugees and Refugee Studies’.

Kunz, ‘The Refugee in Flight’.

A.H. Richmond, Global Apartheid: Refugees, Racism and New World Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 55–6.

Kunz, ‘The Refugee in Flight’.

Ibid.; Richmond, Global Apartheid.

Kunz, ‘The Refugee in Flight’.

Pearce, Hynes and Bovarnick, Breaking the Wall of Silence.

CS denotes ‘case study’ number.

Kunz, ‘The Refugee in Flight’.

R. Zetter, ‘International Perspectives on Refugee Assistance’, in Refugees: Perspectives on the Experience of Forced Migration (London and New York, Continuum, 1999), 46–82.

R. King, R. Skeldon, and J. Vullnetari, ‘Internal and International Migration: Bridging the Theoretical Divide’ (Working Paper No. 52, University of Sussex, 2008).

Ibid.

Castles and Loughna, ‘Globalization, Migration and Asylum’, 182.

Castles, see note 15, 212.

D. Reale, Away from Home: Protecting and Supporting Children on the Move (London: Save the Children UK, 2008).

Ibid.

Ibid.

Pearce, Hynes and Bovarnick, Breaking the Wall of Silence.

K. Asmussen, Key Facts About Child Maltreatment (London: Research Briefing, NSPCC, 2010), http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/briefings/Key_facts_child_maltreatment_pdf_wdf76279.pdf (accessed 5 September 2010)

More examples can be found in the original report by Pearce, Hynes and Bovarnick, Breaking the Wall of Silence.

Ibid.

D. Warner, ‘Voluntary Repatriation and the Meaning of Return to Home: A Critique of Liberal Mathematics’, Journal of Refugee Studies 7, nos 2/3 (1994): 160–74.

B.C.O. Breuil, ‘“Precious Children in a Heartless World”? The Complexities of Child Trafficking in Marseille’, Children & Society 22, no. 3 (2008): 223–34.

Practitioner response to presentation of findings of study, Community Care Conference, London, November 2009.

Malkki, Purity and Exile.

Daniel and Knudsen, Mistrusting Refugees; T. Hynes, ‘The Issue of “Trust” or “Mistrust” in Research with Refugees: Choices, Caveats and Considerations for Researchers’ (Working Paper No. 98, Geneva: UNHCR, 2003).

G. Mann, Networks of Support: A Literature Review of Care Issues for Separated Children (London: Save the Children, 2001).

Ibid.

Bovarnick, ‘How Do You Define a Trafficked Child?’.

Castles, see note 16.

J.A. Scholte, Defining Globalization, Workshop on ‘Dissecting Globalization’, Venice International University, San Servolo, 21–22 July 2004.