Human Trafficking Premise: Relationships Between the Trafficker and the Trafficked
Human trafficking continues today, despite years of attempts to stop it. The practice continues to evolve as the nature of the globalized world changes, and the demands for workers and slaves adapt with it. The research shows that "Traffickers range from large-scale organized crime networks to "small-scale informal networks" (Srikantiah, 2007). Ultimately, human trafficking is a serious crime worldwide. This has lead to a recent surge of research exploring human trafficking: how it is done, who is involved, and why it occurs so frequently.
However, much of the current discourse is spent primarily on evaluating the crime in regards to statistics and demand. Much of the modern research fails to examine the problem from the victim's perspective. To be a victim of human trafficking is to be victimized in a very unique and challenging way. For some, victims resent and fight back against their traffickers. Here, the research suggests that "within an exploitative relationship with the trafficker, moreover, a victim may be able to exercise some amount of free will," (Srikantiah, 2007). This is a more typical relationship between trafficker and trafficked similar to other criminal situations and the trafficked will take every effort to break free from his or her captive.
Yet, in many cases, there is a strange relationship between the victim and the trafficker that has an impact on how the crime actually plays out. In many cases, the victims tend to be passive and thus not taking advantage of opportunities to reach out for health (Srikantiah, 2007). For example, there are cases where the victim, and his or her family, knows the trafficker. The trafficker is then able to use this to his or her advantage because the family or victim may not want to speak out in any way that would harm the other members of the family who are free. This creates a situation where the victim may be more inclined to stay with his or her trafficker, even in instances where there are possibilities of escaping or reaching out for help. Additionally, there are other cases where the victim is so scared and intimidated by the trafficker that he or she may loose out on opportunities for freedom because of that fear. This intense amount of fear can dissuade individuals from seeking help, especially when individuals are trafficked over national borders, where they may not speak the native language. Overall, it is clear that relationships between the trafficker and the trafficked can have huge impacts on the crime itself.
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