Geri L. DimasI, Renata A. Konrad2 , Kayse Lee MaassID3 , Andrew C. Trapp

Human trafficking is a widespread and compound social, economic, and human rights issue occurring in every region of the world. While there have been an increasing number of antihuman trafficking studies from the Operations Research and Analytics domains in recent years, no systematic review of this literature currently exists. We fill this gap by providing a systematic literature review that identifies and classifies the body of Operations Research and Analytics research related to the anti-human trafficking domain, thereby illustrating the collective impact of the field to date. We classify 142 studies to identify current trends in methodologies, theoretical approaches, data sources, trafficking contexts, target regions, victim-survivor demographics, and focus within the well-established 4Ps principles. Using these findings, we discuss the extent to which the current literature aligns with the global demographics of human trafficking and identify existing research gaps to propose an agenda for Operations Research and Analytics researchers. 

. PLoS ONE 17(8), 2022: e0273708. 

By Elina Kervinen, Natalia Ollus

  HEUNI and the Assistance system for victims of human trafficking have analysed whether trafficking of children occurs in Finland and what forms of human trafficking may exist in Finland. In addition to trafficking in human beings, the report examines exploitation related to or indicative of the same, as well as risk and vulnerability factors that create conditions for such exploitation. In addition to minors, the report included young people 18–21 years of age, as many adolescents have been exploited as minors but have either only received assistance as an adult or have been victimised after reaching adult age. The report covers exploitation of children and young persons who are members of the majority population or have a foreign background, including children and young persons who are asylum seekers. The report includes both the cases of exploitation that took place in Finland and those that were identified in Finland. This means that the actual exploitation may have occurred in Finland, in a child’s home country or country of origin, or en route to Finland. The report answers the following research questions: 1) Which forms of trafficking of children exists in Finland, 2) What kinds of cases have been reported to authorities, organisations and other actors, 3) How these parties have acted in the cases reported to them, and 4) How trafficking in children can be identified and prevented in Finland. The focus of the report is on understanding and describing the nature of the phenomenon on the basis of individual case examples. The report utilises both quantitative and qualitative information obtained from an online survey directed at professionals and interviews with experts. We have also used statistics of the Assistance system for victims of human trafficking on child victims of human trafficking and case descriptions of the forms of human trafficking experienced by children. Between 2006 and 2018, the Assistance system for victims of human trafficking assisted 55 children under 18 years of age and 141 young persons (aged 18 to 21). These figures show how many children and young persons have been guided into the assistance system, but they do not describe the extent of the phenomenon in Finland, as many cases remain unidentified as human trafficking. On the basis of this report, it appears that the exploitation of children and young people is not always seen through the framework of trafficking in human beings: rather, it is understood as some other form of exploitation. According to the assessment by experts, as obtained from interviews and the survey results, exploitation that took place in Finland was most commonly sexual exploitation, such as forced prostitution, commercial sexual exploitation of a child or sexual exploitation that occurs or begins via the Internet. The report also reveals cases of forced marriage and forced criminal activity in Finland. Sexual exploitation and forced marriages are the most common forms of exploitation experienced by children and young people in their home country or country of origin. En route to Finland, children and young people have experienced many forms of sexual exploitation and labour exploitation. According to this report, sexual exploitation appears to be the most  identifiable form of exploitation related to human trafficking.

Helsinki: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United NationsHEUNI, 2019. 115p.

  By Anni Lietonen and Natalia Ollus

  The guide has been prepared in connection with the Action plan for effective public procurement (i.e., the Procurement Finland Strategy), coordinated by the Min - istry of Finance and the Association of Finnish Local and Re - gional Authorities. The project was built on the objectives of the Social Sustainability Group operating as part of the Pro - curement Finland Strategy, which include the promotion of human rights in public procurement and respecting funda - mental rights at work. By combating labour exploitation and human trafficking as part of public procurement procedures, contracting units can contribute to preventing fraudulent ac - tivities and crimes, and to promoting the implementation of human rights and respect for the fundamental principles of working life. The proposed measures, views and interpretations presented in this publication represent the authors' views and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the par - ties involved in the implementation of the Procurement Fin - land strategy. This guide has been prepared for the public procurement context in Finland, and for the application of Finnish laws and instructions. However, public procurers and businesses from other countries can also benefit from the content of the guide. When implementing the recom - mendations in the guide, public contracting entities must ensure that their measures comply with the na - tional procurement and data protection legislations, the Act on the Contractor’s Obligations and Liabili - ty when Work is Contracted Out, including other key obligations.   

