Trafficking, Gender, Human Rights, and Health

This interdisciplinary course and speaker series served as one attempt to broaden and deepen the discussion about sex trafficking, situating it more widely in the context of human trafficking and exploring the complex interrelations between sex trafficking, prostitution, health, gender, and generation. The interests that drive trafficking in women and children for prostitution are closely related to those driving other dimensions of trafficking. As income disparities widen across the globe, and the service economy grows, poverty remains a resource for profit-driven entrepreneurs—and traffickers—the world over.  The persistent failure to address growing inequalities, including gendered ones, contributes to the expansion of trafficking. Paradoxically, in this era of heightened talk about globalization in which human rights discourses circulate widely around the world, trafficking not only persists but has expanded.

Speakers: Janie Chuang, "Trafficking: Globalization, Migration, and Sanctions"; Elizabeth Bernstein, "The Sexual Politics of the 'New Abolitionism'"; Keith Haight, Detective, LAPD; and Kathleen C. Kim, 
"Re-conceptualizing Human Trafficking."