Economics of Human Trafficking
| Published date | 01 August 2010 |
| Author | Edward J. Schauer,Elizabeth M. Wheaton,Thomas V. Galli |
| Date | 01 August 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2009.00592.x |
Economics of Human Trafficking
Elizabeth M. Wheaton*, Edward J. Schauer** and Thomas V. Galli***
ABSTRACT
Because freedom of choice and economic gain are at the heart of produc-
tivity, human trafficking impedes national and international economic
growth. Within the next 10 years, crime experts expect human trafficking
to surpass drug and arms trafficking in its incidence, cost to human well-
being, and profitability to criminals (Schauer and Wheaton, 2006: 164–
165). The loss of agency from human trafficking as well as from modern
slavery is the result of human vulnerability (Bales, 2000: 15). As people
become vulnerable to exploitation and businesses continually seek the low-
est-cost labour sources, trafficking human beings generates profit and a
market for human trafficking is created.
This paper presents an economic model of human trafficking that encom-
passes all known economic factors that affect human trafficking both across
and within national borders. We envision human trafficking as a monopolis-
tically competitive industry in which traffickers act as intermediaries
between vulnerable individuals and employers by supplying differentiated
products to employers. In the human trafficking market, the consumers are
employers of trafficked labour and the products are human beings. Using a
rational-choice framework of human trafficking we explain the social situa-
tions that shape relocation and working decisions of vulnerable populations
leading to human trafficking, the impetus for being a trafficker, and the
decisions by employers of trafficked individuals. The goal of this paper is to
provide a common ground upon which policymakers and researchers can
collaborate to decrease the incidence of trafficking in humans.
INTRODUCTION
This paper identifies and models human trafficking according to the
United States Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000
* Equip the Saints, Red Oak, Texas.
** Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, Texas.
*** Chaminade University of Honolulu, Honolulu, Hawaii.
2010 The Authors
Journal Compilation 2010 IOM Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.,
International Migration Vol. 48 (4) 2010 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK,
ISSN 0020-7985 and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2435.2009.00592.x
MIGRATION
Edited by Elzbieta Gozdziak, Georgetown University
(TVPA) definition of the severe forms of human trafficking (Office on
Violence Against Women [OVAW], 2000). In this document, severe
human trafficking is either:
‘‘(A) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force,
fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act
has not attained 18 years of age; or
(B) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining
of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or
coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peo-
nage, debt bondage, or slavery.’’
We also adhere to Article 3, paragraph (a) of the United Nations Proto-
col to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially
Women and Children (U.N. Protocol), (2000) that defines trafficking in
persons as:
‘‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of per-
sons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion,
of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a
position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or
benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another
person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a
minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms
of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices
similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.’’
In this paper, the supply in the market for human trafficking refers to
labour provided by individuals trafficked for both labour and commer-
cial sexual exploitation. Economics models the labour supply decisions
made by vulnerable individuals. Thus the individual’s decision of
whether to supply labour is of vital importance to the economic model.
Whether the outcome of the individual’s choice in the human trafficking
market is labour or sexual exploitation is of importance for policy deter-
mination, but does not change the economic model.
One term needing clarification is ‘‘agency’’. This term has been much
discussed and debated in the literature of trafficking: In his book, Good
News About Injustice, Gary Haugen speaks of agency in broad terms
when he states, ‘‘Injustice occurs when power is misused to take from
others . . . namely, their life, dignity, liberty or the fruits of their . . .
labor’’ (1998: 72). This agency debate is hotly contested, especially so in
Economics of trafficking 115
2010 The Authors
Journal Compilation 2010 IOM
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