Human trafficking and commoditization in the globalized world

People as Commodities: Human Trafficking and Globalization

With the rise of globalization and the culture of globalization (primarily materialistic) human life has been devalued. Moreover, the world is now governed and controlled by powerful entities and multinational corporations that form relationships with countries and criminals in order to make human trafficking possible. The outcome is that the relationship between human trafficking and globalization is tightened. From a Critical Theory perspective, this paper examines how human trafficking is made possible as a result of modern capitalism and the commoditization of human life. It shows that we in the West are responsible for the oppression of humans who hail from other parts of the world, because we participate in the crime.

Introduction and Thesis

The problem of human trafficking is not one that just affects a segment of society in another part of the world. Many people imagine that human trafficking, for example, is only something that happens in third world countries or in parts of Asia where poor children and women are ushered into various forms of slavery by exploitative systems and criminal traffickers. While, trafficking may originate in those parts of the world, it does not end there. Many victims of human trafficking are in fact smuggled and shipped around the world to end up as workers in our very own cities and communities in the West. Thus, human trafficking is a global issue that impacts all of global society. This paper will utilize Critical Theory to show how the relationship between human trafficking and globalization has resulted in a world where human rights violations are prevalent and respect for the more than a half-century\'s old Declaration on Human Rights has eroded through the commercialization and commoditization of humanity.

Globalization

The issue of globalization must first be addressed before an understanding of how all of global society is impacted by human trafficking. Globalization is a phenomenon by which various communities and societies separated by great distances become more commercially and intellectually interconnected as a result of technological developments that diminish the extent to which time and space serve as obstacles. One such development, for example, is the Internet. The Internet has revolutionized the way the world works, communicates, spreads information, conducts business, propagates data, and provides services. As Spillan (2012) observes, the \"reach of the Internet to unknown places\" is a perfect analogy for what globalization has enabled: individual communities from two polar opposite parts of the world have the ability not only to interact in a globalized world but to do so with lightning quick communications that virtually obliterate the concept of time and space in a communicative and transactional sense. The effect of globalization is that cultures and communities are intertwined more closely than ever before. What happens in one nation\'s economy bears on the economies of the rest of the world, because globalization has essentially lined up all the nations of the world like dominoes: united they stand and together they fall.

While globalization has transformed the way in which commercial business is conducted and services are provided, it has also changed the way in which people engage in unethical behaviors. Thanks to globalization, human trafficking is now more prevalent than ever before (Rahman, 2011). Indeed, as Rahman (2011) notes, \"an estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked each year\" and the vast majority of them are aged 18-24 -- which practically makes them young adults -- and nearly all of them suffer \"physical or sexual violence while being trafficked\" from one part of the world to another (p. 57). Victims of trafficking end up working as domestic servants, prostitutes, sweat shop workers, and agricultural laborers -- and, shockingly, nearly half of trafficked persons end up as prostitutes \"in advanced countries\" (Rahman, 2011, p. 57). In other words, globalization has enabled third world victims of poverty and homelessness to end up as first-world prostitutes. As Jones (2000) reports, the West has corrupted itself as a result of its self-seeking objectives: instead of spreading noble ideals, it spreads war, bad philosophies, and exploitation -- all of which creates an environment in which human traffickers may thrive.

There is, however, another reason for the spread of human trafficking -- and that is the breakdown of cultural values and meaning: the concept of the respect for persons and life has taken a beating all throughout the 20th century and continues to do so in the 21st century (Jones, 2000). Not only is terrorism a major threat throughout the world, but so too is the spread of pornography, which the anti-trafficking non-governmental organization, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, fought in its early days before taking up the issue of sex trafficking (Coy, 2016). The erosion of respect for women, for decency (the League of Decency used to exist in America), and for morality has caused the West and by extension the world to regress to the kind of barbaric practices the West used to pride itself on having overcome.

People as Commodities

With the decline in the respect for moral order noted by Jones (2000) and the social and cultural move towards a capitalistic process by which all demands are commoditized (Horkheimer, Adorno, 1944), both the East and the West have capitulated to a materialistic world view in which everything is, notionally, for sale (Hoggart, 1973). According to the theorists of the Frankfurt School, the cultural guidelines of the Establishment -- the authorities in power throughout the 20th century -- were about imposing controls on its citizenry, dehumanizing them to the extent that they became passive participants in the type of Orwellian conceptualization that emerged in the same century (Horkheimer, Adorno, 2002). As Freire (2000) observes, the nature of modern education and modern society is such that virtually all who are not part of the established order of authority are, by contrast, members of the oppressed classes. Critical theory holds that in order to understand the nature of the oppression, the society and its culture must be broken down and deconstructed -- and when that deconstruction is effected in today\'s world, the actual essence of the interplay between forces is revealed. In the case of human trafficking, the oppressed -- the victims of trafficking -- are exploited by a capitalistic system that panders to passive participants in the aims of the State (Horkheimer, Adorno, 1944).

