Nancy Hagan is currently a senior research associate at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work with a long history of engaging in both social science research and community centered programming. She came to UNC having served as a policy analyst on the North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission, and prior to that as a senior research analyst on Project No Rest, a UNC-based, federally funded five year initiative designed to create awareness and response to human trafficking across North Carolina. She has also held faculty positions at North Carolina State University. For almost two decades, Nancy allied with others to design, direct, and deliver programming to underserved rural residents of North Carolina, with a focus on working alongside stakeholders from immigrant and farmworker communities. Through this work, she developed expertise around the issue of human trafficking, both sex and labor. She continues to work alongside vulnerable communities to address exploitation in her current role at the UNC School of Social Work.
Margaret Henderson is an expert on facilitation and human services, specifically in cultivating resources and strategies to reduce rates of elder abuse and human trafficking. As a faculty member, her current work primarily includes facilitating public meetings and assisting local governments to address human trafficking and elder abuse. As a former director of the Public Intersection Project, she worked on research and communication strategies that strengthen cross-sector working relationships for more effective public problem-solving. In facilitation work, she specialized in the practical implications of managing cross-organizational collaborations, community programs, and nonprofit organizations.
Episode Description
According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics the number of people prosecuted for human trafficking offenses has more than doubled between 2011 and 2021. The National Human Trafficking hotline reports that it has identified more than 82,000 instances of human trafficking involving close to 165,000 victims. Researching human trafficking is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with our guests Nancy Hagan and Margaret Henderson.
Check out their full article in Chance Magazine
Learn more about human trafficking at Polaris Project.
+Full Transcript
Rosemary Pennington
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of people prosecuted for human trafficking offenses more than doubled between 2011 and 2021. The National Human Trafficking Hotline reports that it's identified more than 82,000 instances of trafficking, involving close to 165,000 victims. Researching human trafficking is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University's departments of statistics and media journalism and film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me is regular panelist John Bailer, emeritus professor of statistics at Miami University. Two guests are joining us on the show today. The first is Nancy Hagan. She's currently a senior research associate at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work. She came to UNC having served as a policy analyst on the North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission. And prior to that, as a senior research analyst on Project No Rest, a UNC based federally funded five year initiative designed to create awareness and response to human trafficking across North Carolina. Margaret Henderson is an expert on facilitation and human services, specifically in cultivating resources and strategies to reduce rates of elder abuse and human trafficking. Her current work primarily includes facilitating public meetings, and assisting local governments to address human trafficking and elder abuse. As director of the Public Intersection Project, she researches and communicates strategies that strengthen cross-sector working relationships for more effective public problem solving. She taught in the UNC School of Government MPA program for 20 years, and prior to joining the school, served as the executive director of the Orange County Rape Crisis Center. They're also both the authors of an article in Chance, discussing the four strategies for human trafficking research. Thank you both so much for joining us today.
Margaret Henderson
Thank you for the invitation.
Nancy Hagan
Thank you for inviting us.
John Bailer
This seems like such a big topic. And it's such a challenge to consider and discuss. How about, let us start on some common ground. But when you describe something, reflecting human trafficking, what does that mean?
Nancy Hagan
One reason we took on the invitation to author this article is to address that very question. The search for common ground is challenging the constructs that we use: the definitions, the perspectives, the experiences of exploitation that may come under the umbrella of human trafficking vary according to stakeholder and sector. And those stakeholders and sectors include the international community, within the United States, and even at the local level. And so we framed our article around four different perspectives that would inform just that issue: what is human trafficking? And we used criminal justice, public health, human rights and economic models to define what is human trafficking.
Margaret Henderson And I think no matter which definitions you use, whether you use the legal definitions or something else, we're all battling with the fact that we've got these myths and misinformation on our heads, thanks in part to Hollywood, but also to 1000s of years of human history that made human trafficking normal, frankly, a way of life. So it's a difficult thing to wrestle with and to get a group in agreement about what exactly it is they're trying to talk about and trying to address in their work no matter what the work is.
Rosemary Pennington
Since you brought up the sort of myths that are perpetuated in the media. You know, I think one thing people continually go back to when they hear human trafficking is sex trafficking. That seems to be what we discuss a lot. Especially because there's a Super Bowl in the offing not too far away in the United States. And there are always new stories about issues of sex trafficking around big sporting events. But there are other kinds of human trafficking. Could you talk through some of the other things that get classified as trafficking that maybe people might not be aware of, or maybe wouldn't recognize?
Margaret Henderson Well, certainly I think America has a voyeuristic interest in sex trafficking. You know, Hollywood uses it all too many times to advance their plots and sell their tickets? Definitely it happens. But, you know, the common concern is that sex trafficking actually doesn't happen nearly as often as labor trafficking does, but we don't have good data to prove that either way. But sex trafficking gets the attention, and sex trafficking of young women and children in particular get more attention than anything else. And it's not necessarily where we should be focusing our efforts exclusively.
