Ethical Concerns in Research on Human Trafficking

This book presents a vivid description of the solutions that researchers have discovered for ethical dilemmas that pose themselves at studying disadvantaged, vulnerable and victimized populations. Ethical codes prescribe that the scholar should in all circumstances avoid potential harm, that informed consent is necessary and that the limits of confidentiality should always be respected. However, in the practice of research among women involved in prostitution, illegal immigrant workers, enslaved children, people who sell their organs and all the traffickers thereof, the ethical rules cannot always be followed. This book shows that there is a surprising variety of arguable possibilities in dealing with ethical dilemmas in the field. Authors reflect on concrete experiences from their own fieldwork in a wide variety of settings such as the USA, Singapore, Kosovo and The Netherlands. Some choose to work on the basis of conscientious partiality, others negotiate the rules with their informants and still others purposely break the rules in order to disclose and damage the exploiters. Researchers may find themselves in a vulnerable position. Their experiences, as presented in this volume, will help field workers, university administrators, representatives of vulnerable groups, philosophers of ethics and most of all students to go into the field well-prepared.

This is a book that every researcher planning to do fieldwork in the difficult field of hidden, illicit and victimized people should read in advance.

Dr. Frank Bovenkerk, Professor (Emeritus), Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands

This book allows a peek in the kitchen of empirical fieldwork, going into not only "best practices," but mistakes made, in a frank, courageous and honest way.

Dr. Brenda C. Oude Breuil, Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands

Auteur

Dina Siegel is a professor of Criminology and chair of the Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at the VU University, Amsterdam. She has published on the Russian mafia, human trafficking, legalized prostitution, underground banking, XTC trafficking, terrorism, crimes in the diamond industry, and the role of women in criminal organizations. Her most recent books are Traditional Organized Crime in the Modern World (with Henk van de Bunt), Springer, 2012; Mobile banditry. East and Central European Itinerant Criminal Groups in the Netherlands, Eleven International Publishing, 2014. She also published different articles on the position of sex workers and on ethnographic research on prostitution in the Netherlands.

Roos de Wildt is conducting her PhD research in Cultural and Global Criminology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands and the University of Hamburg, Germany. She is studying prostitution and human trafficking for sexual purposes in Kosovo. The aim of this project is to explore how war and a transition process shape these phenomena. She conducted further ethnographic fieldwork on the trafficking of Romanian women to Italy after Romania entered the European Union, the future perspectives of youth in post-conflict Guatemala, prostitution in the Dutch municipality of Almere, child trafficking in The Netherlands and the closing of

designated prostitution areas in Utrecht, The Netherlands. After obtaining her Master of Science in Cultural Anthropology Roos worked as an international project manager at NGOs between 2007 and 2011, during which she was mainly responsible for the implementation of projects in Central and Eastern Europe.

Contenu

Chapter 1: Introduction: the variety of ethical dilemmas (Dina Siegel and Roos de Wildt).- Part I: Sex trafficking.- Chapter 2: Getting the balance right: the ethics of researching women trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation (Helen Easton and Roger Matthew).- Chapter 3: Ethics as process, ethics in practice: researching the sex industry and trafficking (Liz Kelly and Maddy Coy).- Chapter 4: Ethnographic research on the sex industry: the ambivalence of ethical guidelines (Roos de Wildt).- Chapter 5: Ethnicity, crime and sex work - a triple taboo (Dina Siegel).-Chapter 6: The Ethical Minefield in Human Trafficking Research-Real and Imagined (Sheldon X. Zhang).- Part II: Labour trafficking.- Chapter 7: Negotiating anonymity, informed consent and 'illegality': researching forced labour experiences among refugee and asylum seeker in the UK (Hannah Lewis).- Chapter 8: Ethics, methods and moving standards in research on migrant workers and forced labour(Sam Scott and Alistair Geddes).- Chapter 9: Doing no harm. Ethical challenges in research with trafficked persons (Rebecca Surtees and Anette Brunovskis).- Chapter 10: Trust, Rapport and Ethics in Human Trafficking Research: Reflections on Research with Male Labourers from South Asia in Singapore (Sallie Yea).- Part III: Child trafficking.- Chapter 11: Getting What We Want: Experience and Impact in Research

with Survivors of Slavery (Zhaleh Boyd and Kevin Bales).- Chapter 12: No Love for Children: Reciprocity, Science and Engagement in the Study of Child Sex Trafficking (Anthony Marcus and Ric Curtis).- Chapter 13: Walking the tightrope: Ethical dilemmas of doing fieldwork with youth in US sex markets (Amber Horning and Amalia Paladino).- Part IV: Organ trafficking.- Chapter 14: At the Organ Bazaarof Bangladesh: In Search of Kidney Sellers (Monir Moniruzzaman).- Chapter 15: On Adopting Heretical Methods-From Barefoot to Militant to Detective Anthropology (Nancy Scheper-Hughes).