This book provides the first overarching, empirically grounded, critical analysis of child trafficking as an idea, ordering principle, and artefact of politics. It examines (once) hegemonic anti-child trafficking discourse, policy and practice, and does so by placing secondary literature from around the world in conversation the author’s paradigmatic case study of the situation in southern Benin. It deconstructs the child trafficking paradigm, contrasts it with ‘real’ histories of child and youth labour and mobility, and seeks to explain it by going ‘inside’ the anti-trafficking field. In doing so, Howard tells a gripping story of ideology at work.

The phenomenon of child trafficking holds a unique position as an issue of significant contemporary relevance, occupying a principal place in debates about human rights today. The interchangeable terms trafficking and modern slavery evoke emotive responses and proclamations about abolition of contemporary ills, viewed as the ultimate aberration when a child is involved. The classification of children under legal frameworks marks them as different, as ‘other’, and in the context of laws implemented to address trafficking, slavery, and children on the move more generally, this distinction is complicated. This book charts the emergence, decline and re-emergence of child trafficking law and policy during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It provides a systematic and comprehensive overview of the historical origins of child trafficking by utilising the wealth of information located within the non-digitised archives of the League of Nations. It focusses upon the Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children to engage with League of Nations policy to provide an insightful and original contribution to the current body of literature. This is a book that seeks to critique the entanglements of children’s rights and colonialism in relation to the mobility and exploitation of children. It centralises the legacy of colonialism, the undercurrents of race, white supremacy, patriarchy, and their ongoing influence upon contemporary anti-trafficking legal and policy responses. Through utilizing what the author identifies as the ‘anti-trafficking machine’ as a theoretical framework, the book challenges contemporary law and policy responses to child trafficking. This theoretical framework has been adopted to illustrate a central hypothesis of the book – that the contemporary anti-trafficking agenda is both imperialist and a continuity of colonial attitudes.

Brings social, economic and political elements to the policy discussion as well as strategic interventions regarding the fight against "trafficking" (the recruitment and transportation of human beings through deception and coercion for the purposes of exploitation). Trafficking, generally, occurs from poorer to more prosperous countries and regions; however, it is not necessarily the poorest regions or communities which are most vulnerable to trafficking, and so this volume seeks to identify the factors which explain where and why vulnerability increases.--Publisher description.

Trafficked children are portrayed by the media—and even by child welfare specialists—as hapless victims who are forced to migrate from a poor country to the United States, where they serve as sex slaves. But as Elzbieta M. Gozdziak reveals in Trafficked Children in the United States, the picture is far more complex. Basing her observations on research with 140 children, most of them girls, from countries all over the globe, Gozdziak debunks many myths and uncovers the realities of the captivity, rescue, and rehabilitation of trafficked children. She shows, for instance, that none of the girls and boys portrayed in this book were kidnapped or physically forced to accompany their traffickers. In many instances, parents, or smugglers paid by family members, brought the girls to the U.S. Without exception, the girls and boys in this study believed they were coming to the States to find employment and in some cases educational opportunities. Following them from the time they were trafficked to their years as young adults, Gozdziak gives the children a voice so they can offer their own perspective on rebuilding their lives—getting jobs, learning English, developing friendships, and finding love. Gozdziak looks too at how the children’s perspectives compare to the ideas of child welfare programs, noting that the children focus on survival techniques while the institutions focus, not helpfully, on vulnerability and pathology. Gozdziak concludes that the services provided by institutions are in effect a one-size-fits-all, trauma-based model, one that ignores the diversity of experience among trafficked children. Breaking new ground, Trafficked Children in the United States offers a fresh take on what matters most to these young people as they rebuild their lives in America.

This book analyzes the contemporary effects of anti-trafficking policies on children trafficked for labour. It explores different dimensions of private and public apparatuses through which the governmentality of child trafficking manifests itself at a regional and interregional level. It investigates questions linked to the diffusion of the child trafficking norm between and within regions and stakeholders; to the criminalization and vulnerabilization of child traffickees; and to private governance of anti-trafficking initiatives, in particular concerning social sustainability of business supply chains. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with government, police, justice, civil society, multilateral organizations, and businesses in the EU and in ASEAN, the book argues that child traffickees are subjected not only to physical and psychological violence but also to structural violence. The book concludes with suggestions to improve current anti-trafficking regimes. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in EU Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Regionalism, Human Rights, Law, International Relations, and International Political Economy. Chapters 3, 6, and the Conclusion of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development provides an interdisciplinary, agenda-setting survey of the fields of migration and development, bringing together over 60 expert contributors from around the world to chart current and future trends in research on this topic. The links between migration and development can be traced back to the post-war period, if not further, yet it is only in the last 20 years that the 'migration–development nexus' has risen to prominence for academics and policymakers. Starting by mapping the different theoretical approaches to migration and development, this book goes on to present cutting edge research in poverty and inequality, displacement, climate change, health, family, social policy, interventions, and the key challenges surrounding migration and development. While much of the migration literature continues to be dominated by US and British perspectives, this volume includes original contributions from most regions of the world to offer alternative non-Anglophone perspectives. Given the increasing importance of migration in both international development and current affairs, the Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development will be of interest both to policymakers and to students and researchers of geography, development studies, political science, sociology, demography, and development economics.

This book interrogates the international child protection regime, with a particular focus on its weaknesses and failures. It looks at the lack of accountability, the normativity, and the tendency to recreate patterns of power and exclusion that blight otherwise good intentions. The book assesses why the regime falls short of its ideals and offers ideas for what can be done to improve it. Bringing together influential, established voices, and emerging scholars who work on issues related to childhood, youth, policy, and practice, the book offers a timely intervention that aims to push the world of international child protection in more progressive directions.