Ethical Concerns in Research on Human Trafficking

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction: The Variety of Ethical Dilemmas

   • Dina Siegel, Roos de Wildt

   Pages 1-7

3. Sex Trafficking

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 9-9

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   2. Getting the Balance Right: The Ethics of Researching Women Trafficked for Commercial Sexual Exploitation

      • Helen Easton, Roger Matthews

      Pages 11-32

   3. Ethics as Process, Ethics in Practice: Researching the Sex Industry and Trafficking

      • Liz Kelly, Maddy Coy

      Pages 33-50

   4. Ethnographic Research on the Sex Industry: The Ambivalence of Ethical Guidelines

      • Roos de Wildt

      Pages 51-69

   5. Ethnicity, Crime and Sex Work: A Triple Taboo

      • Dina Siegel

      Pages 71-83

   6. The Ethical Minefield in Human Trafficking Research—Real and Imagined

      • Sheldon X. Zhang

      Pages 85-96

4. Labour Trafficking

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 97-97

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   2. Negotiating Anonymity, Informed Consent and ‘Illegality’: Researching Forced Labour Experiences Among Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK

      • Hannah Lewis

      Pages 99-116

   3. Ethics, Methods and Moving Standards in Research on Migrant Workers and Forced Labour

      • Sam Scott, Alistair Geddes

      Pages 117-135

   4. Doing No Harm—Ethical Challenges in Research with Trafficked Persons

      • Rebecca Surtees, Anette Brunovskis

      Pages 137-154

   5. Trust, Rapport, and Ethics in Human Trafficking Research: Reflections on Research with Male Labourers from South Asia in Singapore

      • Sallie Yea

      Pages 155-169

5. Child Trafficking

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 171-171

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   2. Getting What We Want: Experience and Impact in Research with Survivors of Slavery

      • Zhaleh Boyd, Kevin Bales

      Pages 173-190

   3. No Love for Children: Reciprocity, Science, and Engagement in the Study of Child Sex Trafficking

      • Anthony Marcus, Ric Curtis

      Pages 191-204

   4. Walking the Tightrope: Ethical Dilemmas of Doing Fieldwork with Youth in US Sex Markets

      • Amber Horning, Amalia Paladino

      Pages 205-223

6. Organ Trafficking

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 225-225

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   2. At the Organ Bazaar of Bangladesh: In Search of Kidney Sellers

      • Monir Moniruzzaman

      Pages 227-247

   3. On Adopting Heretical Methods: From Barefoot to Militant to Detective Anthropology

      • Nancy Scheper Hughes

      Pages 249-272

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

• Child Trafficking
• Labor Trafficking and Slavery
• Methodology of Social Science Research
• Organ Trafficking and Medical Trafficking
• Prostitution and Human Trafficking
• Sex Trafficking

• Willem Pompe Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

  Dina Siegel, Roos de Wildt

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.

Policies and ethics