John Bailer
So when you talk about labor trafficking, can you describe kind of, it always helps us to have sort of some narrative kind of examples of some of what's a case or a condition where someone is experiencing or is a victim of labor trafficking? Where might they have started, and what are they doing now?
Nancy Hagan Sure, so human trafficking is a form of exploitation. Its very nature is exploitative. In the United States, we tend not to use the frame our words, modern slavery, or slavery because of our particular history with chattel slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and the exploitations and abuses that are multi generational and part of of the history of the United States now, so that brings us back to even some of the conceptual differences that arise internationally where other cultures and countries do talk about modern slavery, we tend not to in the United States. So I just wanted to bring that forward at the beginning of our conversation. We, as Margaret said, often default to sex trafficking, which is one form of human trafficking, the other is labor, it is believed. And the ILO, the International Labor Organization, is the entity that provides population estimates of the prevalence of labor trafficking throughout the world, it is believed, not confirmed, that labor trafficking is far more prevalent than sex trafficking. But as Margaret said, sex trafficking sells, sex sells, it's compelling. It's egregious, it's a violation. And so it garners a lot of attention. Labor trafficking, the exploitation of people for their labor, is embedded into our cultural systems, be they economic models, models of production, models of sustenance, and so it's very hard to identify, distinguish, determine, much less, prosecute, or end. And so we often talk about vulnerabilities and how vulnerabilities are exploited in all forms of human trafficking and labor. That vulnerability is: how do I meet my basic needs? I need a roof over my head, I need food, I need shelter, clothing, I've got to support my children, my family, my fellows. How to do that? Well, we often do that through work. And so when there's a power differential, a trafficker, and the system can exploit a person who does not have access to those means of sustenance.
Rosemary Pennington
You mentioned that the number we have for people being trafficked for labor purposes, is an estimate. What are the challenges to tracing individuals who have been trafficked? Or perhaps even identifying individuals who have been trafficked?
Nancy Hagan
Well, it's a fearsome crime. So we only very recently established the Criminal Act of Human Trafficking in the United States through the first federal legislation that was passed in 2006, 23 years ago. Prior to that, human trafficking, again, the exploitation of an individual for commercial sex, or forced labor, was embedded in our systems, in our culture and our humaneness and not recognized as criminal. And so we're really just developing those means of identification, and in particular, the trust that needs to evolve in order for victims. We, in our work, use the term victim to convey someone who is still involved and being exploited in a trafficking situation and survivor as someone who has exited that situation. And so to create trust and system response for folks to either self identify or to have law enforcement, service providers, family, faith communities, any other stakeholder, identify much less received services and or justice is very, very challenging and new.
John Bailer
You know, you talked about these four different strategies to understand nature and scope. You know, you mentioned criminal justice, public health, human rights and economic analysis. So all of these are lenses to think about this, about human trafficking. Could you just give a sentence or two descriptor of each of these perspectives?
Margaret Henderson Well, the criminal justice approach basically relies on what happens through law enforcement in our court system, which is fun, except it's the tip of the iceberg. And it's based on what the trafficker does, it's not victim oriented at all. The public health approach relies primarily on the victims who are somehow defined while seeking services like healthcare services, or they are seeking services specifically related to being trafficked. So that's very much more oriented around the person who has experienced the abuse, which is a good thing. But you know, it's a different angle. The human rights approach, Nancy, correct me here, but I think we see that much more in initial international analysis of how this happens, and where it happens, and who's affected by it. And it's just the very big picture that humans should not be treated like this. It's wrong in whatever form that it takes. And we are just beginning to see more economic analyses. I mean, it's happened some on an international scale. But we're seeing more I think, in our country, where people are just doing an economic or forensic analysis of where the money goes. And tracking that, and trying to use that to develop a sense of how big the problem is, where the exchanges take place, how they are exchanged, who's involved in the transactions, and that sort of thing. It's been great seeing the banking industry getting more involved in that in the last decade or so. But remember, you know, Nancy said, we didn't have the legislation until 2000. So we are novices as a country in dealing with this problem, and figuring out how to make this enormously complex series of events and abuses, how to make it digestible, how to identify chunks of it that we can actually make progress with. So all we really get are bits of research that give you a glimpse into one particular dynamic in one place, you know, one kind of victim, one kind of transaction. And that's all good, but it's fragmented. So our knowledge about human trafficking is fragmented. Our services are fragmented. And our willingness to act is also fragmented as well.
