"When people write or talk about trafficked children or young people, the focus is usually on them as victims. They are never portrayed as actors or agents," explained George Soros Visiting Chair Elżbieta Goździak during a public lecture at the School of Public Policy at CEU on September 29.
Goździak went on to explain, "I hope to give young people a voice by focusing on agency." Goździak said that policy concerning trafficked young people was too often made by "white people sitting in a room" and in "an empirical vacuum." Goździak admitted that doing research on trafficked children "was not a piece of cake." She noted, however, that many people have successfully studied "hard-to-reach populations" such as victims of domestic violence, drug users, and prison inmates. "I'm not seeing the transfer of these types of methodological approaches to the study of trafficked young people," she said.
Goździak disagrees with those who argue that victims should not be the ones championing change, noting that research can be empowering and therapeutic. She spoke forcefully about the importance of talking to the victims themselves. "They know what they need," she said. She went on to explain that this was important also because of the many erroneous assumptions that are often made about the experiences of trafficked children. She gave one example of young women who were found working in a bar. The authorities who found them assumed that they were all engaged in prostitution and then designed services based on that assumption. "Some engaged in prostitution, some did not. It was a choice," she said, "but the expectation was that they all had."
Goździak based her talk, and her recently published book, Trafficked Children and Youth in the United States: Reimagining Survivors, on what she learned during several years of research studying 142 children in the United States who had been identified by the US federal government as "trafficked victims." She said that the reality of trafficked children is very different from that portrayed in Hollywood movies. For example, in Goździak's experience, organized crime is rarely involved in child trafficking. "In the case of the 142 kids I studied, it was all family and friends who were involved," she said. Also, trafficked children are rarely kidnapped. "The parents usually know," said Goździak. Trafficked children come from poor families – or families that are struggling economically – and were expected to contribute to the livelihood of their families. "There was an element of volition and of decision making on the part of the children," said Goździak. She noted that many trafficked children "did not perceive what happened to them as being so terrible."
Goździak related the stories of some of the children she had met and studied to demonstrate that they often viewed their situations very differently than outsiders might. They often reported, for example, that they were not afraid of the friends and family members who were responsible for the situation they were in now. They did not see themselves as victims of these family members, but were instead grateful for their help. They were also sometimes devastated to learn that their parents and family members might be jailed for what they had done. "They understood that it [what they had done] was illegal, but thought the severity of the punishment [imprisonment] was extreme," Goździak said. Those young people who were often in particularly difficult situations were more likely to blame their employers than the people who smuggled them across the border, explained Goździak.
Goździak pointed out that there is a double standard in the United States regarding child labor. "There are laws in place that allow children to work. We want children in the US to work. We use very different standards though when we talk about other children. Then, it becomes exploitation," she said. She also noted that we "conveniently forget" the role of the US government and of the governments of other countries in creating circumstances that cause children to migrate.
In her concluding remarks, Goździak noted that we know very little about the long-term effects of child trafficking. "There are no resources to follow these people, so we don't know. We just don't know," she said. Goździak said that the absence of empirical data, which was a real problem for those studying child trafficking, underlies a lot of public policy.