Helsinki: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations HEUNI, 2021. 61p.  

By Alice Fereday

This report assesses risks of exploitation and labour trafficking in gold-mining areas in northern Niger and northern Mali. It examines the modalities of recruitment and employment, the risks they pose to workers and the structural factors that contribute to the vulnerability of gold miners. The report also identifies key opportunities for policy makers to address these risks while recognising the crucial role of gold mining for local livelihoods and stability.

  OCWAR-T Research Report 3 . Institute for Security Studies, 2023. 34p.

by Joe Eyerman, Melissa M. Labriola, Bella González

Reducing the prevalence of all forms of human trafficking, including sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and child sexual exploitation, is a national priority that puts the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in a prominent role. Given the scale, evolving nature, and complexity of labor trafficking, combating the problem poses a significant challenge. The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) anti–human trafficking program is assessing the current state of and future needs for labor trafficking research in the United States. This effort will serve as a starting point for future social science–based S&T anti–human trafficking research and actions focused on labor trafficking.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 

Edited by  Christiana Gregoriou

This open access edited collection examines representations of human trafficking in media ranging from British and Serbian newspapers, British and Scandinavian crime novels, and a documentary series, and questions the extent to which these portrayals reflect the realities of trafficking. It tackles the problematic tendency to under-report particular types of victim and forms of trafficking, and seeks to explore both dominant and marginalised points of view. The authors take a cross-disciplinary approach, utilising analytical tools from across the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, literary and media studies, and cultural criminology. It will appeal to students, academics and policy-makers with an interest in human trafficking and its depiction in the modern day.

Cham:  Springer Nature, 2018. 160p.

By  Hui Yin Chuah

This briefing paper highlights the key findings from the Research Report, “Refugee Protection, Human Smuggling, and Trafficking in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia”. The research aims to assess the risks and needs of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia across three thematic domains, with particular focus on the national contexts of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The three domains are: protection; human trafficking; and human smuggling.

Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 9p.

Edited by Christine M. Jacobsen, Marry-Anne Karlsen and Shahram Khosravi  

"This edited volume approaches waiting both as a social phenomenon that proliferates in irregularised forms of migration and as an analytical perspective on migration processes and practices. Waiting as an analytical perspective offers new insights into the complex and shifting nature of processes of bordering, belonging, state power, exclusion and inclusion, and social relations in irregular migration. The chapters in this book address legal, bureaucratic, ethical, gendered, and affective dimensions of time and migration. A key concern is to develop more theoretically robust approaches to waiting in migration as constituted in and through multiple and relational temporalities. The chapters highlight how waiting is configured in specific legal, material, and socio-cultural situations, as well as how migrants encounter, incorporate, and resist temporal structures. This collection includes ethnographic and other empirically based material, as well as theorizing that cross-cut disciplinary boundaries. It will be relevant to scholars from anthropology and sociology, and others interested in temporalities, migration, borders, and power. 

New York: London: Routledge, 2021. 229p.

By Kevin Fredy Hinterberge

‘Combatting’ irregular migration is one of the key challenges to migration management at EU level. The present book addresses one of the most pressing structural problems regarding the EU’s return policy: the low return rate of irregularly staying migrants. In this regard the EU Return Directive obliges Member States to issue a return decision, yet only 40% of such decisions are enforced annually. Moreover, despite the political and legal efforts, the EU is not making any significant progress in enforcing the rules it has laid down in the Return Directive. The legislation of EU Member States may, however, serve as a source for possible solutions to ‘combat’ the problem of irregularly staying migrants. This is why the book compares the system of regularisations in Austria, Germany and Spain. Regularisations constitute an effective alternative to returns because they terminate the irregular residence of migrants, not through deportation, but rather by granting a right of residence. Regularisation is therefore understood as each legal decision that awards legal residency to irregularly staying migrants. As is shown by the examination and comparison of regularisations in Austria, Germany and Spain, differentiated systems of regularisation exist at national level. However, EU regularisations supplementing the present return policy would be more effective at ‘combatting’ irregular migration at EU level.

 Baden-Baden: Nomos; Hart Publishing, 2023. 398p.