In an age when materialism represents all that is good, the idea of human beings having value let alone rights is easily lost (Jones, 2000). This loss has come about as a result of propagandized entertainment that has undermined the respect for human life that the West simultaneously has always promoted as an ideal. Hoggart (1957) states that \"most mass-entertaiments are in the end what DH Lawrence described as \'anti-life\'. They are full of corrupt brightness, of improper appeals and moral evasions. To recall instances: they tend towards a view of the world in which progress is conceived as a seeking of material possessions, equality as a moral leveling, and freedom as the ground for endless irresponsible pleasure\" (p. 306). Hoggart\'s perspective situates the ills of society squarely in the projections put forward by the media industry and its impact on how individuals think. The result is a skewed sense of reality. For the issue of human trafficking, the same skewed sense is evident -- as Jones (2010) indicates in his assessment of human trafficking viewed through the media lens.

The Media

If one were to judge the nature of human trafficking from what the mainstream media says about it, one would emerge with a far different picture of the issue than the reality would suggest (Jones, 2010). For example, an episode of Larry King Live on CNN covered the issue of human trafficking -- but the host described the issue as one that primarily affected only \"women and children\" and more than twenty references throughout the hour long episode referred to the victims of human trafficking as being \"women\" or \"girls\" (Jones, 2010, p. 1143). While women, girls and children make up a percentage of the exploited and victimized class of trafficked persons, the show neglected to shed light on men and boys -- yet they are no less victimized by traffickers. As Jones (2010) indicates, \"boys also make up a significant portion of forced labor victims\" (p. 1155). Yet, the media constructs an image of human trafficking that is highly gendered and thus plays a role in distorting the actual reality of the issue.

If one examines the reality, one sees quickly that human trafficking is not just related to forced prostitution -- but that the corporate world also participates in this criminal activity by employing forced laborers (many of whom are men and/or boys) in sweat shops around the world. In fact, force labor is also practice in the United States as Brennan (2014) shows. Thus, the reality is far more disturbing and far more encompassing of all peoples in all walks of life than what media programs like Larry King Live are willing to admit. From a Critical Theory perspective, Larry\'s King\'s show is there to promote an image of the world that does not contradict or oppose the corporatist/elitist foundation that supports his program. Larry King is there to sell a concept about an issue -- here, human trafficking -- that is fairly innocuous in the sense that it does not rouse sentiment or anger against the same entities paying for advertising during the show and thus supporting King\'s salary. Human trafficking in this context is commoditized and sold to the public as a shame -- something that villainous persons are doing to innocent defenseless women and children. What Larry King does not show is that human trafficking is a global phenomenon that is even practiced right in America itself -- the land of liberty. Were King to show this, he would raise uncomfortable questions about society, the place of capitalistic exploitation, and the violation of human rights that people in the West are committing.

The media\'s role in shaping the way in which the world views human trafficking is also apparent when considered in the light of globalization. Global media conglomerates now act as multinational companies with ranging influence that extends beyond borders and, in fact, across the entire globe. With the rise of the Internet and digital media, content and context may be controlled from the same drivers of Larry King\'s show, thus impacting the way in which the world thinks of human trafficking. When coupled with the extended influence of Western empire over the course of the 20th century, the dehumanizing impact of what Jones (2000) refers to as a century of moral corruption, and the fact that human trafficking is so prevalent today (and even occurring within our own borders) is not so surprising. For corporations pursuing ever greater profit margins, it is a cheap alternative to minimum wage.

The Global Culture

The global culture also plays a role in how human trafficking exists today. As Bryant-Davis and Tummala-Narra (2017) illustrate, racism and ethnic bias play a key role in the prevalence of human trafficking: \"specifically, racially and ethnically marginalized women and children may be viewed as commodities to be used for the purposes of perpetrators who hold more economic or social power\" (p. 154). As globalization has allowed powerful elites to exert more influence and control over portions of the world heretofore untouched by them, the danger of seeing marginalized members of societies being exploited in trafficking poses itself as a significant risk. Globalization has, in other words, contracted the world and created an environment in which racial and ethnic minorities or persons oppressed/marginalized because of economic conditions can be abused and exploited by the ruling class. That same ruling class can then control the narrative of the issue by framing it in an altogether unrealistic light that makes for an entertaining hour but sheds little light or truth on the actual matter. Moreover, that same class can pay lip service to the ideals of the modern world -- liberty, human rights, and personal security -- but at the same time can arrange for trafficking in order to benefit itself (Brennan, 2014).

The relationship between globalization and human trafficking is complicated further by the limitations of international police, whose mandate to a large degree is given them through a mixture of democratically-elected leaders in government and lobbyists of the corporate world who impact how those same leaders approach legislative duties. As human trafficking balloons into a \"global, multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise [with] estimates varying from $32 billion to $150 billion per year,\" it is not surprising that law enforcement agencies are limited in terms of what they can and cannot do to address the issue around the world (Pittaro, Normore, 2016).