Rosemary Pennington
You're listening to Stats and Stories. And today we're talking with Nancy Hagan and Margaret Henderson about human trafficking research. As I was listening to you talk and have been going through this article and thinking about this, the thing that I feel like it's becoming much more of a talking point is the issue of coercion, around trafficking, and it, you know, around domestic violence around trafficking and other things. And I wonder if you guys could talk a little bit about what exactly coercion might mean in a trafficking situation. I just keep thinking about how, again, how do you measure this, to really understand what is going on?
Margaret Henderson Well, I can think of one example. And how it can start out is basically, we have the friend, the daughter, the whoever, who has the boyfriend, that we just don't really like; we don't really trust. And he seems to be using, or he convinces her that she needs him, or she needs him because nobody else has ever paid attention to her. Nobody else loves her or understands. Or he may shower her with love and affection and make her feel like she belongs in a way that she never has before. She needs that, just like we all need that. And at some point, there's some financial stress here, I need you to do something for me, we need to get the rent money together. And here's what you can do. And it builds from there. That's just one example. And you know, it doesn't apply to everybody, it can be a lot more dramatic or a lot less dramatic. But the point is, the coercion is so subtle, and it's so successful, in that the trafficker knows how to reach out into our vulnerabilities and tap them, tap the thing that we need, whether it's food and shelter, like Nancy mentioned earlier, or if it's a sense of belonging and understanding. Like imagine I'm a gay kid from a family and a community that won't accept me, but somebody else out there does. And he tells me things that I need to hear. So yeah, now naturally, I'm going to gravitate to that person and maybe not keep my boundaries up in the way I ordinarily would. And he can eventually convince me to do things I wouldn't otherwise do,
John Bailer
You know, it is such a hard problem to even just define and then kind of quantify a kind of impact. But one thing that I noticed is, you just described this idea of this amp model, as being part of human trafficking, that there is an action, a means, a purpose. And the means, like you just were talking about one example of the means being coercion. Could you talk a little bit about why this model was helpful to consider when you think about human trafficking?
Nancy Hagan
I'm happy to address that. And I thank you for bringing it up. Because we do use the AMP model or the amp model both in the criminal justice system and in the victim services world to help us frame this very complex and multifaceted exploitation, which is human trafficking. And so that AMP stands for action means purpose, one of each of those elements needs to be occurring in order for the act of human trafficking to take place. Now, Margaret spoke of Hollywood. Hollywood tends to focus on some of the acts like induces, recruits, harbors, transports, provides or obtains. So it's an action that one human being or a group of human beings takes upon others. The means; there are three possible means: force, fraud, or coercion. Media loves force, people who talk of rescue often are drawn to that force. We find, however, as was mentioned earlier, that fraud and coercion, in particular coercion, which involves the manipulation of emotion, or characteristics, or elements, is far more subtle, harder to identify, not glitzy, and very common. I always say that anybody who's stood with a two year old in a grocery line while that child is having a meltdown about the candy bar at the cashier's counter has experienced some sort of coercive act, we've all engaged and sometimes we capitulate. And coercion is very, very hard to identify, much less address, and then the purpose. So Act means purpose, we have to have one of each, the purpose is either commercial sex, or forced labor. caveat. In the United States, if the trafficked individual is under the age of 18, and it's sex trafficking, i.e. commercial sex, they are always a victim. That force, fraud and coercion does not have to be demonstrated. However, in the US for labor trafficking of minors, we deviate from almost the entire rest of the world who has signed an accord about what the definition of human trafficking is legally. In the United States, we say that even if a person is under the age of 18, and they're engaged in forced labor, force, fraud, or coercion has to be identified, denoted and prosecuted. And that is incredibly hard to do. So we have almost no cases of human trafficking of minors in the United States, but we do definitely have identified cases of the sex trafficking of minors, which again, is very compelling, and Garner's lots of attention in the public arena. So force, fraud, coercion.
John Bailer
Just as a quick follow up, are there particular industries or, you know, occupations where you're more likely to see this type of labor trafficking occurring?
Margaret Henderson Well, the Polaris organization here in the United States that is partnered with the National Human Trafficking Hotline, used the data from the hotline and identified 26 different business models of human trafficking, which is a great way for any of your audience who wants to start out learning about human trafficking, go to the Polaris website, and look at that article in particular. So depending on what kind of labor we're talking about, whether it's migrant farm worker, or factory work or landscape work, whatever, you know, the means of attracting the workers may vary somewhat, but I think the general belief is that it almost always begins with fraud. I'm offering you a job that sounds pretty good, you're desperate, and maybe your defenses are down a bit, but this job sounds pretty good. So I get you in there, and maybe you're part of my landscaping crew. And it's all fun until you decide you want to go somewhere else and do something else. And then I upped my game, from fraud to force or stronger coercion and like, if you leave, I'm going to do this negative thing to you. And you stay, and I've got you, then I'll work you.
