Correlations, or Discrepancies You Have Found. Synthesizing

¶ … correlations, or discrepancies you have found.

Synthesizing the Literature Human trafficking: A synthesis of the literature

Researching human trafficking reveals several common themes. The first theme is that slavery continues to exist in modern society. The second theme is that slavery is a problem in modern America. The third theme is that slavery does not exist in real secrecy; Americans are exposed to slaves on a daily basis. The fourth theme is that slavery is a global problem, and that different countries respond to slavery in different ways. The fifth theme is that trafficking does not only exploit individuals, but also exploits their countries of origin. Taken together, one sees that modern-day human trafficking exhibits many of the social and moral problems as old-fashioned slavery.

Many people believe that slavery no longer exists because slavery has been criminalized in most nations. However, human enslavement exists in a variety of forms: domestic service, prostitution, farm labor, factories, and mining (Bales & Soodalter, 2007). Human trafficking is the second-largest source of illegal crime internationally, next to the drug trade (Tsalikis, 2011). Moreover, governments have been aware of the persistence of human trafficking for at least the last century. Many anti-trafficking efforts have failed because of the underlying racism and xenophobia that people in the most vulnerable populations face (Limoncelli, 2010). Rather than address the trafficking concerns, people have been content to persecute the victims as illegal aliens; a problem that persists in modern times.

One of the secrets of slavery is that it exists in the modern-day United States (Bales & Soodalter, 2007). The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 was the first federal law attempting to give law enforcement agents the tools they needed to deal with the phenomenon of modern slavery, but federal laws are still not adequate to deal with the issue (Destefano, 2007). The federal government focuses on sex trafficking and prostitution and does not spend sufficient resources investigating other modern forms of slavery (Destefano, 2007).

Another theme about slavery is that, while it may be extremely secretive, slaves interact with society as a whole. Healthcare providers are likely to encounter victims of human trafficking. In fact, 28% of trafficked women saw a health care provider while still in captivity (Dovydaitis, 2011). Therefore, having front-line workers, such as health professionals, aware of how to spot and report trafficking is critical.