Researching Vulnerable Female Populations. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Ph.D. Jennifer Nazareno, Ph.D.

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1 Researching Vulnerable Female Populations Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Ph.D. Jennifer Nazareno, Ph.D.

2 Outline Introductions Why focus on vulnerable populations and not human trafficking? Group Exercise Unreliable data on human trafficking Research strategies

3 Past Research Experience Field work in United States, Italy, Philippines, Japan, United Arab Emirates and Singapore Focus of research migrant women in globalization (Philippines) Two research projects on individuals identified as trafficked victims by U.S. Department of State or modern day slaves Sex workers in Japan (interviews with 67 workers and supplemented by interviews with government officials, employers, recruiters; participant observation for three months) Domestic workers in Dubai and Singapore (interviews with 120 domestic workers in Dubai and 100 in Singapore; interviews with 35 employer in both locations; interviews with government officials in UAE, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia)

4 Past Research Experience Research on migrant caregivers in long-term care industry Interviews with employers and workers, including workers employed in shadow economy

5 Why focus on vulnerable populations? Trafficking technically refers to individuals who are 1) transported; 2) deceived, duped, forced in the process; and 3) exploited (prostitution, unpaid workers, forced laborers, etc). Exploitation is not necessarily trafficking yet our understanding of trafficking is plagued by what Janie Chuang calls exploitation creep (slavery = trafficking; prostitution = trafficking; forced labor = trafficking) Doing research on trafficking is like doing research on the 10 percent

6 Group Exercise How to Study Trafficked Victims I. Identify. Name a group identified as trafficked victims which you would like to study. Examples: underage sex workers; domestic workers in the Middle East or domestic workers of co-ethnics in Los Angeles; construction workers in Arizona (H2B visa workers) II. Access. Describe ways you could access the group you named. III. Focus. What will be the empirical focus of your project? IV. Design. Design the project so as to establish that the group you have identified are trafficked.

7 Lack of Reliable Data on Human Trafficking UN Office on Drugs and Crime: It is very difficult to assess the real size of human trafficking because the crime takes place underground, and is often not identified or misidentified. See UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Human Trafficking FAQs, One of the great frustrations of the antitrafficking field has been the absence of hard data... Anne Gallagher ( The global slavery index is based on flawed data why does no one say so? Guardian, November 28, 2014)

8 Lack of reliable data: US TIP Report In 2006, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the TIP Report for methodological weaknesses, gaps in data, and numerical discrepancies, determined that country data are generally not available, reliable, or comparable ; and concluded that neither the U.S. nor other governments had established an effective mechanism for estimating the number of victims. To date: methods not included in TIP Report.

9 Lack of reliable data Bird s Eye View Elizabeth Gozdziak and Institute for the Study of International Migration of Georgetown University used EndNote to build a comprehensive bibliography on human trafficking written before 2008 (n = 741 citations of reports, articles, and books) Breakdown: 429 reports, 218 journal articles, and 94 books Major findings: Majority of books were based on non-empirical research Sixty eight percent were based on empirical research with the majority based on convenience sampling (only 4 of 429 looked at health/medical) Of 218 articles, only 39 were based on empirical research and the rest on nonempirical research Majority of empirical research focused on sexual exploitation Sixty six percent of the 39 used convenience samples and 17 percent used population samples (clients of a particular program so representative of a very specific population and not overall population); and two articles used random sampling

10 Lack of reliable data on human trafficking: million slaves Global Slavery Index is based on statistics from 19 countries that are extrapolated to apply to the remaining million slaves are chattel slaves, debt slaves, and contract slaves

11 How to study groups susceptible to human trafficking? MACRO RESEARCH It is not possible to create a representative national survey of victims, because they constitute a hidden population whose boundaries are unknown, thus preventing random sampling of them. (Ronald Weitzer) International Organization for Migration (IOM) did a survey (n= 5,513) in five European nations believed to have major trafficking problems. Respondents were asked not about their personal experiences but instead whether a close family member had been trafficked. One hundred and eight individuals (2 percent) reported having a family member who fit the survey s definition of a victim: twenty-two sex trafficking and eighty-six labor trafficking victims.

12 How to study groups susceptible to human trafficking? Many scholars have done studies on vulnerable groups in which they found a significant number [ not majority ] to be trafficking victims. Examples: Sheldon Zhang (n = 826), Daniela Balenger (n = 646), Munim Joarder and Paul Miller (N = 386) Ronald Weitzer advocates for micro level studies [geographically specific to city, town, or small region of a country].. If the data pertaining to this limited arena are reliable, they can provide (1) more valid victimization numbers (because of the limited parameters), (2) richer insights regarding actors lived experiences, and (3) the potential to identify trafficking hot spots for targeted deployment of enforcement resources.

13 Is representative sample possible? Dubai hotbed of human trafficking Focus of research: employer and employee relations in the context of unfree labor without civil society Primary interviews: 77 Filipino domestic workers and 50 Indonesian domestic workers; 40 employers of domestic workers Supplementary interviews: UAE Ministry of Labor; Indonesian, Philippine and Bangladesh Government Officials in UAE; Philippine and Indonesian Government Agency Representatives Interview Locations [Domestic Workers]: Immigrant Neighborhoods (undocumented), Embassies (runaways), Supermarkets, Food Courts, Parks Time of Interviews: 6 am in parks, 9 am in supermarkets, evenings in immigrant neighborhoods, Fridays in food courts