Human trafficking constitutes one of the most serious human rights violations of our time. However, many social work practitioners still have a poor and incomplete understanding of the experiences of children and young people who have been trafficked. In Trafficked Young People, the authors call for a more sophisticated, informed and better developed understanding of the range of issues facing trafficked young people. In the first work of its kind to combine an up-to-date overview of the current policy context with related theoretical concerns and practitioner experiences, Pearce, Hynes & Bovarnick demonstrate how the trafficking of children and young people should be regarded as a child protection, rather than an immigration concern. Drawing on focus group and interview research with 72 practitioners and covering the cases of 37 individuals, Trafficked Young People explores the way child care practitioners identify, understand and work with the problems faced by people who have been trafficked. The book looks at how practitioners interpret and use definitions of trafficking in their day to day work; at their experiences of exposing the needs of trafficked children and young people and at their efforts to find appropriate resources to meet these needs. Trafficked Young People will be of interest to practitioners working in support housing and social work, along with solicitors and sociologists, particularly those working within discourses of child agency, self determination and victimhood. With its emphasis on the legal and policy framework, and integrated throughout with case histories, practitioner interviews and recommendations for best practice, Trafficked Young People is essential reading for anyone working within a Social Policy Development context.

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.

"Trafficking thrives in the shadows. And it can be easy to dismiss it as something that happens to someone else, somewhere else. But that is not the case. Trafficking is a crime that involves every nation on earth, and that includes our own."—US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2009 Human trafficking is as old as slavery and continues to be practiced in the modern world. Victims of human traffickers include workers in restaurants and in garment factories, maids and nannies in the homes of wealthy families, child sex workers, beggars on the street, boy soldiers, even infants kidnapped for foreign adoptions. Women and children are more likely to be coerced or seized than men and boys, especially if they are poor and uneducated. Traffickers sell their victims for their bodies or for their labor and reap an enormous profit. Human trafficking is estimated to be a $30 to $45 billion industry on an annual basis, rivaling weapons and drug trafficking as one of the most profitable criminal undertakings in the world. Up for Sale takes a hard look at human trafficking, identifying perpetrators and telling the stories of victims through their own words. You'll discover why some people become vulnerable to trafficking and you'll read about what their lives are like on a daily basis. You'll also meet some of the courageous individuals and organizations working to free people from lives in bondage so that, in the words of US president Barack Obama, each person can "forge a life equal to [their] talents and worthy of [their] dreams."

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.

How can a public health approach advance efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to child trafficking? Child trafficking is widely recognized as one of the critical issues of our day, prompting calls to action at the global, national, and local levels. Yet it is unclear whether the strategies and tools used to counter this exploitation—most of which involve law enforcement and social services—have actually reduced the prevalence of trafficking. In Preventing Child Trafficking, Jonathan Todres and Angela Diaz explore how the public health field can play a comprehensive, integrated role in preventing, identifying, and responding to child trafficking. Describing the depth and breadth of trafficking's impact on children while exploring the limitations in current responses, Todres and Diaz argue that public health frameworks offer important insights into the problem, with detailed chapters on how professionals and organizations can identify and respond effectively to at-risk and trafficked children. Drawing on the authors' years of experience working on this issue—Diaz is a doctor at a frontline medical center serving at-risk youth, victims, and survivors; Todres is a legal expert on legislative and policy initiatives to address child trafficking—the book maps out a public health approach to child trafficking, the role of the health care sector, and the prospects for building a comprehensive response. Providing readers with advice geared toward better understanding trafficking's root causes, this revelatory book concludes by mapping out a "public health toolkit" that can be used by anyone who is interested in preventing child trafficking, from policymakers to professionals who work with children.

Today, two cultural forces are converging to make America's youth easy targets for sex traffickers. Younger and younger girls are engaging in adult sexual attitudes and practices, and the pressure to conform means thousands have little self-worth and are vulnerable to exploitation. At the same time, thanks to social media, texting, and chatting services, predators are able to ferret out their victims more easily than ever before. In Walking Prey, advocate and former victim Holly Austin Smith shows how middle class suburban communities are fast becoming the new epicenter of sex trafficking in America. Smith speaks from experience: Without consistent positive guidance or engagement, Holly was ripe for exploitation at age fourteen. A chance encounter with an older man led her to run away from home, and she soon found herself on the streets of Atlantic City. Her experience led her, two decades later, to become one of the foremost advocates for trafficking victims. Smith argues that these young women should be treated as victims by law enforcement, but that too often the criminal justice system lacks the resources and training to prevent the vicious cycle of prostitution. This is a clarion call to take a sharp look at one of the most striking human rights abuses, and one that is going on in our own backyard.

"The Legacy of Racism for Children: Psychology, Law, and Public Policy is the first volume to review the intersecting implications of psychology, public policy, and law with the goal of understanding and ending the challenges facing racial minority youth in America today. Proceeding roughly from causes to consequences - from early life experiences to adolescent and teen experiences - each chapter focuses on a different domain, explains the laws and policies that create or exacerbate racial disparity in that domain, reviews relevant psychological research and its implications for those laws or policies, and calls for next steps. Chapter authors examine how race and ethnicity intersect with child maltreatment (including child sex trafficking, corporal punishment, and memory for and disclosures of abuse), child dependency court decisions, custody and adoption, familial incarceration, the "school to prison pipeline," police/youth interactions, jurors' perceptions of child and adolescent victims and defendants, and U.S. immigration law and policy"--