Edited by Emre Bayamlioğlu, Irina Baraliuc, Liisa Janssens, and Mireille Hildebrandt

Profiling the European citizen: why today's democracy needs to look harder at the negative potential of new technology than at its positive potential.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,    148p.

Edited by  Dirk Hoerder and Nora Faires

Presenting an unprecedented, integrated view of migration in North America, this interdisciplinary collection of essays illuminates the movements of people within and between Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States over the past two centuries. Several essays discuss recent migrations from Central America as well. In the introduction, Dirk Hoerder provides a sweeping historical overview of North American societies in the Atlantic world. He also develops and advocates what he and Nora Faires call “transcultural societal studies,” an interdisciplinary approach to migration studies that combines migration research across disciplines and at the local, regional, national, and transnational levels. The contributors examine the movements of diverse populations across North America in relation to changing cultural, political, and economic patterns.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. 458p.

By John Ketchamand Daniel Di Martino   

Since the summer of 2022, more than 70,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City, stretching public resources to their limit. The massive influx has been particularly challenging given the city’s “right to shelter,” the result of a 1979 lawsuit, Callahan v. Carey, and corresponding consent decree, which required the city to provide immediate shelter to those who request it, regardless of the number of applicants or the availability of resources. In order to comply with this requirement, the city has housed some 40,000 migrants in shelters—which has led to an approximately 70% spike in the shelter population in a single year. NYC is currently supporting more than 170 emergency shelters and 10 additional large-scale humanitarian relief centers.

Shelters and relief centers simply cannot house all the newly arrived migrants, which has forced the city to procure approximately 4,500 hotel rooms in unionized facilities,[1] often through expensive contracts that provide bonanzas to owners and the city’s hotel-worker unions. Most notably, on May 13, Mayor Eric Adams announced that the historic 1,025-room Roosevelt Hotel, located in the heart of Midtown East, would become New York City’s central migrant intake center,[2] at a reported cost of $225 million.[3] In addition to hosting hundreds of families and individuals on-site, the location will process all arriving asylum seekers and provide them with a range of city services, including government-issued ID cards, public-school and health-insurance enrollment, mental-health counseling, and more.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2023. 19p.

By Alexander Betts

Such threats as environmental change, food insecurity, and generalized violence force massive numbers of people to flee states that are unable or unwilling to ensure their basic rights, as do conditions in failed and fragile states that make possible human rights deprivations. Because these reasons do not meet the legal understanding of persecution, the victims of these circumstances are not usually recognized as "refugees," preventing current institutions from ensuring their protection. In this book, Alexander Betts develops the concept of "survival migration" to highlight the crisis in which these people find themselves.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Pres, 2013. 255p.

Edited by Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi and Vinh Nguyen

This Handbook presents a transnational and interdisciplinary study of refugee narratives, broadly defined. Interrogating who can be considered a refugee and what constitutes a narrative, the thirty-eight chapters included in this collection encompass a range of forcibly displaced subjects, a mix of geographical and historical contexts, and a variety of storytelling modalities. Analyzing novels, poetry, memoirs, comics, films, photography, music, social media, data, graffiti, letters, reports, eco-design, video games, archival remnants, and ethnography, the individual chapters counter dominant representations of refugees as voiceless victims. Addressing key characteristics and thematics of refugee narratives, this Handbook examines how refugee cultural productions are shaped by and in turn shape socio-political landscapes. It will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners committed to engaging refugee narratives in the contemporary moment.

London; New York: Routledge, 2023. 528p. 

Edited by Matthew Frank and Jessica Reinisch  

 Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959 offers a new history of Europe’s mid-20th century as seen through its recurrent refugee crises. By bringing together in one volume recent research on a range of different contexts of groups of refugees and refugee policy, it sheds light on the common assumptions that underpinned the history of refugees throughout the period under review. The essays foreground the period between the end of the First World War, which inaugurated a series of new international structures to deal with displaced populations, and the late 1950s, when Europe's home-grown refugee problems had supposedly been ‘solved’ and attention shifted from the identification of an exclusively European refugee problem to a global one. Borrowing from E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis, first published in 1939, the editors of this volume test the idea that the two post-war eras could be represented as a single crisis of a European-dominated international order of nation states in the face of successive refugee crises which were both the direct consequence of that system and a challenge to it. Each of the chapters reflects on the utility and limitations of this notion of a ‘forty years’ crisis’ for understanding the development of specific national and international responses to refugees in the mid-20th century. Contributors to the volume also provide alternative readings of the history of an international refugee regime, in which the non-European and colonial world are assigned a central role in the narrative.

