Human trafficking within and across nations is a pervasive, insidious global criminal enterprise that endangers human rights and impedes social justice. Sex and labor are two fundamental types of human trafficking, but both media and policies prioritize the former. Social work calls for empowering marginalized groups, and labor trafficking survivors—who are more likely to be women and immigrants of color—certainly fall into this category. Since 2003, every U.S. state has criminalized human trafficking, yet the issue remains a wicked problem. Most human trafficking analyses focus on federal or international, not state, policies.
Thus, the purpose of this critical analysis was to explore how states frame human trafficking in policymaking, including who policymakers overlook. This qualitative multiple-case study’s research questions were: How do state policymakers conceptualize the problem of human trafficking, and how does this conceptualization differ between states? For answers, this dissertation analyzed legislative speeches about old and new state human trafficking laws from a purposive sample of states with content analysis. This dissertation adopted an intersectional lens to uncover what types of survivors (i.e., demographics, labor or sex trafficking survivors) policymakers emphasize when publicly justifying their stances.
This study found that, on the whole, state human trafficking policymaking does not consider survivors’ intersectionality—minimizing the experiences of women, trans, and immigrant survivors of color. The findings of this dissertation lend empirical support to the observation that U.S. policies prioritize the prototypical young female survivor and sex over labor trafficking. Suggestions are offered for survivors, policymakers, and social workers to overcome inequitable framing and ensure that policymaking better reflects the experiences of marginalized groups.
DR. ASLI YALIM, Committee Chair.
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