Research Guides: Current Issues: Human Trafficking

Introduction

Human trafficking refers to the trading of human beings for the purpose of forced labor and/or sexual exploitation. It involves acts of transporting, transferring, harboring, or receiving a person through a use of force or coercion, and it is recognized by the United Nations (UN) as a crime against humanity. Every year, tens of thousands of men, women, and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their home countries and abroad. Every country in the world is affected by trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit, or destination for victims.

Human Trafficking topic introduction (Opposing Viewpoints)
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Banner for National Human Trafficking Hotline 1-888-373-7888 (TTY:711)

Finding Resources

Sex Trafficking	Is recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purposes of a commercial sexual act, in which the person induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age.
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC)	Refers to a number of transactional sexual activities involving minors in which adults offer false promises of food, shelter, clothing, money, or other items of value, either to the child or to an interested third party, usually a family member. Child sexual exploitation includes such activities as procuring children to participate in child pornography, child prostitution, sex tourism, extrafamilial sexual molestation, sending obscene unsolicited materials to a child via the US Postal Service, online enticement of children for transactional sexual activities, and digital transactions of sexual content.
Labor Trafficking	Is 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, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
Peonage	A system of involuntary servitude based on the indebtedness of the laborer (the peon) to his creditor.
Organ Trafficking	“Trafficking in body parts” refers to the practice of selling one's body parts (organs, cells, biological tissue) to be implanted in another person for medical treatment. The recipient (illegally) pays the donor, but more often than not they pay a dealer for the body part. It is assumed that the trafficking in organs (such as kidneys) or organ parts (liver lobes) is pervasive.

Individual Databases

If you know a specific collection has what you need, or if you're struggling to narrow a search from the search bar above, try one of these.

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Complete historical full text of all issues of peer-reviewed journals in a wide range of humanities and social science fields. (pronounced jay-store)
Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Multi-disciplinary database; full text of articles from over 5,300 journals, magazines and newspapers, plus image collections.
Military Database (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
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The Military Database covers topics across all government and military branches, including international relations, political science, criminology, defense, aeronautics and space flight, communications, civil engineering, and more. Included are scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, government publications, and more.
Also searchable as part of the ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
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Full text of 285 journals in literature, history, international/cultural studies, and other fields within the humanities and social sciences.
Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law This link opens in a new window
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Contains an extensive collection of essential legal materials (court cases, trials, statutes, etc.) on along with books, sermons, slave narratives, speeches, periodicals, pamphlets, poems & songs, and much more from the 18th-20th centuries.

Online News

Recent Headlines via Google News

Online News Sources

Houston Chronicle
Search results on human trafficking from the Houston Chronicle
Texas Tribune - Human Trafficking
Search on human trafficking from the Texas Tribune
NPR News - Human Trafficking

News Databases

US Major Dailies (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
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US Major Dailies provides access to The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. The content is available by 8 a.m. each day and provides archives stretching as far back as 1985.
Newspaper Source Plus (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
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Selected full-text from 30 US national and international newspapers and 200 regional papers, plus TV & radio news transcripts.
New York Times: Create an Account This link opens in a new window
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Find both news and reviews as well as access to historical NY Times issues dating back to 1851.

First time user: To get access, you need to first register for an NYT account.
1. Click the link. You will have to enter your LSC library barcode.
2. Select Create Account and complete registration fields. Use your LSC email address!
3. Once you have an account, you may access NYTimes.com and NYT mobile apps like any subscriber, or go through this link but select "log in."

Note: Site passes will expire after 365 days. To renew, you will have to activate a new pass by repeating this process.

If Google Chrome shows a warning about this link, hit Ignore. You must use the proxy to get the special access.

Government Entities

Department of Justice: Human Trafficking
U.S. Department of State: 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report
U.S. Department Health and Human Services
Search results on human trafficking
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Search results for human trafficking from the Department of Homeland Security

Laws & Statutes

Organizations

Crime Stoppers: Human Trafficking Awareness
Crime Stoppers of Houston is Houston’s top non-profit dedicated to public safety and since 1980 has remained committed to its mission to solve and prevent serious crime in the Greater Houston Area in partnership with citizens, media and the criminal justice system.
United Against Human Trafficking
Their mission: to end human trafficking through preventing exploitation, educating the community, and empowering survivors.
Children at Risk: Center to End the Trafficking & Exploitation of Children
The Center to End the Trafficking and Exploitation of Children, the only center of its kind in Texas, was established to combat domestic minor sex trafficking.
Polaris Project
Founded in 2002, Polaris is named for the North Star, which people held in slavery in the United States used as a guide to navigate their way to freedom. Today we are filling in the roadmap for that journey and lighting the path ahead.
The UN Refugee Agency
Search the United Nations Refugees Agency for Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking (Statista)
Forced Labor, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (ILO)
International Labour Organization
Pew Research Center- Human Trafficking
United Nations: Office on Drugs and Drugs
UNODC's report on human trafficking exposes the modern form of slavery. Based on data gathered from 155 countries, it offers the first global assessment of the scope of human trafficking and what is being done to fight it. It includes: an overview of trafficking patterns; legal steps taken in response; and country-specific information on reported cases of trafficking in persons, victims, and prosecutions.

Selected Titles

Human Trafficking: A Reference Handbook by Alexis A. Aronowitz
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Collection: EBSCO Ebook Collection (1 copy)
Published: 2017
This book offers a comprehensive understanding of human trafficking in its many forms. It examines the traffickers who range from single operators to large, transnational organizations and investigates how they coerce, deceive, and exploit their victims in the domestic service, farming, construction, and sex industries as well as in the harvesting of organs.
The Slave Next Door by Kevin Bales; Ron Soodalter
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Collection: Ebook Central
Published: 2010
In these pages, we meet some unexpected modern-day slave owners, such as a 27-year old middle-class Texas housewife who is currently serving a life sentence for offenses including slavery. Weaving together a wealth of voices--from slaves, slaveholders, and traffickers as well as from experts, counselors, law enforcement officers, rescue and support groups, and community leaders--this book is also a call to action.
Slaves Among Us: The Hidden World of Human Trafficking by Monique Villa
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Collection: EBSCO Ebook Collection (1 copy)
Published: 2019
Through the stories of three remarkable individuals who share how they fell victim to traffickers and how their bodies and souls resisted an enterprise of total destruction, Monique Villa takes us around the world--from Ohio to Tokyo, London to India, Qatar to Colombia--to uncover a parallel world where men, women, and children are dehumanized and reduced to obedient machines.

Texas Reference Center: Human Trafficking
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See search results for Human Trafficking
The Texas Response to Human Trafficking
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2008 Report by the Texas Attorney General, published for the 81st Legislature, 93 pages
Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Search results for Human Trafficking
Texas Department of Family of Protective Services- Human Trafficking
City of Houston Mayor's Office: Anti-Human Trafficking Division
Their vision is to intertwine Houston’s Anti-Trafficking response into our city’s institutional fabric and replicate in the US and abroad.

About This Page

This page was originally developed by Blaire Hiebsch.

Updated by: Elaine Patton

First published: Spring 2021