Erin Heil explores the global problem of human trafficking in the context of a small Florida town¿one typical of the many rural communities that confront modern day slavery in their own backyards. Drawing on two years of interviews and observation, Heil lays out the dynamics that allow both agricultural and sexual forced labor to flourish. She also highlights community antitrafficking responses. Including the perspectives of traffickers, victims, and community members in one rich portrait, her work ably contributes to the fight against human trafficking at the local, state, and national levels alike.
The Asian sex trade is often assumed to cater predominantly to foreigners. SEX SLAVES turns that belief on its head to show that while western sex tourists have played a vital part in the growth of the industry, the primary customers of Asia's indentured sex workers and of its child prostitutes are overwhelmingly Asian men. Here are the voices of some of the world's most silent and abused women - women who have been forced into prostitution by the men they trust. This is their story: about the journey from home to captivity; the horrors of 'seasoning' for prostitution; and the hidden life within the brothel.
Marli F. Wiener skillfully integrates the history of medicine with social and intellectual history in this study of how race and sex complicated medical treatment in the antebellum South. Sex, Sickness, and Slavery argues that Southern physicians' scientific training and practice uniquely entitled them to formulate medical justification for the imbalanced racial hierarchies of the period. Challenged with both helping to preserve the slave system (by acknowledging and preserving clear distinctions of race and sex) and enhancing their own authority (with correct medical diagnoses and effective treatment), doctors sought to understand bodies that did not necessarily fit into neat dichotomies or agree with suggested treatments. Focusing on Southern states from Virginia to Alabama, Weiner examines medical and lay perspectives on the body through a range of sources, including medical journals, notes, diaries, daybooks, and letters. These personal and revealing sources show how physicians, medical students, and patients--both free whites and slaves--felt about vulnerability to disease and mental illnesses, how bodily differences between races and sexes were explained, and how emotions, common sense, working conditions, and climate were understood to have an effect on the body. Physicians' authority did not go uncontested, however. Weiner also describes the ways in which laypeople, both black and white, resisted medical authority, clearly refusing to cede explanatory power to doctors without measuring medical views against their own bodily experiences or personal beliefs. Expertly drawing the dynamic tensions during this period in which Southern culture and the demands of slavery often trumped science, Weiner explores how doctors struggled with contradictions as medicine became a key arena for debate over the meanings of male and female, sick and well, black and white, North and South.
Most times left solely within the confine of plantation narratives, slavery was far from a land-based phenomenon. This book reveals for the first time how it took critical shape at sea. Expanding the gaze even more deeply, the book centers how the oceanic transport of human cargoes--infamously known as the Middle Passage--comprised a violently regulated process foundational to the institution of bondage. Sowande' Mustakeem's groundbreaking study goes inside the Atlantic slave trade to explore the social conditions and human costs embedded in the world of maritime slavery. Mining ship logs, records and personal documents, Mustakeem teases out the social histories produced between those on traveling ships: slaves, captains, sailors, and surgeons. As she shows, crewmen manufactured captives through enforced dependency, relentless cycles of physical, psychological terror, and pain that led to the the making--and unmaking--of enslaved Africans held and transported onboard slave ships. Mustakeem relates how this process, and related power struggles, played out not just for adult men, but also for women, children, teens, infants, nursing mothers, the elderly, diseased, ailing, and dying. Mustakeem offers provocative new insights into how gender, health, age, illness, and medical treatment intersected with trauma and violence transformed human beings into the world's most commercially sought commodity for over four centuries.
Examines the nature and extent of female sexual slavery, exploring the psychological foundations of male dominance and surveys the by-products of a patriarchal society--pimps, procurers, rapists, enforced marriages, and polygamous arrangements.
“The best book ever written on human trafficking for sexual exploitation”—the basis for the feature film, Trafficked, starring Ashley Judd (Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves). Every year, hundreds of thousands of women and children are abducted, deceived, seduced, or sold into forced prostitution. These trafficked sex slaves form the backbone of one of the world’s most profitable illicit enterprises and generate huge profits for their exploiters, for unlike narcotics, which must be grown, harvested, refined, and packaged, sex slaves require no such “processing,” and can be repeatedly “consumed.” In this book, Kara provides a riveting account of his four-continent journey into this unconscionable industry, sharing the moving stories of its victims and revealing the shocking conditions of their exploitation. He draws on his background in finance, economics, and law to provide the first ever business analysis of contemporary slavery worldwide, focusing on its most profitable and barbaric form: sex trafficking. Kara describes the local factors and global economic forces that gave rise to this and other forms of modern slavery over the past two decades and quantifies, for the first time, the size, growth, and profitability of each industry. Finally, he identifies the sectors of the sex trafficking industry that would be hardest hit by specifically designed interventions and recommends the specific legal, tactical, and policy measures that would target these vulnerable sectors and help to abolish this form of slavery, once and for all. The author will donate a portion of the proceeds of this book to the anti-slavery organization, Free the Slaves. “Sex trafficking is more of a problem than most people realize. Read this well-written book and find out.”—Kirk Douglas
Trafficking in human beings for the sex industry has been practised for centuries. What is new is the scale of the trade, the ages of those involved and the organization applied to the marketing. This text looks behind the wholesomeness of Asian values and takes a controversial approach to the sex industry by viewing it as a product of Asian cultural values. There are interviews with sex workers, their families, clients and the staff of the charities that work with the women. Above all, the book aims to tell the stories, often in their own words, of the girls and women who are forced into the trade and to publicize the tragedy of the voiceless women of Asia.
While more and more people each day become aware of the dangerous world of human trafficking, many people in the U.S. believe this is something that happens to foreign women men and children not something that happens to their own children and neighbors. They couldn't be more wrong. In this powerful true story. Theresa Flores shares how her life as an All American, 15-years-old teenager was enslaved into the dangerous world of sex trafficking-all while living at home with unsuspecting parents in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit. Her story peels the cover off of this horrific criminal activity and gives dedicated activists as well as casual bystanders a glimpse into the underbelly of human trafficking Even more importantly, Theres's story and expertise as a counselor and licensed social worker help identify red flags that could prevent her plight from becoming the fate of an unsuspecting teenager. She discusses how she healed the wounds of sexual servitude and offers advice to parents and professionals through prevention tips, education and significant information on human trafficking in modern day America. With insights and perspectives from a doctor, a friend and her own brother, Theres's memoir provides a well-rounded portrait of the dark world of human trafficking and serves as a reminder of the most important clement to overcoming slavery: hope. Book jacket.
Why is the international community so concerned with the fate of prostitutes abroad? And why does the story of trafficking sound so familiar? In this pioneering new book, Jo Doezema argues that the current concern with trafficking in women is a modern manifestation of the myth of white slavery. Combining historical analysis with contemporary investigation, this book sheds light on the current preoccupations with trafficking in women. It examines in detail sex worker reactions to the myth of trafficking, questions the current feminist preoccupation with the 'suffering female body' and argues that feminism needs to move towards the creation of new myths. The analysis in this book is controversial but crucial, an alternative to the current panic discourses around trafficking in women. An essential read for anyone who is concerned with the increased movement of women internationally and the attempts of international and national governments to regulate this flow.
In the first general interest book to examine the phenomenon of people smuggling, investigative journalist McGill gives a global overview of this criminal activity, including firsthand accounts from smugglers and the smuggled.
