Human Trafficking as a New (In)Security Threat

Reviews / Votes

Security and Human Trafficking is a significant contribution to our holistic understanding of the interplay of human trafficking and national security. Elzbieta Gozdziak challenges the famous oratory on these issues by disentangling factual truths from populist rhetorics by focusing on rich empirical data collected in Hungary, Poland, and the United States.

- Ludmila Bogdan , Ph.D., immigration and human trafficking scholar at Harvard University.

Elzbieta M. Gozdziak brings decades of ethnographic research on human trafficking and international migration to powerfully critique the conflation of human trafficking and migration with national security threats such as terrorism and organized crime. She masterfully shows how the inaccurate framing of human trafficking as a security threat in the United States and Europe has led to costly and high stakes policy actions -- enhanced border control, anti-immigration, and surveillance measures -- that increase insecurity and lead to negative economic, military, and diplomatic consequences. If we care about solving the problem of human trafficking, Gozdziak's call to interrogate policy framings and demand better empirical data to justify those framings will lead to better policy solutions and outcomes to combat human trafficking on the ground. Human Trafficking as a New (In)Security Threat is a must-read for students, experts, and practitioners interested in the nexus of human trafficking, migration, and national security.

- Kathleen M. Vogel , Ph.D, Professor and Deputy Director, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Tempe, Arizona. Vogel is co-author of Human Trafficking Trends in the Western Hemisphere .