London; New York : Bloomsburgy Academic, 2017. 269p.

By Adele Valeria Messina

Filled with new elements that challenge common scholarly theses, this book acquaints the reader with the “Jewish problem” of sociology and provides what this academic discipline urgently needs: a one-volume history of the Sociology of the Holocaust. The story of why and how sociologists as well as the schools of sociological thought came to confront the Holocaust has never been entirely told. The volume offers original insights on the nature of American sociology with implications for the post-Holocaust sociology development.

Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017. 498p.

By Cesraéa Rumpf

Recovering Identity examines a critical tension in criminalized women’s identity work. Through in-depth qualitative and photo-elicitation interviews, Cesraéa Rumpf shows how formerly incarcerated women engaged recovery and faith-based discourses to craft rehabilitated identities, defined in opposition to past identities as “criminal-addicts.” While these discourses made it possible for women to carve out spaces of personal protection, growth, and joy, they also promoted individualistic understandings of criminalization and the violence and dehumanization that followed. Honoring criminalized women’s stories of personal transformation, Rumpf nevertheless strongly critiques institutions’ promotion of narratives that impose lifelong moral judgment while detracting attention from the structural forces of racism, sexism, and poverty that contribute to women’s vulnerability to violence.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023. 234p

Edited by Carol H. Poston

FROM THE PREFACE: “In 1792 a book appeared in London which set out the claim, dramatically and classically, that true freedom necessitates the equality of women and men. Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was so provocative and popular that a second edition appearedin the same year, and Dublin, Paris, and American editions soon followed. The history of the subsequent editions of A Vindication of the Rights of Wcman closely parallels the vicissitudes of the women's movement: when feminism as a political cause comes to the fore, as it periodically does, Mary Wollstonecraft's work is one of the first to be reissued. Yet after nearly 175 years of republication and commentary, the book has never been annotated, nor has there been (save in the case of facsimile editions) an attempt to preserve Wollstonecraft's prose exactly as she wrote it…”

Norton. W.W. Norton. 1975. 248p. USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP.

By Marry-Anne Karlsen

Over the past decades, European states have increasingly limited irregular migrants’ access to welfare services as a tool for migration control. Still, irregular migrants tend to have access to certain basic services, although frequently of a subordinate, arbitrary, and unstable kind. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Norway, this book sheds light on ambiguities in the state’s response to irregular migration that simultaneously cut through law, policy, and practice. Carefully examining the complex interplay between the geopolitical management of territory and the biopolitical management of populations, the book argues that irregularised migrants should be understood as precariously included in the welfare state rather than simply excluded. The notion of precarious inclusion highlights the insecure and unpredictable nature of the inclusive practises, underscoring how limited access to welfare does not necessarily contradict restrictive migration policies. Taking the situated encounters between irregularised migrants and service providers as its starting point for exploring broader questions of state sovereignty, biopolitics, and borders, Migration Control and Access to Welfare offers insightful analyses of the role of life, territory, and temporality in contemporary politics. As such, it will appeal to scholars of migration and border studies, gender research, social anthropology, geography, and sociology.

New York: London: Routledge, 2021. 176p.

By Michela Semprebon

This book deals with social protection programmes targeted to people trafficked for the scope of sexual exploitation. It provides empirical evidence on the N.A.Ve programme, in the north-eastern Italian Veneto Region, and its evolution. It elaborates on the programme by narrating the subjective experiences of practitioners and of a specific group of beneficiaries: young Nigerian women - some in transition towards the majority age. The book builds on qualitative research, including a long institutional ethnographic research and semi-structured interviews carried out in the period 2019-2021, before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. It takes an intersectional, social work and humanitarian governance perspective to examine the multiple dimensions of vulnerability (age, gender, geographical origin, type of exploitation) characterising trafficked and sexually exploited Nigerian women. It draws attention to the precariousness of protection trajectories, but also on the agency of these women, by building on the autonomy of migration approach, while shedding light on the temporal tensions between biographical and institutional times. Calling for greater space for women’s voices and for their involvement in the co-development of protection programmes, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, social work and politics, as well as to practitioners and policymakers interested in migration and trafficking..

New York; London: Routledge, 2023. 202p.