Rosemary Pennington
You guys have mapped out these four lenses through which to kind of consider human trafficking or through which trafficking has been considered. What advice would you have for researchers who are interested in doing this work about how to approach it in a way that is thoughtful and careful, because I think, you know, we all recognize the care that needs to be taken in approaching this work.
Margaret Henderson When I started working with Project No Risk, which is where Nancy and I got to know each other, I had a strong background in violence against women and children issues, and my learning curve was still vertical. So please go in with humility, there is so much to learn because this is a complex issue. And one point of advice, actually, I've got two, the first one is in what include practitioners and survivors as you're designing your work and pay attention to what they tell you because you really need to honor whatever it is they tell you. The second point is to be aware that this can be dangerous, particularly if you're having first person contact with victims, or traffickers, or the buyers. And you need to up your game in terms of personal security in ways that you might not have before. I do hope people get interested in it. I do hope they approach it with humility and curiosity. And I do hope that we end up attacking this from a lot of different directions, because that's what it's going to take. Nancy, what would you advise?
Nancy Hagan
I would echo that and advise centering victims and survivors. And what that means is to attend to any kind of research agenda, as background and the human being first, to build trust and relationships, not to rely on secondary data, because so much of it is incomplete or inadequate, even flawed. And to be very aware that this is not the kind of research that can be done by parachuting in extracting information and parachuting out because it's real, vulnerable human beings, whose lives are literally at stake. And so putting those essential stakeholders first, i.e. victims and survivors and their families and loved ones, is essential. And it's not something that we always pay attention to as researchers.
Margaret Henderson Well, and I, my guess is that researchers don't always pay attention to self care in that once you learn about these issues, you cannot not think about it. So you may have to approach some strategies in terms of dealing with the hardness of the topic in ways that you haven't before in your research.
John Bailer
Yeah, I was struck by that thought as well. When I was reading some of the materials that you had produced, I thought this has got to be a tremendously challenging topic to explore and investigate, particularly when you start hearing about these individual lives that have been so horribly impacted by it. So I want to follow up with, I read in one of your reports, that quote, you don't have enough information for a baseline understanding of the prevalence of human trafficking. And that, to me, was a striking statement, but it was also a call to action, you know, so what kind of hopes do you have for the future understanding of the magnitude of trafficking? And then part of understanding that is then thinking about the interventions for trying to do that? So I'd be interested in the stripes, Rosemary credit, crazy, by the way, this is a tradition. This is a typical John, two part question. So it's the idea that the first part is kind of the hope for better describing the magnitude of the problem. And the second part of the question is, thoughts that you might have of interventions that you hope will be successful or you think might be successful.
Margaret Henderson I have a very foundational hope, which is that we continue to name it and ask about it. And it doesn't matter what kind of work you're doing. I mean, it's stunning to think that even in fields where people were aware that trafficking was happening, for example, they would ask about trafficking by husbands, boyfriends, spouses, that kind of thing, but not necessarily by other family members. We need to provide all the boxes that can be ticked off to show the variety of forms of trafficking that can be happening, and we just need to stay relentless in asking about it, and processing the information about it, and figuring out how to do better.
Nancy Hagan
And we need to do that with some integrity and depth that we mentioned. I remember conversing before we started recording that we often see posters and awareness campaigns. And these awareness campaigns often use the term human trafficking, which I'm gonna say is meaningless to the average person, what human trafficking is. I do a lot of work in Spanish. I came to this work initially through working with people who are immigrants and farmworkers and typically their first language was Spanish. So both in the arena's of sex and labor trafficking, the terminology in Spanish is quite different. And so we know that as humans, we mediate our experiences through language. So I think we have to be very attentive to the words that we use. What does human trafficking mean? Because when we say those words, we're creating a construct, both for the general public around awareness and for researchers, students and documentarians. And so if those we often see for instance, and maybe anyone who listens to this podcast might be more attentive to the difference between smuggling and trafficking. And they're often used interchangeably, even by politicians, policymakers, various folks, and they're quite distinct. Smuggling is a crime against the state. It involves a transgression of a federal boundary from one state to another. Human trafficking is the exploitation of an individual human being for commercial sex or labor. And so I think that it's very important to create awareness as a first step and continue to create awareness. But let's be accurate when we do it. And not just toss phrases out human trafficking kinds of what the heck does that mean, but how do you do that in a 3o second spot on a PSA or on a poster in an airport? That's our challenge.
Rosemary Pennington
Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Margaret and Nancy, thank you so much for joining us today.
Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University's Department of Statistics and media journalism and film and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on social media outlet formerly known as Twitter or Apple podcast, or other places where you find podcasts. If you'd like, share your thoughts on the program. Send your email to statsandstories@miami.oh.edu, or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.